Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef, your host and if you've arrived here, there must be a reason.

I'm guessing you're curious to learn more about improving your well being alongside adhd or maybe looking for some advice or guidance to feel healthier and calmer.

So why start this podcast?

I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, eft practitioner, mum to four kids and I discovered my own ADHD alongside one of my daughters at the age of 40.

And now after supporting many other women just like me and probably you, I feel there's a need for more emphasis on well being and lifestyle help for women with adhd.

And through the podcast I want to offer you new insights and perspectives to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and balanced life.

So wherever you are on your ADHD journey, my aim is to support you in finding the awareness and the most aligned tools to enhance your well being so you can make the most intentional mindset and lifestyle choices moving forwards.

Ready to get started?

Here's the episode.

Hi everyone.

So before we get started on this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that finally the ADHD Women's well Being Collective is open.

I've opened the doors, can go and join the membership.

I am really, really excited for those of you who were on the exclusive waiting list that you'd put yourselves on.

I've already got quite a few of you signed up.

I'm so happy and I just wanted to let you know that this membership has been really carefully thought about.

I'm going to be giving you exclusive content every single month that you won't be getting here on the podcast.

This is going to be creating a community.

I'm going to be giving you exclusive workshops, additional podcast episod Q A opportunities, bringing in some fantastic experts I've already got lined up for the next few months and really offering you what I can give you that isn't part of my one to one service.

So if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, I'm not, you know, private coaching isn't quite for you, you're not able to do that, but you would like a more personal approach to helping you on your ADHD journey.

The ADHD Women's Women's well Being Collective.

The membership is going to be really good for you.

I hope to be able to bring together a community.

I hope to be able to answer lots of questions wherever you are in your ADHD journey so you could be waiting for assessment, waiting for that diagnosis but would love some practical spiritual coaching tools.

Really be able to lean in to help yourself emotionally and from the well being side.

So just head to my show notes or my website which is coachingbykate.me.uk.

you'll see there on the homepage all the information to click through to join the membership.

And I really hope that this will be a wonderful way of all connecting me, being able to guide you, teach you, support you on this journey so you can thrive with ADHD and actually believe that you are able to do things that you are enough and really lean into all the strengths that you may have struggled to find.

So I really hope to see you there.

And now here's the this week's episode.

Welcome back to the ADHD Women's well Being podcast.

Another week, another amazing guest and this lady I have been so looking forward to meeting and chatting to because her book has been on my desk for many weeks now.

I refer to it all the time.

And we have Dr.

Tamra Rosier.

Tamra is a well, has been a college administrator, a professor, a leadership consultant, a high school teacher, a national public speaker and now an ADHD coach.

And what an amazing conglomeration of different roles there.

And through these different adventures, Dr.

Rosier has developed valuable insight into ADHD and how it affects one's life.

And as the founder of the ADHD center of West Michigan, she leads a team of coaches, therapists and speech pathologists to help individuals, parents and families develop an understanding and learn effective skills to live with adhd.

Her book, which is what I was just talking to you about, was your brain's Not Broken.

And this provides strategies for navigating the powerful emotional aspects of adhd which I know I resonate with and all of my clients resonate with.

So this book is, is very much needed and I urge anyone with an interest for self development to definitely have a read of it.

So Tamara, thank you so much for joining me today and I can't, I actually just can't wait to dig in and just dive into all the, the topics because people can't see this.

But the book has got probably about 10 different post it notes.

I've got lots of underlinings because it's such an effective tool for helping me as a coach understand even more the ADHD emotional side and it gives me lots of practical strategies for both myself and my clients.

So thank you.

Oh I am so thrilled to be talking with you.

So thanks for having me here today.

Oh it's a Pleasure.

So I know something that you're really passionate about is our big emotions, the emotional regulation side of adhd, where I don't think it's talked about enough when people.

First of all, there's a stigma of adhd, of sort of concentration, focus, disorganization.

But actually, from speaking to many clients of mine and myself and I see it in my family that losing our temper, keeping calm, keeping balanced, is actually really hard work with adhd.

So why is this part of it so important to you as well?

Well, emotional regulation isn't just when we lose our stuffings and get angry at a parking spot, or as my husband called today, he was driving in traffic and commenting on every car passing him.

And, you know, that was.

Even that little bit.

He wasn't angry, but there was a lack of emotional regulation even as he was driving in traffic.

By the way, I need to stop talking about my poor husband because I have adhd, too.

I just like to pick on him because it's easier.

Because, of course, emotional regulation is something we're constantly struggling with, and it's everywhere and every little nuance.

So it's not just about getting angry.

It's about feeling too big of emotions all the time and we don't know what to do with them.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think that's so well described because I think what you just said then is that we only see the temper, the anger, the big emotions.

But sometimes, like you say, it's.

It's hard to maybe articulate what's going on.

It's hard for us to recognize when we are about to lose control.

Yeah.

I mean, I see it with my daughter.

So my.

I've got a daughter who's seven, and.

And she's not diagnosed, but I have a feeling it's there because her emotional regulation and it's.

And I've got another daughter who is diagnosed who doesn't have that same issue.

And I know you talk about in your book that no adhd, you know, all looks the same.

Everything's different.

My ADHD looks different to them, and I look different to my brothers.

And so there's a lot of ADHD going on.

But we all quite.

It manifests quite differently within us all.

But my daughter's emotional reckoning, she can literally go from like 0 to 90, exactly 20, not even 20 seconds.

And my husband finds it really hard to deal with because she'll be coloring and in two seconds, like, her frustration levels will just go out of control and she'll have kicked the chair, thrown her Pens everywhere, slammed the door, the door will have broken.

And this is, it's just like a 30 second snapshot.

And.

And my husband's just like, oh my God, like, what the hell has just happened?

Right.

Well, in your husband sounds like he might be neurotypical, someone without adhd.

And so he's like, excuse me, Kate, can you help me understand what just happened?

And is our daughter possessed?

Yeah.

Yes.

So, yeah, he, he's seen it, but then she can rein it in quite quickly and.

And then the fast rebounder.

Yes.

Yeah.

And again, I'm just thinking about myself today.

One of my other do.

I've got four kids.

And so I, you'll hear me always bringing different circumstances in.

I was racing out the door, I had a packed schedule.

So in my mind I'd already.

And again, referring back to your mental rehearsal in the morning.

I'd already gone through my schedule and I knew it was unnecessarily back to back.

I'd squeezed stuff in because I'd had a holiday and I thought I better try and catch up.

So I was already like on the back foot, nervous about my busy schedule, which I don't normally do.

I normally am better with my schedule racing out the door.

And I knew I had to take the dog for a walk.

And my AirPods, I like to listen to music or a podcast, weren't there.

They were missing.

And I knew straight away what happened.

My eldest daughter had taken them because she had AirPods had broken.

So already in my head I was like, where my AirPods get the dog, get the shoes?

And we left.

And I was so disappointed with myself that I should know better to.

I was in complete reactive state and got in the car and I started my day already with my, like, my heart pounding.

I'd lost my temper, I was impatient and that frustrated me because I, I do know better.

But I, but, but, Kate, Those were your AirPods, so if anything is worth losing your temper over.

No, just joking.

But she.

And the funny thing is, is I knew what she'd done.

Like, I knew exactly what she was complaining that she'd lost hers or they weren't working and she'd grabbed mine because they were on the side.

And, and so she knew full well.

So that anger was there, but I just didn't want to start my day like that.

And that's the emotional regulation side that despite doing lots of work myself and using lots of tools, it can just creep up and it can, you know, and, and now I recognize, okay, I've kind of Gone into the acceptance mode.

I've forgiven myself.

I've shown myself compassion.

Like, I kind of know that the drill, right?

But it still happens.

Well, and it's still exhausting.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I mean, these big emotions, again, I'm not saying we can't get rid of them.

I think it's part of how we're made.

You know, my emotions get tamped down a little bit when I'm medicated, but they're still there.

And it's just this big pool of big emotions that I can trip and fall into my pool at any time.

And frankly, you know, sometimes I'm really embarrassed by my big emotions.

I cry very easily, and if anyone knows me, they know that I'd rather not be that vulnerable all the time.

But if I'm at a baptism, a wedding, I mean, happy things, I'll cry.

If a friend tells me that they're having a baby, and I'll cry over that.

I literally can feel the swell of joyful emotions.

That's just as embarrassing to me sometimes as my anger and frustration, really.

So I see that it's beautiful and empathic, and sometimes, I mean, that is a very touching thing to do.

And I agree with you.

I'm very similar.

I will cry very easily, but actually more with happy stuff and watching tv, and I'll cry.

But when it comes to something really catastrophic, it's almost like it goes the other way.

Like what you mentioned.

It's just.

I'm almost kind of, like, numbed.

I don't even know what to do.

Well, because my brain goes, whoa.

Too big.

Shut down.

Yeah.

And so these big emotions, this.

I think this is the starting place where we should be talking about adhd.

Everyone's so hooked on how can we get Tamara to focus more?

How can we get Tamara to do her schedule better?

Instead, we really need to focus.

How do we get Tamara to regulate her emotions?

And honestly, by regulate, I mean just admit we have big emotions and notice how close I'm getting to the big emotions and trying to be able to regulate so that I don't fall into that big pool of emotions.

Right?

Yeah.

And it's not.

It's not a bad thing.

And I want to point out to your listeners, this isn't bad.

It's the intensity.

There's a lot of times I go through my ADHD life and I realize my emotions are at a 9 or 10 and one, that's exhausting.

Two, I think the neurotypicals around us go, oh, well, that's a happy emotion.

And I guess that's nice.

Okay.

And it's almost like they say, could you feel that at a 7 though, instead of a 10?

Yeah.

I think what you touched on, it is exhausting.

And you know, for me, I definitely, I resonate with the overwhelm.

And I know a lot of my clients, you know, we've, they come to me and the first thing they talk about is just, I'm just so overwhelmed and you know, a compounding layer of lots of different small things that maybe neurotypicals just tick off their to do list for us.

It's big and it's big emotions and it's very energy sapping, it's draining, it's exhausting.

But what I wanted to ask you about, I've just got a list here, I'm just reading on my list because there's lots of things that I wanted to ask you about.

But maybe we could just go back to the prefrontal cortex Butler.

Because I really like this analogy of how you explain what this is.

And so I don't, you don't have to go into the whole sort of neuroscience, but if you could give us a little snapshot of what you mean by the butler and what we're missing, I guess in the, in a bit of our brain.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, the first time I used this metaphor, I was talking to, I think she was around nine years old.

And I was trying to explain ADHD to her because she's a smart nine year old girl.

And so I said to her, you know, I bet you see this mommy, her mommy didn't have adhd.

And I said, you know, in your mommy's brain she has this butler.

So the child and I started to play like what we thought a butler might say.

And by the way, let's be clear, neither of us have a butler.

We just have watched enough tv, maybe BBC kind of TV to tell us what we think a butler is.

Yeah, but my little head, I think a butler is just kind of attending to me to say, excuse me, your AirPods are on the counter, or don't worry ma'am, I'm going to get your AirPods back.

You'll just need to wait a moment.

You know, it's this calming voice that is directing my attention and directing my emotions.

And it's a very calm voice.

And so with this child, we were pretending to, you know what our, the mommy's butler sounded like.

And the child was absolutely hilarious.

She's like.

I said, so what do you think your mom's butler says, don't worry, she's going to remember to put her bike away, you know, so the butler says this.

And as you guessed this and your listeners guessed, we don't have a butler.

I say mine really left town and is not ever returning.

And so we have the version of an angry neighbor.

And if you would imagine again taken from TV, I watched too much TV as a child in the 70s and 80s.

But if you could imagine this curmudgeon of a human and just standing on the property line screaming over to you, shaking his shoes, saying why hi.

And threatening to throw his shoe at you.

He's doing obscene gestures, I'm sure.

And all of this is to try to get you to behave.

And so when we have adhd, the angry neighbor is really kind of how our emotions work to try to get us to behave.

Does the angry neighbor technique work?

Of course not.

Does every ADHD person I've ever known try to use it?

Yes.

And that's just because that's how our brain is set up.

Yeah, I like that.

And it's the prefrontal cortex, isn't it, that this is where it's all happening?

Yes.

Why is it all happening in that area of our brain?

Well, the prefrontal cortex is like the butler.

And so the butler is the calm part saying, please direct your attention here.

Emotions, we don't need you quite now.

And so when we don't have reliable access to the butler, then we go back to the limbic center where the angry neighbor is.

And that angry neighbor gets our attention by screaming at us.

And so that's why we actually have problems with emotional regulation.

It's because the butler just isn't there to help us out.

And so the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I think it's so important that people understand the neuro science behind it.

They actually understand that this is the way our brain, hence the reason why, you know, you've named the book and what you did, because so many of us have lived our lives in shame thinking that we have personality defects, you know, flaws with bad people.

We, we've been called lots of different things, you know, growing up from parents, siblings, friends that we have conditioned ourselves to, you know, that we are, you know, there's something wrong with us.

And I genuinely, you know, growing up I did the emotional regulation side.

I didn't feel as much, but I think more my.

The way just the overwhelm kicked in and things like that, I just couldn't work out why I was who I was and I just needed fixing, I was like, just needs fixing and then I'll be fine.

And then as soon as I had this diagnosis and I know so many women who get this, you know, this epiphany when it's they realize it's adhd, they get the diagnosis, this half grief, half relief of, you know, finally there's something that medically there's an explanation.

It's not my personality.

So when we explain about the butler and the angry neighbor, this is all going on in our brain.

So we can't fix the adhd, but we can learn fantastic supportive tools and practical strategies to help us.

So living in a busy household where I'm constantly switching tasks, which we all know isn't that easy for the ADHD brain, I've recently been using a new tool to help me focus and concentrate while getting my work done.

I came across Brain FM after someone else with ADHD recommended it to me and wow, I'm so glad I discovered it.

I'm hooked and I'm using it pretty much every day now for various situations.

Brain FM has access to over a thousand tracks across a wide range of different music genres and nature soundscapes, all specifically designed to help you focus, sleep, relax and meditate.

I've recently used the different soundscapes to relax on a plane, train and cab, as well as choosing an hour long relaxed track while having some very much needed reflexology.

I've also used it to help me meditate and focus on my breath.

And if you are anything like me, I can get easily distracted by outside noises.

And having the Brain FM app on my phone is a quick option to help me do what I want to do distraction free.

But here's the best bit if you're interested in the neuroscience like me, Brain FM has based all their chosen tracks on neuroscience and psychology so you can discover the perfect music for your brain by personalizing science based features like neural effect and music complexity.

And Brain FM's music is purpose built to guide your brain into your desired mental state every time.

Meaning we can change our own neural pathways using Brain FM's chosen tracks.

And the focus music is made to help you work better by blending into the background so you can focus distraction free.

And trust me, it works.

I've been so productive using Brain FM and this is all the while stimulating the brain with gentle rhythmic pulses in the music that support sustained attention.

Now if this is something that you feel that you need in your life and trust me, I would not be promoting it if I didn't think it was worthwhile.

I've got a discount code for you so you can head to Brain FM Forward slash ADHD Women's well being.

That's Brain FM Forward sl, ADHD Women's well Being.

And I've got a code for you which is ADHD Women's well Being.

You can start your free trial straight away and then you get the discount when they decide to charge you all the details, I will put on my show notes.

So if you go to Brain fm, ADHD Women's well being and use the coupon code, ADHD Women's well Being.

I love your book because you first of all acknowledge what's going on.

You lay out, I love your stories, you bring, you know, fantastic examples of yourself or clients and then you give us either in black and white tools or you give us fantastic working strategies through the day.

And one of them I love, and that's something that I'm been really, is really open my eyes is living on the grid.

Oh, fantastic.

Thank you.

Because this living on the grid, which I'm going to allow you to explain, it was like, oh my God, why did I not, why could I not see this before?

And it made open my eyes and it's made me recognize, you know, certain tasks.

So before I start talking about it, can you explain sort of relatively simply how you came up with this, you know, notion and what it's all about?

You know, I came up with this actually while I was talking with a client.

He couldn't figure out why he couldn't muster up the energy to do things.

And because he was a business major and business majors love the four quadrants.

You know, if you're a business major, you put everything in a four quadrant kind of thing.

I drew a quick, I drew the first solvent grid and said, I need you to think of it like this.

And then it really started to make sense for him and then he really kept referring back to it.

And so that's how I came up with it.

So we're going to ask your listeners to kind of picture things in their brain.

And if you don't get it, I'll send Kate an illustration to put on her show notes so no one has to get frustrated right now.

How's that?

Brilliant.

Okay, so imagine a horizontal line and it's a continuum.

And on the left hand side we put not fun and the right hand side we put fun.

And Kate, I'm watching your face to go, yes, this makes sense or no.

Okay, yeah.

And so we're going to dissect that line.

So we have not fun and then fun, but then when we dissect the line to make the four quadrants, we have the emotional volume control.

And so we have, you know, in the book, I kind of call it something a little bit more sophisticated, emotional stimuli, but really it's the amount of emotional energy we're putting to that task.

And so if you at the bottom of that grid, it's low.

Remember, this is the vertical line, and then at the top it's quite high.

Kate does that.

Yeah.

You've seen the grid, so that's not quite fair.

Yeah.

But does that make sense?

It does make sense.

And using my ADHD brain, I'm thinking of my listeners.

It is hard to picture it.

And then also concentrate and probably the next bit.

So maybe what I might do, because I think it's important that people understand why I found it so useful.

But would you be able to explain why we expend energy on things that we don't want to do, but sort of play in our mind, and then we.

We use sort of this boundless energy to do the things that we want to do and how we kind of balance it all together?

I think that's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so really, we have a problem with energy ADHD people.

We have a ton of energy, it seems, and we are very careless with our energy.

In fact, I have, especially since writing this book, I've really done some work in my own life and thought, tamara, you need to be an energy miser.

And so this is what I mean by being an energy miser.

Let's say I have to do some billing for my practice.

Right.

Well, who on earth would find that fun?

So that's in the not fun category, and I certainly don't have any good feelings about it.

So it's low emotional stimulus there.

And so we call that the yellow quadrant, by the way.

Again, look at the show notes.

But I have no reason to do it.

It's not fun and it's not interesting.

And so I'm going to play a little bit of a game with that.

I'm going to think, well, when is the last possible moment I could get it done?

And, you know, in billing, if you run your own practice, you know that there's really not a last moment.

And so that's where the angry neighbor starts to click and say, you know, Tamara, if you were a real professional, you know, you'd do this.

And that angry neighbor is slowly turning up the energy going, hey, hey.

Until it crosses into the next quadrant and that's red.

So it's still not fun.

But now I'm either angry at myself, I'm shaming myself.

I worked up some kind of anger towards someone else who knows what's happening or what I had to do, but somehow I turned up the energy in order to get something done.

So that I think a lot of people can relate to is when they procrastinate and they leave it to the very last minute.

And then the cortisol and the adrenaline pushes them over the finishing line.

So they pull an all nighter.

You know, they're handing in a dissertation or a project, whatever that is, they do it, they cram it, the hyper focus.

But then the next day or two days later, they just, they can't move.

Their energy is completely gone.

They get sick, they, they've got low mood.

So am I right in saying that this is, that's kind of the path?

So then on the grid in the other side, we've wasted all this energy now.

So now we're back down to low energy.

But then we're like, well, I deserve some fun.

And we'll flop to the other side of the grid in the quadrant I call blue.

And that's where we don't want to do anything.

And we tell ourselves, you know what, it's okay, Tamara, you worked really hard, you burned through all that.

Cortisol is exactly the right word here, right?

Our whole adrenal system is exhausted and so we waste a lot of time the next day at work.

And so that's why some of us with adhd, we have our on days, we have our off days.

And really what the whole grid is about is let's just analyze our energy expenditure.

And we're never going to nail this, right Kate?

But at least we can do it on purpose.

And so I know that Wednesday is going to be a very busy day for me.

And I've already done rehearsal for Wednesday today because I'm really prepping, right?

I'm going to have to be really on and I'm going to say to myself, look, you have a lot of the not fun activities to do and you might have some surprises along the way, but just be a grown up the whole day, right?

But then already at night I'm like, go ahead and flop to the other side of the grid.

Past 7:00, you don't have to do anything.

You can go into that rest zone.

So at least I'm doing it purposefully.

Knowing I will be out of energy and to flop it back to the other side.

So the grid is really about seeing where we spend our energy and learning to manage the grid.

It's not, by the way, we're never trying to get things perfect or nailed in.

Right?

Or just try to try to see it and acknowledge it.

I think it's important.

What you're saying is that I speak to a lot of my clients about just diary management, of trying to stay off that red zone and being really conscious and intentional with the amount of meetings you book in, what you commit to your boundaries.

If you've got a buffer, you know, I'm a huge fan of like buffers between meetings.

I've got time to eat, have a walk around, do some breath, work.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

Because that's what we compromise.

We compromise who we really want to be.

Like, we don't want to be that crazy screaming mom in the parking lot, right?

We don't want to be that person.

And so it takes a lot of planning to be that person.

You know, something else you said though, that hit me.

It's not just avoiding the people pleasing, managing our rejection sensitivity, but it's also actually remembering that things take time.

That's where, frankly, I'll forget to give myself bio breaks, right?

I forget that I'm a human and I need to eat, use the restroom.

I forget.

And don't even get me started on travel time.

You know, somehow I think I'm on Star Trek and I can just beam myself in a different place.

Years and years I should be working on this, and yet my brain literally forgets that those things take time.

Yeah, definitely.

And that's why we have to, I think, keep checking back in with ourselves because we can either live in this perpetual state of frenzy and stress and, and that red, that red quadrant where things do get done but at the expense of our health.

And like, you know, the stress that we live under in that quadrant has to be short term.

It can't be long term because that's when I do see the knock on effect of, you know, chronic pain and inflammation and autoimmune problems and depression.

And it really, it's quite a serious thing that we think we kind of, you know, with adhd, if we just cram, everything will fine.

But you can't live like that.

It's just not, you know, I just.

So love your approach and I so appreciate how common sense you are because you're not saying, hey, we need to be the most productive.

We can be because we have these beautiful minds that can create unattainable productivity.

But you're also, and this is where I really appreciate you're accepting ADHD and not say, hey, I want to always be careful with my clients to say, this is not a gift.

ADHD is a harder way to live in our modern world.

And every day, you know, when I do interviews, I work with people who aren't ADHD professionals like yourself, who are like, yes, but Tamara, doesn't ADHD have strengths?

And I say only, we only have strengths when we're really managing the weaknesses.

And that takes a lot of work and it's exhausting.

And so imagine a superpower that you could use for 20 seconds a day and then had to take two days to restore that power.

That's how exhausting it is.

Yeah.

So I love that you, you're approaching this like, yes, let's admit we have adhd.

Let's also say that it's harder to be us in a modern world.

Yeah.

And that's 100%.

That is the approach.

Because I think that's the acceptance I've had to come to through lots of convoluted ways of not quite knowing until I got my diagnosis.

But I think that's when I've definitely leaned into well, being and changing my lifestyle and managing my lifestyle and making that a daily choice.

Because yes, I have great aspirations and ambitions, but do I want that to be at the detriment to my health and my family?

For me, no.

There's many women I speak to who've chosen not to actively chose not to have children who have actively chased their professional career and that's been of huge importance and worth to them.

But they still have the same level of exhaustion because it's not sustainable.

And I wish I could turn around and say, yes, of course you can do, do it and you can be that person.

But something inevitably has to give.

And I do see it with ADHD women that it is often our emotional well being or mental health, which for me, I think that's kind of the pocket of support that I want to offer people because it's hard having lots of ideas and being creative and ambitious and forward thinking.

And I do think they are strengths for adhd.

Like, we can see things in a big picture, we can see things work and succeed, but then when we have to break it down and we see and then, and then we kind of go, okay, right, I either need to delegate, I need to get some serious help, or this is just going to be too much.

And sadly, I can't do it.

Well, and don't forget, you know that butler we talked about, that butler likes to sequence things for us.

And if we don't have reliable access to our butler who puts things in order, we have these big ideas from the angry neighbor shouting them, but we don't have the butler to actually help us carry it out.

And that's where the people with whom we work and ourselves get so frustrated.

Yeah, I mean, I thank God for my assistant every day.

Genuinely.

Like, I can't believe how lucky I am to have found someone that listens to my witterings on Voxer where I use this thing where I just send.

I'd go, you don't need to listen to this till tomorrow morning.

But because it's in my head, I just have to get it out.

I'm so.

It's like 9:00 at night.

So unprofessional.

But if I don't get out, I'll either forget it or I'll lie in bed awake going, I just, I need to get it out.

And so I genuinely.

She is, I guess she is my butler because she helps me do the sequencing and put things together for me.

And I didn't have that, you know, 18 months ago and I was, I was so much more overwhelmed in life.

But I guess I'm privileged in the respect that in my business now I can afford to have someone to help me and not everyone can, so I'm aware of that as well.

I actually, I have one child who does not have ADHD, out of the four, and she's 20 years old, she's in college and guess what?

She needed a job.

And she's a very detailed together young woman.

Again, neurotypical.

And so I hired her to be my administrative assistant and I hire her six hours a week.

And I have to tell you the joke.

In our family, I pay her for six, but she saves me 12 because my business changed when I hired her to do six weeks or six hours.

Because those six hours are the mundane kind of butler tasks that are just like pure magic to me.

I mean, it's like I, I would like.

Well, I don't have a butler.

Maybe I have a magician.

Like I'm trying to concoct some way to do this boring stuff.

And it's really evident the difference between us neurologically.

Wow, that's so fascinating and I'm so.

Grateful for her and her patients, frankly.

Wow, what a great idea.

That's so resourceful as well, isn't it.

You know, you noticed that.

You noticed that she needed a job, you needed help.

She's got the right brain to help you with that mundane stuff.

Well, you know, when I brought the idea to her, her response was, hey, mom, let's face it.

I've been doing this for you all through.

She goes, I think I started in middle school, and it would be true, because we would be driving to soccer practice.

I'd hand her.

Her my phone and say, hey, write these things down for me, or would you look on my calendar to make sure that this is, you know.

And so she was doing that administrative work for me, that butler stuff.

So now, you know, I just made it legit, and we're paying for it.

So I love that.

I think it's brilliant.

And I think you probably sparked a few, like, ideas in people's heads when, you know, they're listening to this now.

Oh, I never thought of that.

Well, you know, there's a thing we have in our family, and it's called borrowing someone else's prefrontal cortex.

So this is a responsibility issue.

I don't expect people to be my prefrontal cortex, but I intentionally borrow it.

And so we have a lovely man who married into our family named Adam.

And there's one time I said to Adam, no, I'm catching the train to go to Chicago, but I need to be there.

And there was a time change involved as I traveled west.

And so it was like this little bit of a math problem with time zones.

I said, so you think I'm leaving on time?

Right.

And he looks, and he was brand new into our family.

And he took the question very seriously, thought with me, and said, yes, I think you're going to be leaving on time.

And then his wife laughed and said, she just borrowed your prefrontal cortex.

The people I work with, I say, go ahead and borrow their prefrontal cortex.

Go ahead and borrow that, but take responsibility.

Don't make people do your thinking, but just borrow it and then return it.

And that's a difference of kind of people going, just think through this for me.

I don't want to have to do the work.

Instead, I say, just borrow their prefrontal cortex to check your work.

I love that.

What a brilliant reframe everything that you've talked about in the book.

There's not one chapter that I don't think people wouldn't resonate with in some way.

And I think the way you've written it, it's so I'm not belittling it, it's simple, but it's very important, you know, information.

So I just want to thank you very much for giving it, for letting me read it and have the opportunity to digest it for myself and then I can sort of relay it back to clients in, in different ways.

But just before we go.

And this is something that I've not actually spoken about in a, in a huge way on the podcast yet, but it's something that I'm building up to, is that one of the things that you've written about is, is how important sleep is.

And it's towards the end of the book and, you know, listen, I've got notes here about asking you about boundaries and all sorts of different things, but I've spoken about boundaries before on the podcast.

Sleep is such a huge part of managing our adhd.

And sometimes, you know, we can find it hard to get ourselves to bed, like put ourselves to bed and have the right amount of sleep.

Why did you find it so important to have sleep as it was almost like a non negotiable, isn't it?

Sort of, you're up there with your, if you had any advice to give anyone, it would be like, try and get a good night's sleep.

So this, I mean, this is so difficult.

And so now let's speak specifically for women and sleep, right?

And you even said, look, I want to be the wife and mother who I want to be to these people who, whom I love so much.

And then you're at the end of your day, you're like, well, what about a little Kate time?

Doesn't Kate get any time?

And so then the little elf in your brain is popping up going, yes.

And it's between 1am and 3am that's okay.

The kids don't wake up till 6.

And so we kind of lie to ourselves about that.

And I see women doing that the most of going, well, I have to stay up.

If I can just fold laundry and listen to a podcast by myself without anyone demanding anything, I feel better.

And so a lot of times women will rob themselves of sleep.

But the big problem is this.

Our sleep cycles are reversed when we have adhd.

So if you're neurotypical, you get your deep cleansing cycle within the first two sleep cycles.

Oh, no, not for us.

We have to wait till the third sleep cycle before we go through that deep cleansing.

And the deep cleansing is actually we're finding more and more out about sleep.

It really is a cleaning cycle for the brain.

And so if we don't get the full Eight to nine hours.

Yup.

Nine hours might be the thing.

We will look much more ADHD than we are.

Let's go right back to emotional regulation because that's out the window, my friends.

And so it's very difficult.

I work with many women who are menopausal and hormones really mess up our sleep cycle.

Right.

And so now we have a reverse sleep cycle that's we're waking at different times.

And so if we're going to work on anything, it's sleep.

And you know how I said I was an energy miser?

I'm going to sound like a real fun person to live with.

I'm also a sleep hoarder, which means my kids were home.

Mom went off duty at 9, 8, 9pm, not 9am, 9pm And I would take emergency phone calls and phone calls being kind of the euphemism.

They were right down the hall, you know, until 11, like, hey, you know, I just broke up with my boyfriend.

That kind of drama.

Otherwise past that time you had to actually be bleeding or something really uncommon happening to you to wake me up.

And I modeled that for my kids, almost being kind of, hey, I don't function the next day.

And literally, Kate, I will have swollen glands, I will feel sick if I don't get that cleaning cycle.

Yeah.

It's so interesting when you talk about the cleaning cycle because I'd read about this before that these, the protons, the proteins, they have an impact on sort of like Alzheimer's and dementia.

And this is, it's similar, this cleaning cycle.

Sleep is so important to our brain.

And I'm, I'm one of those people that once my eldest kid goes to bed, it's quarter to 10, you know, by the time they, you know, I've cleaned the kitchen, kitchen, you know, I've probably sitting on the couch by about 9.

My husband likes to go to bed early, so 10 o'clock he likes to go to bed because he wakes up super early.

I've not even relaxed by 10 o'clock, you know, exactly.

I'm, I'm just, just getting into a TV program and he's like, I'm going to bed.

So I have this kind of like, you know, conundrum.

Do I go to bed with my husband and then we have a bit of time together as well, or do I stay up and watch TV program and then, you know, put off bed and by the time I get to sleep, it's like 11:30, 12.

And I know I've got to be up in the morning so this happens most nights, but I have to.

There's some internal discipline that I know that I.

I need my sleep the same as you.

That if I don't get those, I would say not nine, but definitely eight.

I work at my optimum, so it's.

It's.

I kind of think it's not forever, though, is it?

Our kids.

Ages change.

Well, you are in the busiest time of your life, right?

I'm an empty nester, so I just have three furry preschoolers.

They're dogs that are taking my attention.

Otherwise, all my kids are in their twenties, safely into their twenties.

I say, because, whoo, right, I made it that far.

But you would think, hey, Tamara, there's no excuse now, right?

Except tonight my husband's traveling, and so he's going to be in Chicago.

And I won't have that pace car of, hey, Tam, I'm heading to bed now.

Pace car's gone.

And I have to be very careful because ADHD folks like me, there's like a natural stop sign sign that happens around 3pm in the afternoon.

And we blow right through it.

Okay?

And then, because, I mean, we'll feel tired and then we're like, rally, but we'll rally a little bit too hard.

Then we'll blow through the 7pm stop sign.

And that stop sign usually says, hey, Tamara, you have about three hours left in your day.

What are you going to do?

And by the way, you have to wind down during that time.

But you know what?

I'm still doing stuff at seven, right?

I still think I have wild ideas about what this day can contain at 7pm so instead of my brain saying, whoa, no, no, no, we're just wrapping everything up.

I'm like, you know, I could clean out that closet.

Right?

I think that's the big problem for us.

So even though it's, you know, I don't have children, my brain is still filled with the possibilities of the day.

And so I literally have an alarm that pops up on my phone.

It says, no, seriously, you're gonna wrap up today.

And I have to talk to myself.

No, seriously, you're gonna wrap up today.

And so at 7 now, I've trained myself.

All right, we're heading.

We're heading to the wrap up phase.

Heading to the wrap up phase.

And that helps me reframe everything in my day.

That's so helpful.

You know, 100.

I'm gonna try that.

I'm gonna put that on my phone as well, because I find it really hard to wind down.

And then when I Finally wind down.

I want to relax and watch tv.

And then I'm looking at the time and it's like, oh my God, now I've got to go to sleep.

Like now I know that sleep's important.

Right?

Right.

So we can't just tell people, we just can't tell women, especially like, okay, go to sleep, get all of your sleep, be a good girl.

Because there's, we don't know how to.

And so a couple of the rules I say is it takes us at least an hour to do a wind down.

And so the wind down again, referring back to that grid we introduced, is an hour of blue time.

It's slow emotion and fun, but it's a slow emotion.

Like we're not watching anything on television that's going to excite us emotionally.

It's just, in fact, I say reruns, redecorating, you know, just the very basic non emotional things because we're just telling our brain, nothing to see here, folks.

We're going to be wrapping this up soon.

But asking women to carve out an hour is very difficult.

And so sometimes when they have younger children, I say, well, you can have a whole family cool down time.

And so a lot of times I help families do it all together.

Yeah, that's interesting because I have a bath.

That's my thing.

So I have a bath and actually my kids will know.

I mean, they don't really listen because there's always something that a child needs to tell me.

But I'm in the bath, I put my salts, my essential oils, I get my book or, or not.

And I tell the kids, I said, I'm, I'm.

This is me winding down now.

And I put my youngest in the bath.

And she, not my bath, in her bath.

And she, I said, right, you chill out, you can go watch the iPad for a little bit, you can relax in your pajamas.

And I hope that I am modeling to my kids that this time, this kind of diffusing time between lots of energy to maybe having dinner or watching TV is really important because it's like a stepping stone, isn't it?

From, from one state to another state.

You can't just jump.

Yeah, I could.

Honestly, I feel, I'm very conscious at the time and I feel like we could have probably did another hour because I think it's just so insightful what you're saying because it's so relatable and I know that lots of people probably take a huge amount from this conversation.

So I just want to thank you, Tamra so much for your time.

Thank you for your book.

Thank you for your expertise.

And tell me, how can people, if they want to, I don't know, either work with you or just connect with you.

Where's the best place you can go?

To my website, tamaracier.com and there's information on my book, the ADHD center and so on.

Fantastic.

I'll make sure all that, that information is in the show notes and if we can, we'll try and get some form of illustration or a printout of the page for the the Living on the Grid so people can really see it because I think it's quite a valuable tool.

But yeah, thank you, Tamara.

I really appreciate you being here and I really hope we can speak again.

Again, Kate, you're a gem.

I will come back anytime you ask.

You are just delightful.

So thank you so much for this.

So that's today's episode done.

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