Hello and welcome back to the final episode in the Summer Toolkit series.

I'm so happy that you've been here with me while I've been having a little bit of a break after all of the craziness, launching a book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit.

I'm so, so grateful for all your lovely messages, so grateful for the reviews, and thank you for sharing the book with everybody that you've been messaging me, saying you bought one for yourselves, one for a friend or a family member.

This is the ripple effect that we want, and we want it to be grassroots level people sharing and helping and guiding the next person through their understanding of adhd, no matter what age you are.

So I'm so, so appreciative of all your support.

Now in these Toolkit episodes, I've been sharing sort of past wisdom, past insights, and I'm bringing them probably the stalwart of ADHD who has been working with ADHD women for 25, 30 years.

Her name is Sari Soldan.

She's actually contributed to the book and we've done some brilliant workshops together.

I'm so honored for Sari to come and help teach her wisdom from all the years that she's been working and understanding ADHD women and all the different nuances that she sees.

Sari is an experienced psychotherapist and authority, and actually she spent 35 years, probably more now, helping adults with ADHD overcome emotional challenges and embrace their true neurodivergent selves.

And in this snippet, you're gonna hear Sari explain the different ADHD personality types and traits through the characters of her book called Journeys Through Adulthood.

So add adulthood.

We're gonna learn and understand and recognize what, how these different presentations show up and how you can untangle who you are from how your ADHD presents itself.

Maybe you've kind of blended it as part of your personality and now it's time to sort of separate it and give it a bit of distance and the compassion, the love that it deserves.

But it's not all of you and how to understand and embrace ADHD as part of your identity.

Now, I want you to know that I'm going to be launching a membership and it's going to be called More Yourself, which is going to be starting in October.

And I'm going to be talking so much about these concepts, about authenticity, about truth, embracing our, our real selves and understanding and letting go of all the pressures and difficulties and challenges that we have found by not understanding our ADHD So this is not about getting rid of our adhd, it's about leaning into self acceptance.

Now the wait list is open, you put your name down on the wait list and you will be able to get the founding members price which is 18 pounds a month.

It's incredibly accessible.

I've tried to do it so so many people can join and be part of this I would say revolution.

I would say this is a community.

There's going to be guest workshops, there's going to be Q&As.

It's going to be a place where you can show up when it feels right, pull back when you're not sort of that, you know, feeling it.

And we're going to be really working on the community style, all based on authenticity after an ADHD awareness or diagnosis.

It's called More yourself because someone messaged me to say that they thought my name, my surname, More Yousef was more yourself.

And she'd always thought how fitting that my surname sounded like, you know, leaning into all this authenticity.

And it's just stuck with me.

So if you are that person I've been trying to look for, look for the email but please do message, message me again because I am so excited that this is going to be now the basis of this new community.

So I'm going to put the link to the wait list on the show notes.

So as you can tell, I'm very excited.

But in the meantime, here is my conversation with Sari Solden.

I think I was looking at neurodiversity even then, even though we didn't have those kind of words for it.

This idea of people were getting stuck when they just saw themselves as a bunch of symptoms that they had to get over to meet some kind of ideal.

And the way I described in this book, four different composite characters based on people that I've worked with sort of take a deep dive into that long journey in a story's form, so it's easy to follow.

But there's a hyperactive man who doesn't see his difficulties, he only sees his strengths, which is unusual.

And so he doesn't learn to compensate for that or get help or figure out how to use his tremendous strengths.

There's another inattentive sort of man who's an insurance salesman who is really a poet at heart and he doesn't fit in anywhere.

And his journey is about how not to change professions but to gradually let himself be seen and do more of his poetry and be with people at conferences.

That really changed his view of himself and he was much more authentic and fulfilled.

Then I have two women.

One starts out as a younger woman who's keeping to a very rigid schedule in college.

She's determined to get over this and to, you know, discipline herself.

And that, of course, didn't work.

She was determined to be an administrative assistant when that was like the worst of her skills and how then she gradually was able to let herself move into an area of her strength and become more fulfilled.

Then there was Jennifer, this character who was a mother and wife, who the only time she had for herself was at night, in the middle of the night.

She'd go out every night to a big box store.

It was open 24 hours, and wander around and just feel free because she didn't feel entitled during the day to take any time for herself as long as she had these problems.

And then gradually she learned to feel entitled to give herself permission.

She could, you know, she got back into things like acting or singing, things that fulfilled her, even though she still had the difficulties.

So to compare this to Radical Guide that was sort of many years later, the goal is to untangle who you are and yourself from your problems with your brain.

So is your brain, which you have to keep working at with your coach or your.

Or medication or work on accepting difficulties and keep going because that's a lifelong process, and then that's different from you as a person and what you're going to do to feel fulfilled and to find meaning in life, even though not.

Not after, but even though you still have difficulties.

And that's sort of the.

The goal that's been there all the time for me.

It's fascinating because you mean I'm sort of like breaking it down in a very simplistic way.

But it sounds like when that resistance is removed, when we finally accept ourselves and accept our brain, we start allowing ourselves to, okay, we can get the help, the coaching, the medication, the therapy, the awareness, the understanding.

And then we can open up to who we really are, as opposed to, no, I will.

I will fit into this box.

I will be that person.

And then that acceptance kind of kicks in.

It's like wave washes over you and the resistance goes.

Which is so, you know, paradoxical.

People resist that idea because they think that acceptance means just giving up or giving in or resigning, or they come to a state.

I talk about the first journey here is pseudo acceptance, which, okay, well, I've accepted my add now, you know, now I just want to get organized or whatever.

So deep acceptance is an ongoing journey.

And it.

And it's forever.

People have been at this for years and feel good about themselves, still will hit a roadblock.

They'll feel wounded.

It's natural to understand that you've been hurt.

You haven't understood your experience for so long.

So you're going to feel wounded and you're going to react.

And as time goes on though, you're going to start seeing, oh, that that's my brain.

That's difficult, that's hard, I hate it, whatever it is.

But that's not me, that's not who I am, that I'm not measuring myself against my ADHD or the difficulties my brain brings me.

So, yeah, acceptance is funny and people resist that idea because it's counterintuitive.

So as soon as the more you accept yourself, the more relaxed you are, the more you move toward your strengths or enjoying your life anyway, the more actually you, you know, you have more energy, less anxiety, and you actually, your ADHD symptoms actually improve.

So it's, it's a really important thing to understand and to work toward and to observe in yourself.

Yeah, I mean, that is just making me think that that mental exertion that, you know, we all have had of like washing it and going, no, like try again.

Just different try, different job and all of that.

And that once we kind of go, okay, now we understand that level of exertion that we've always put in is minimized.

And like you say, we can it just be a bit freer and we have more energy.

I know that I've definitely this, the path that I've been on has.

I've seen that once I understood, I know from so many people in the collective people that I speak to is that epiphany of, okay, now I understand.

That in itself is so true.

Exactly.

And everybody used to be so isolated in this.

That's why my first book, Women with adhd, was so eye opening because literally we didn't have Internet.

Literally nobody ever saw their experiences described before.

Never met another woman like that.

So when they read it in my first book, they couldn't believe that I was describing their experiences so well.

But it's interesting what you're saying about.

I always say, you know, because this push and this pushing yourself so hard and berating yourself to do things.

I looked up at one point, you know, discipline really means, you know, to follow with love, disciple.

This comes from disciple to follow with love.

And if you, you have to get anywhere with your adv, you have to find something compelling to move toward, to organize your life toward.

Something meaningful and important to pull your focus together, not just to get perfectly organized.

You know, that's, that's the wrong goal that keeps people stuck.

You know, you have to organize good enough, well enough to, or get enough help to move towards something that's important to you and not just for the sake of pushing yourself.

It doesn't really work.

So let me just go over briefly, like the journeys the way I have them, and then we'll go on to talk with everybody.

Well, you know, I talk about everybody starts out pre diagnosis in the state of confusion, sort of.

You don't know what is going on, why you've had these crazy experiences your whole life where sometimes you've been good at something, other times you've been criticized or you haven't been able to figure things out, you've just been confused and so you're, you know, on a treadmill, just all about your difficulties and have no way out.

I had no way.

I had no idea.

When I was pre diagnosed, before I was 40, in my basement, I had thousands of books, I mean, boxes of, I always say, dreams buried at the bottom of my boxes.

I had no idea how I would ever get out of there, you know, and so it seems hopeless at some point.

So I have three journeys that I conceive of as like different crises, critical turning points, sort of.

And the first one is sort of journey one which focuses on this crisis of understanding.

Like you're saying it's a crisis because it's like shakes up your whole world.

Crisis isn't just a bad thing.

It means it's an opportunity to move forward.

So it shakes up your entire worldview.

Oh, this is how I've thought of myself all my life.

And this is like, what do I do now?

Kind of.

And so it sort of brings into question, as well as into sort of bold relief, your lifelong experiences.

And you have to go back and look at them now.

You can also be filled with some grief and loss at that time because, oh, all those years and you know, what would have happened and what ifs.

And the focus of this first big journey here is your ADD symptoms, your primary symptoms.

And the goal is to, you know, through medication and through understanding of the difficulties, maximize kind of your brain effectiveness and get rid of the most troublesome symptoms.

Often that's with medication.

And then that's where it used to stop.

And so now no one knew what to do after that.

Planners, tips, tools, strategies.

And in this book, the end, there's these explorations.

Like you said, it's Important understanding how you've come to feel about yourself in terms of your differences.

What did you learn growing up about differences?

What do you say to yourself about these differences?

Coming to terms with, there's more to you than, than just this.

And when you understand that, you start this journey too, which is really the important critical piece of this, which I call the crisis of identity, where the emphasis has to change from your brain, understanding your brain to now, like, okay, well, who am I now?

Knowing this.

And usually when you've grown up without understanding, you're caught in these negative views of yourself, negative narratives, distorted self use.

Like you just, you see everything through this negative lens.

I mean, I can't tell you how many people I see as these warm, wonderful, creative, interesting women, for instance, and they maybe they took the wrong turn to get to my office, you know, and, and they say, oh, and all they can do is berate themselves, you know, instead of seeing themselves as whole versus this yes and yes, you know, I'm this, this, this, and I also have these difficulties.

So you getting to a yes and, and seeing yourself as whole is important.

So in this next search, which is a long time about really accepting who you are and examining those narratives, also going back and transforming your dreams, you know, maybe you wanted to be, you know, a rock star, I'll say, you know, or you wanted to be a president of a corporation, or you wanted to do something, you have to sort of go back and say, okay, I didn't do that.

Then what are the essential elements that still ring true to me about who I am at the core?

How can I change those earlier dreams to put in these other pieces of what I know now?

And how can I find a new vision for myself moving forward?

So in this journey about yourself in the middle here, this identity crisis, because you can't go back pre diagnosis, you can't go forward yet you're sort of scared, you're sort of in limbo until you get a feeling of wholeness.

This is a time where you start to increase your support and reverse this negative feedback loop by being with people who can see you and value you, just like you have here, where you gain more successful experiences of yourself, put more of your strengths out there, and then you start to make better choices and you start to have better experiences little by little.

And then you come away at some point with a new sense of vitality and excitement and not so scared and hopeless about, about your future now you start to appreciate sometimes your sense of uniqueness.

So that's like in that middle section there, that identity piece, the piece of who am I?

And.

And you learn to protect yourself, understand what you need.

And then you move into this journey three, which is, you know, then what do I do Now I know how to handle myself and protect myself, but now how do I talk about that?

That's the hardest thing to other people who don't understand me or don't know who I am, you know, and then you start to.

Women often start to hide and pretend and withdraw.

Even though you might accept yourself better now, it's still so hard to explain yourself to people who don't know what executive function is or know why you're so weird, kind of, you know.

So that third crisis is crisis of success.

Because now maybe you are having more options and maybe you do use your strengths more, but then you have no experience with how to choose well, how to develop criteria for how do I make decisions, you know, and sometimes you can find yourself even more overwhelmed now because you want to do everything.

You don't want to say no because people will, you know, you don't want to go back to people thinking you can't do things.

So this is a really difficult, important journey because it means the concept I like in this part of the book is called learning to navigate a protection connection continuum.

Like you have to learn how to delicately learn to protect yourself still, but not by pushing everybody away.

You know, how to connect with other people and protect yourself.

Now some people overdo it on the protection part and they don't connect.

And some people say, you know, forget that and they just connect and they forget about taking care of themselves.

So it's a continuum of being able to really validate that someone is important to you or you'd like to comply with what they want.

And also these are your needs or what you need.

So it's that constant, how do I stay in connection and contribute the way I want to and without giving up my sense of self.

And so in the book there shows what a narrow tightrope women walk on.

You know, like it's easy to fall off.

You have to really carefully know how to navigate your brain.

Like how much stress, how much stimulation, how much structure, how much support.

All these different variables are very important.

And when you learn how to operate your brain well, when you know, like, what makes it work well and what makes it not work well, then by setting boundaries and communicating, that's a long journey.

Not giving up power in relationships because of your difficulties, feeling respected, expecting respect in relationships, those are all long term Journeys.

It's absolutely fascinating.

And every element of that journey, I know that so many of us are relating to.

You know, you really described and articulated each journey.

And I kind of was going back and I was thinking where I was in that place, and that protection connection that you talked about, then, that is.

That's very real.

When people say to me, what do you do?

And I go, I'm a coach.

What kind of person you coach?

Kind of like, I kind of gauge the situation.

Do I want to talk about ADHD right now?

Do I want to talk about my journey?

And I kind of go, protection mode.

Or I feel that I'm in a safe space and they're not going to judge, and I don't feel like I have to kind of talk too much about it.

It's constantly navigating.

And I know that lots of people who have had a diagnosis, they.

They are not sure how do I tell friends, family, work colleagues.

That in itself is exhausting.

And is that something that you talk about?

Well, yeah.

I mean, because.

Well, all these years, what I try to get people to do instead of that is just to start describing your difficulties and your strengths, like.

And describing what you need without characterizing yourself or labeling yourself or telling people you have adhd, who have no idea what that means, especially in women.

So somebody could come over and start talking to.

And I have a lot of communication strategies in here.

While you're at a party and they want to talk to you or at a meeting, you know what?

I'd love to talk to you.

The connection part, this is so important to me to have this conversation.

I find that I have trouble filtering out all this stuff coming in at me.

You know, when we're in this busy environment, could we find a place to talk or could we schedule some time to talk later because it's important to me, or, you know, oh, I find when you're telling me directions, you know, orally like this, I can't remember.

You know, it'd do much better if you would write them down or let me write them down.

And.

Because it's important to me.

So you're validating the other person, but you're also suggesting what would work for you.

Instead of saying, I read.

I can't remember saying, you know, so instead of having to label yourself, just learn to describe instead of characterizing yourself for a long time.

I think that's an easier thing that.

We'Re not saying, I've got adhd.

And then again, kind of like minimizing, invalidating it even Though you could be open.

You're kind of working with the old stigmas, aren't you?

Oh, I can't remember anything, I've got adhd.

But sometimes mechanism being open so you.

Know, it's important to remember to be authentic.

It doesn't mean the same as telling everybody everything.

It doesn't mean that you have to, you know, you're not failing to be authentic and open about yourself.

You need to protect yourself.

You need to.

But it doesn't have to be come from a place of cowering and fear is from a place of choosing.

These people aren't really going to understand.

I don't really care if they understand.

I, you know, what I care about is them understanding that I can't, I can't do their fundraiser this year.

I'd love to support it, you know, ask me again next year or I can do this part of it or I can't do that part of it.

But they don't need to know everything.

That doesn't mean you're cowering in fear.

You know, it means that you, you get to choose.

You want to get to a place of choice.

I get to choose who I share what with and why.

So it's, you know, you're not hiding, you can choose not to tell something because that's privacy.

That's different.

You know, it's a really nuanced kind of decisions to, to make.

When you talked about the different variables of.

Yeah, I think it moves through maybe the last bit of the journey of knowing what helps you and you know, with the choices and the boundaries and then practical way like the timeout and having space and connecting with the right people.

That is really empowering, isn't it?

Of all of a sudden knowing the formula that works for you.

I know so many people really love this is like on this page I have this diagram of this guy walking on a tightrope because so many of us are on a tightrope and we're feeling okay and then it's such a narrow edge like you can just fall off of it really quickly if you don't have enough structure or if you have too much structure, you're over suffocated or under, you know, overstimulated.

Understood.

So you have to find out what really makes your life work.

And that's where for women, how to set boundaries because people will think you're mean or selfish or self centered.

So that's the kind of thing for women that's very gender messaged, you know that it's hard to protect yourselves and still connect to people that you want to without just giving everything.

This is what I love about your work, because you're so aware of living in this world as well, identifying as a woman, a female, and being able to, I guess, understand all the nuances that come with that.

You know, the social pressures, you know, just mentioning that of like, oh, we have to be the hospitable ones.

We've got to be the ones holding up the family.

And Whereas men typically are the ones that can be blunt and straightforward and they don't have to be so sort of empathic and, you know, we're the ones that are caring and nurturing.

And when we all sense self feels like failed, if we can't remember things about our kids or we forget a friend's birthday or we're not, we don't want to be hospitable.

We can't just throw dinner on the table in 10 minutes.

Like all these different things that impact our sense of self as a woman.

Whereas men, I know that they deal with lots of other things, you know, with adhd, but it does feel like we've got those compounding factors.

I'm looking for around for my book because, I mean, the first book, women with ADHD is that was what it was all about, was about gender role expectations and, and these cultural expectations that we internalize and idealize.

And that's what causes all the, the shame and the moving away and the withdrawal.

Because I, you know, dealt with a lot of men, you're right, they have their own issues about being the strong, stable one or whatever, but they don't take the organizational piece of what you're saying, you know, to heart in terms of affecting their identity or affecting how they feel about themselves or thinking they, you know, if someone comes over and the house is a mess or whatever, they don't care.

Or if they, yeah, they're not making dinner correctly, they don't care or whatever.

So women are often in a more caretaking role, whether, you know, these days it's.

Obviously, there's more sharing, but women still judge themselves or feel judged about the way they're managing their children or the way that executive function just collides with gender role expectations for women so much because it's all about logistics and coordination and making, prioritizing, sequencing.

You know, it's very difficult for women to, especially at that stage of life or even at work if you don't have children.

In the old days, at least they would look to the women to like who's going to, you know, go visit the sick co worker who's going to bring the stuff, you know, for this party or that party.

There's a lot of other expectations that women wanted to do actually.

You know, women, women have said to me, I want people don't see my heart.

Like women will spend all the time thinking about a friend, wanting to help people at difficult times, doing all these things.

But it gets so complicated for them because of their difficulties with all tangled up, so they can't show how they really feel often in the way they want to and then they feel bad about that.

So they, they really do want to do these things often, but it's just too overloaded and overwhelming.

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.