CPTSD and Adult ADHD | Penny Belle | THERAPYLAB

it's funny because when I first when I got diagnosed radiation I was told any medication would work I was i spoke to other people who had been given CBT therapy so I was like that's what I want and they were like that won't work for you just need medication so I was like oh my gosh these guys are so medication II just want to throw medication at people and but what I didn't realize is that the therapy I was seek him was was for trauma so it was trauma therapy I was looking for really but I for it was ADHD therapy are needed [Music] hello i'm dr. sheri jacobson and mrs. therapy lab a podcast dedicated to therapy thoughts and the art of mental well-being in this episode we are joined by mental health blogger and wellness coach penny jared to talk about her life and work hello penny hey thank you very much for joining us today it's my pleasure how are you I'm good I'm good yeah I'm going through a weird transition at the moment so I'm good but it's just new and uncomfortable a little bit yeah what generally keeps you busy um art I say that because I've got so I make affirmation cards and affirmation jars and stuff like that and so I spend a lot of time doing you know creating those but I think I think that's probably I've jumped a bit ahead because up until recently I was working at a job board as a business development manager so that kept me pretty busy most of my day and then in like the evenings or the weekends I'd be doing as much as I can - yeah raise awareness about mental health learn a bit more about my own mental health as as I'm growing and understanding it but yeah aside from that a lot of my RT ventures and I've seen some of your affirmation cards tell us about how it evolved and wouldn't what it means to you to produce them it's um it's amazing actually it means everything because I've always really enjoyed coloring in and in school I enjoyed art but I didn't like I'm a perfect well I'm not going to call myself that I had perfectionist tendencies and so if something went wrong with my art the frustration and the stress and it's always grief I'd feel was just feel like it was worth it because I've been away so I kind of you know kind of fell out of fell out with but but a couple of years ago when I found out that I was struggling with my mental health and stuff like that but actually throughout my whole life I've always liked to have written down reminders of what's good and what's real and like I'd always have like you know scriptures or quotes on my wall that I'd written out because I'd read something and I'd be like oh my gosh this has just saved my day or made my day and I'll to forget it and then I'd go for the same stresses and then remember I had a solution that day I had a comfort that day and so I would write them down and then I was at work and I realized that when I found out that I struggled with focus and it was not a fault of my own it was how my brain works I found that when I'd be on the phone at work because I'm in cells so I have to take like some of my calls would be really important sales calls and missing a detail I'd come off the phone sometimes and try to create a proposal for that person and there'll be details I'd forgotten and it would be so hard for me to kind of come to terms with and know this is like this is this is something I could have tried hard away if I should have been listening but I found that if I was colouring in or doing some doodling I would be able to focus on the phone so I started to just do loads of like just create loads of colorful designs on paper it's just nice to look at I made me feel calm but it also felt nice to do and then I started writing over them so getting a sharpie and writing over these colorful little bits of paper I'd make and when people at work would be going through something hard I would create them like a little encouraging card that they could fit in their bus pass holder or their or their wallet and yeah I started making them for myself after that because I thought these are actually really cute yeah and I'll carry them and I'd give them to people on public transport I saw a woman crying on a bus once and so I gave her one that's just had something uplift and I remembered it was in my purse I gave it to her and the impact it had on her was so huge something hit me that this is more than what I think so I realized it helped me with anxiety the the words I was writing and also remembering them and speaking them out loud would calm anxiety so I wrote a blog post about it and just asked people if they you know if you want some of these that we know so many people got in touch I started making affirmation cards for everyone and then I decided to have to start selling them because it was getting a little bit too much as much as I loved it and I loved the response when people got them and knowing what it would do for them I had no time I had no time my fingers were going numb so for if I if I sell them because so many people are after them even if yeah it would maybe motivate me and I can see is kind of like a business and then I wouldn't feel like I'm not delivering mmm but yeah so you said you've got an online shop in a way or Nancy um I'm finishing off my website so it will be all on my website but there are links so it's like an Etsy shop at the moment yeah yeah um so how much of your time does that take currently um know quite a lot yeah well I've got a store that I'm doing um at Christmas Fair so I'm preparing for that so I've been just doing I've just been doing loads loads of creating and coming up with new ideas and yeah so quite a lot of my time I enjoy it so clearly it's enjoyable for you and and therapeutic in its own right I wonder if you can take us through your your your early background and and when you first started to notice and East any if you had any struggles and early signs of psychological difficulties well um I had quite a dysfunctional childhood so growing up I am my mum struggled with stuff I didn't know a lot of the stuff that my mom struggled with until I got older but my mom struggled with her own personal trauma which then kind of leaked out into her own life and in a minute she was drinking a lot and you know as she went through stuff I think her her own habits kind of got worse and her kind of responsible side declined a little bit and so kind of if I if I go into too much detail on that I'll end up on a tangent and going into going round for hours but I'm cut in a bit a long story a bit shorter I we got evicted from our home and I had to go into temporary foster care just until my mom got rehomed and so we could go back but in the time that we were separated my mum went to prison and then ended up passing away from heroin from taking heroin so I suppose a heroin overdose but I guess that sounds like I don't know I think saying overdose makes me feel like it was like ongoing I think what it was is she was addicted to alcohol and and took heroin and kind of died instantly so I knew that that was that my behavior and the way that I related to people in the way that I thought was affected by that well were you when she passed 15 but at the same time I got my first boyfriend around the same time so that felt like a great distraction I was in a lot of denial about my mum actually died and so I didn't believe it when I was told I thought it must be mistaken identity or she just didn't seem you know just my mom doesn't know she's so strong and she's been so positive through all her hard times she's not gonna die now that it's all getting sorted out so I was in a lot of denial and then I met my first boyfriend who it felt like a distraction it felt good because I was not very affectionate with everyone after being separated from my mum but I was able to be affectionate with him so it kind of reminded me of my mom but then he began quite early showing signs of abuse and violence and control and being you know quite nasty so I guess I was really distracted by four I met him when I was 14 and got away when I was 21 so for that whole time I didn't get to grieve my mom I didn't so I knew that my behavior I also started drinking and and you know miss you sir in the juice so the relationship was a breakdown from the beginning I just didn't know any better but awhile after my mom died I found you know substances and alcohol and stuff made me feel normal it didn't like whatever that meant I just it made me feel like myself not escape it was it didn't feel like escapism it felt like I can be myself so I got into really bad habits and with that but when there so when the relationship ended I then realized how bad it was so I realized I was a victim of domestic violence I realized yes so many things that had you know he'd kind of hidden hidden me away from other people so I didn't know what healthy relationship looked like my mom didn't have very healthy relationship so I you know I kind of just went with the flow but when I was away from him I saw that you know I fought that all my weird ways were to do with IVA the substance is playing up you know or my bet my my childhood have an effect on me so I kind of had a hope that you know when I can face it or I'll be healed and you know God will take it all away or the the weirdness but it wasn't until I was 30 that I started to really notice that I weren't myself I've got I'd stopped miss using substances I've stopped relying on alcohol and I stopped hanging around with people that I knew like you know other relationships not that they were bad people but just just kind of having other relationships to soften the blow rather than to kind of you know set my future up it was just lots of Comfort blankets and stuff lots of like the comfort blanket vibe and that includes like you know it having other boyfriends but also hanging around with people and doing certain things that you know that group of people do again drinking and stuff so I kind of cleaned my life up got my my self together away consciously or yeah yeah I just knew I'm feeling like this because I'm I'm not where I'm meant to be I meant to be you know doing other things I meant to be not drinking all the time no I in all the time and and forcing myself to fit in in crowds I don't fit in I knew that I was doing that so I knew I had to stop so did you did you have any assistance and instead of cleaning up your act or repairing things did you or did this come from within well I had um I had a lot my I had people that might urge and people that I I knew were praying for me and encouraging me and and I knew and I just knew you know I knew there was a better way and I did have really good people around me that were you know uplifting and and stuff like that but I weren't very open with what I was going through because it was hard to describe and I you know I I guess I was quite judgmental myself so I assumed I'd be judged all the time because I I probably was even with what my mom went through I never told anyone the truth because I felt like people look down on people that died from drug you saw that that that my grief would be disregarded because my mom was an alcoholic so I just I weren't very open I was scared of being judged so I didn't yeah I didn't I didn't I weren't very open I was hiding a lot of stuff but I didn't know I had a great community like a great community or you know support system that I could go to but I felt kind of so bad for the bad habits I picked up I just wanted to get through it and just literally prayed my way through rather than telling people what what I needed to clean it's like you must have had incredible resolve to get through that was it a was it a sort of continuous line of improvement or did you suffer yeah loads loads of setbacks because I didn't know about trauma at the time I knew I knew that you know people that have bad things happen end up you know being affected by it displaying so I knew that was happening with me but I didn't know that I would be having like trauma flashbacks or emotional flashbacks so whenever I had those I would then just want to call someone to be around me and so I'd like invite a friend round or say you know she would go out for a drink so I would get a few steps forward but then I didn't emotions I was going through I just didn't know what they were so I couldn't I weren't comfortable ride in the mount so then I would fall back or I would just get back into similar patterns for us a little while so it was it was so frustrating and the flashbacks were they of a particular situation so they very so they were all different things so there was loads of different things that had happened that I would be reminded of but it was it was a lot of things could trigger so being alone would trigger things that I didn't even remember so if I was alone for too long the the way I would feel I'd be pacing up and down my house I would I wouldn't be able to rest so then I'd want to smoke to calm down and then I would get into a weird trance like just you know smoking and just kind of not do anything and I'd to be like you know what today I will you know think of productive things to do and then I'd get one of those times where I can't sit down and I didn't know I had ADHD so I didn't know what was going on inside me I didn't know that being alone reminded me of other times I was alone so where I won't have in like photo flashbacks I was feeling things that I'd felt the last time this situation had arisen which I didn't know what that was so I just tried to quickly cover the pain or cover the discomfort and try to fix it and in my way that would be I'd tried to get stuck into church more and then even the overwhelm of that which would be a good feeling would feel too Restless and I'd want to drink or smoke so just yeah it just I just kind of I forgot what the question when we make an incredible resolve but the jerk but the the the journey out wasn't straightforward it was sort of choppy and in terms of you mentioned ADHD how did you come to a diagnosis and what was your kind of experience with the helping professions so I yeah so I've got to I've got to a point where my life was quite you know all the distractions were gone but I've but I felt on certain days worse than ever so without having the bad things around and not everyone I was around was bad but without my distractions I didn't feel the peace I thought would come so I mentioned how I was feeling to a friend and she highlighted that I'd felt like this the month before and the month before but she just said something along the lines of you know you've you've mentioned this feeling blank I was feeling blank I feel like I didn't have any emotions I didn't I felt like I didn't know what the point in life was I didn't have suicidal force but I understood why people had suicidal thoughts and I'd never before so I thought this feels really dangerous that I now in this place I'm in understand suicide why why now so when I mentioned it to my friend she mentioned that it happens before my period so and I've never had I've never noticed or being someone who suffered with their moods around their period and you know and so I didn't I didn't relate that to anything and then I remembered there are new people that did and that it could have been a hormone imbalance so I was like okay I'm gonna I'm gonna find out how to balance my hormones because I've turned 30 maybe that site official adult world maybe I've got like adult hormones now so I'll find out what you know nutrition I can like I know nutrition has a lots of massive parts place I thought I could just change some things in my diet and maybe I'll be better but along that journey so I went to see somebody privately who coincidentally had family members who had ADHD and said sounds like you have ad actually like I'm almost 100% sure and I just what I knew of ADHD was you know people at school who mainly young boys who were really disruptive and really you know attention-seeking so I didn't get it kind of felt a bit like Oh ad what do you think this whole talk was a bit attention Sikhi do you think that what we've spoken you know I didn't and what professional was that was it a it was a or a private yeah AG ap yeah and yes so then they were just like what what I'd advise you to do is get referred to an ADHD specialist through your GP and even you know speaking to my GP not my I don't have a set to you people I spoke to a GP at my practice and they had even said you know only only young boys under the age of 13 ADHD so I think you've been misinformed so I just said well could you you know refer me anyway and then I kind of forgot about it a bit and then people would say so a friend of mine was at my house and she's she knows you know she's quite clever and you know basically I trust what she says and she said that my behavior around the house was a bit ADHD and it really twigged my ear off and I realised I've heard that before never took it serious I just thought someone was like my friends who had said it before were messing around because I'm quite hyper but she and I said why did you say that and when she described why it was so personal it was like this is me every day so then I I knew there was more to it and started researching and when I got my actual appointment yeah got diagnosed and was that with a psychiatrist yeah it was yes I purchased and the thing is is that they actually said you do have ADHD but you know there's a lot of trauma there as well mm-hmm and I was just like yeah well I don't want to talk about I don't want to think about all that stuff I don't want to go that route that I'm feeling frustrated I'm feeling held back and ADHD like it you know I've been told I have it you've you know the guy I was like you've even said I have it and that's the one that's holding me back once I sort out all the issues around ADHD then I'll deal with the trauma cuz I know it's there but what he didn't explain is that what PTSD or see PTSD was and that the effects of trauma actually look like you know that that as well so I didn't are suffering with both like two different and see see PTSD being complex yes yes so so I started blogging and writing about ADHD because I knew so many people must be going through similar not know and if I could write about it and explain it they might learn about themselves so that a very informative source and very in a very very relatable way yeah I'm not not that much medical jargon but your experiences yeah really helpful to to others so what response did you get from from that it was amazing it was so encouraging it was it it wasn't encouraging to hear other people are suffering but after about I think three months in to write in my blog and I was being extra because it was so hard to because my jump my blog included journal entries of mine that I'd you know dug through to see where this this condition might have been more now I knew about it I wanted to see if if my frustrations were written down and there was loads so it was quite personal and that was like a fear of mine is sharing I knew at one point I've got to write so my passion was write is writing and I thought I've got to write about all the things I've gone through I had eaten disorders I you know grief and loss and domestic violence and all these things I've been through I knew that I was gonna write about it and write books to help people because books had helped me but I was so scared of like seeing the internet and how it worked and so scared of people writing negative comments and I didn't get to finish uni because of my ADHD you know I said it like that because I just didn't know I had it otherwise I would have known how I learned so yeah I didn't get to finish uni so I couldn't just write I had to do it the internet way and seeing how people got trolled and I was so insecure I was just scared of negative comments so for four years I didn't write about the things that I wanted to write about but when I got diagnosed of ADHD it put everything into one bundle so then I just started writing and I just was really meticulous about the effect I was having all the impact I was having because I wanted to stop so after three months I had like over a hundred women I stopped counting a hundred say that they had read my blog and and found out so much about themselves and then put themself forward for appointments because of it and just expressing their freedom and their their relief that they were feeling free reading my writing so I knew that I had to continue but that those women being brave enough to tell me is what made me continue and push harder in trying to change the way even doctors see things if I could because of the amount of times I'd been kind of not pushed away because I was very firm in my approach and you know but I saw how misinformed they were about it and it made me serious and we are hearing more about adult ADHD being being diagnosed um what care plan did you receive including any medication I just got told that only medication would help yeah that I had severe ADHD and that only medication would help which I didn't want so I then started to find ways to manage it naturally hmm you never tried any of these I yeah well I didn't know at the time after that I did do a medication trial because I met somebody that I so I have taken medication since but I'm not on medication and I didn't take it straight away so it was like you know but a friend of mine described her experience with the medication it sounded amazing so I wanted to try it so I could write about it and so I could stop saying to people don't take meds because that's what I've been doing because of my fear and the stigma around mental health medication so I found that it it didn't suit me during this time is trying to manage my ADHD and naturally changing my diet changing my habits changing my way of thinking I went through something cut work where a colleague had asked me for I just found out that I've been writing about mental health so asked me to talk to him about it a little bit more but at the time we were in luck Oh a work function so I couldn't really talk bit he we have a little conversation and he was just like Oh could you send me the links to your blog so I can read it and then maybe we talked about it but at the work function you know we forgot and I didn't I didn't get round to it but a couple of weeks later he came up to me at work and said oh yeah you know you forgot to send me the links and but don't worry then I forgot to so I said come and sit down now actually so I send them so I don't get distracted and forget and it was at the time our company was going for a big change and a lot of our sister that the whole structure of my pitch on the phone had changed so I weren't bringing in as many deals and it was just a pressure e time and all of us were going through it so when he sat down to ask for the links one of our director walked past and we kind of both panicked because we hadn't had money in and we didn't want to be seen as socializing while we're going through this hard time in the office so I was like hey come back later and he ran off and I went back to my desk and that evening he killed himself so I yeah I really badly affected me and I felt really embarrassed because I didn't know him that well we were cool we were we were we were nice we were friends but I didn't know him that well so I I felt weird and I didn't understand why it was impacting me so much I obviously something like that would impact anyone it wasn't that I didn't understand why it was impacting me so much but it was on my mind more than a lot of you know a lot more than I thought and obviously it was but the guilt and so that so once I got comforted around you know you don't you know a lot of people I I didn't speak to many people about I looked up stories similar stories to get encouragement just to you know get rid of the guilt and and I spoke to somebody in HR at work because I was too scared to talk to you know I spoke to people but there weren't many people I could talk because I felt so embarrassed I felt like I'd failed him and I felt like you know it was just so much emotion I didn't know what was going on but I went to HR and I just I you know I just wanted to get it out and I asked if I could be like a mental health first aider or something just so that if anyone's talking to me I can I can feel free to talk to them about their mental health without worrying that about how I'm gonna get treated for not having money on the board because in the cells well dislike you're a queen one day and you're like invisible another dependent on what you've got on the board and then it really that really messed with how I felt about myself and my self-worth for my own anxiety so I was obsessed with controlling how much money I earn at work so I could feel good at work and be treated nice nicer so yeah he the the they said that they you know at work they're not they haven't got the mental health first aid thing in place but when they do it will be me or they'll consider it being me so I kind of just put a lid on it which I've realized I'm professional at doing put a lid on it and carried on but a year later which was July just gone it started all coming back and ice and I was aware that had been a year so I started having nightmares that you know he's family found out that he had asked me for help and we're you know his family were trying to kill me I was this having horrible nightmares I knew this wasn't real and I knew it wasn't my fault I did actually know but it kept coming back up and then that led to me realizing that I had see PTSD this was trauma and it had brought up loads of other things from my past and other stuff I'm sensitive to everything and when I found out that I was suffering with C PTSD I realized that a lot of the symptoms are almost identical to the ones that I struggle with with ADHD so I was kind of in a place where I was like do I even have ADHD or is it extreme trauma or have I got both and they're both just really strong and this is why I'm feeling so stuck and and stuff so through more research I was like a calf definitely got ADHD because there were parts of ADHD which one identified the symptoms of C PTSD so I just kind of thought okay I've got both so now I've got to heal because I can't manage my ADHD anymore I didn't want to eat healthy I didn't want to cut out sugar I wanted to comfy I wanted to drink again I wanted to do all the things that I had to stop doing to manage my mental health and Anna and I realize it's a trauma so knowing more about what mental health is I realized I had to have to now heal and go through that time how did you go about that I I tried to just think better and just open myself up to talking and I went to talking therapy how did you go about finding it and what was it like for you I my GP helped me find that gave me some options and and also privately friends had referred me and then a friend even got me a like package a therapy package it was too expensive for me at the time and she helped me to do that and so I bounced around a bit just because I I as well when when and if it made me uncomfortable or if the person at the time and if the person I was talking to didn't seem very empathetic I felt drained I felt like going there I just had to say so much and then I'd leave with no answers I thought I was going to go there explain how I felt and leave of an answer stopped me feeling like that so I would stop and start because it would be uncomfortable I didn't like opening up that much and then being left without a an answer I didn't know what was happening I didn't know the process was to you know that things would be revealed so that I could heal so when I finally understood and settled and stayed despite the discomfort I found that I was able to talk about things with you know with the right what what the lady that I was seeing did was ask very calm I guess the words calm but not it's not that they were indirect questions but they were subtle questions that would lead to like breakthrough answers and that helped me understand myself and it helped me to just say things I'd never said and and I had friends I trusted but then I guess there were parts of my life that I I guess that Appert my friends knew about so I just didn't want to go into but talking to somebody who didn't know me while that felt so scary and like the last thing I'd want to do I got to see myself as a fresh canvas kind of as oh I don't know I guess I was just it felt like I was a blank canvas and and I was able to start fresh and and not you know if I was to say to one of them I guess I fought that if I said to one of my friends I keep having this feeling friends that knew that I'd been a person who would drink or smoke or whatever would would would probably think it could be a comedown or it could be an effect of you know smoking or you know people say that smoking leads to psychosis and stuff you know smoking bad things but yeah like that so I'd think okay it's probably just that so I just make up my mind that wall I'm gonna stop doing that and then I won't feel like this but hearing somebody say something that was totally away from things that they could know and the giving me ants not answers but like for instance I explained to my therapist about how weird I feel at night sometimes and how my behavior changes at night and how I don't feel like myself like a different person even though all day I can feel so positive at a certain time at night when I get back from work and I just want to do things that I'm passionate about around mental health maybe write a blog post I couldn't do it at home I have to stay at work and do it because when I got home I felt like I was weird a weird person and then my therapist just said we'll maybe your emotions you know your your energy or your emotions drop and so you find ways to quickly fix it so then you become a person who's looking for results straight away again so I'd feel all positive for out the day and then at the night at night I'd find oh I just I just want to sit down watching TV or I want to just things that weren't edifying and I knew it but I still do them and and she was just explained that you know this could be a way that you regulate your emotions at a certain point so here in that it made me realize what else do I do that regulates my emotions my moods I get so scared when my moods feel like they're dropping I quickly look for things and even throughout like away from you know alcohol stuff I was the same with coffee or I was the same with I'm looking at my phone if something happened at work which felt you know made me feel discouraged I would go on my mobile phone for say 15 minutes and or I would go and get another coffee and it was like I was always trying to find quick fixes when my mood would feel different and I didn't know that I thought I'm just going addictive personality because my mom did that's how I always saw it so I didn't want to talk about that I wanted to get over it and and but hearing that I was like okay so I it just gave me such you know so it was just yeah I loved it I loved being able to ya hear myself say things I've never said and then yeah it really woke me up and how was how long was the longest you've worked with a therapist for 14 weeks yeah I think it was 14 or 15 weeks yeah and in your blog you talked a lot about and you very usefully give a number of techniques to deal with ADHD specifically is that something you acquired on your ear or is that through through therapeutic work no I see I I didn't I the lady that I saw didn't know anything about ADHD so she was I think yes so she was a trauma therapist and yeah it's funny because when I first when I got diagnosed with ADHD and I was told any medication would work I was i spoke to other people who had been given CBT therapy so I was like that's what I want and they were like that won't work for you just need medication so I was like oh my gosh these guys are so medication even just want to throw medication at people and but but what I didn't what I didn't realize is that it was and it was that the therapy I was seek him was was for trauma so it was trauma therapy I was looking for really but I for it was ADHD therapy I needed and I thought CBT was ADHD fara because I didn't know at the time but I know now that you know anxiety and depression are both symptoms of ADHD so going into the clinic that I went to I've gone off on a tangent a bit but I found that a lot of people weren't getting diagnosed with ADHD that had it because on the form on every appointment I went to it would just have a list of questions that relate to anxiety and depression and if you scored high on all of them you had severe anxiety and severe depression so because they were all symptoms of ADHD I always scored high so I then got to understand why a lot of women I spoke to would say I've had I've been on medication for anxiety and depression like all my life reading your blog I know that this could be it and also it's because the therapy that I don't know if it was say a therapy place but it was there was the NHS clinic I went to the the yeah the only way to find out what you're struggling with was through anxiety and depression analysis is and like so that's when I got kind of more passionate about that side but yeah I managed get around would you oh yeah so I learned how to manage it through my own research and then so if you can run us through some of ADHD tools and techniques that you haven't adopted in the past or continue to do now just for the benefit of those who who do struggle with it whether they have an official diagnosis yeah or not yeah so I haven't even mentioned what it looked like when I got aids like what the symptoms were but a lot of the like lack of concentration and and all of its all of it's just a different kind of your brain is just different so I had to find out so I found out that you know cutting out sugar cut it now animal products is best from mental health for anyway and so I did that I I didn't cut well I cut everything out at once but I wouldn't advise anyone to do that because it can be so overwhelming that you know the relapse makes you feel like a failure so yeah just changing what you eat eating mood boosting foods but as well because your your moods can drop I would make sure that between tasks or between things that I have to do for out the day that had breaks so I would have like energy boosting breaks for instance where I could you know for instance if I'm getting if I get off the train and then go home I'd feel so drained and a lot of it could be that my mind's been working so hard drug throughout the day doing my job which I enjoyed but also didn't you know I enjoyed the good sides but so all that that time and energy into that and I felt drained at home so what I would do instead of going into a phone trance and ending up on social media and feeling even worse I would go for a walk or have a shower or read or try to do something that made me feel good even if it's just for 15 minutes just so I could transition and that worked I also found that if I time-boxed my day I could get more done and enjoy it so I would literally ADHD brains always under stimulated so to prevent me doing something and getting distracted by searching for stimulation of other places I would break up my day so that all my long all my big tasks or whatever I'm doing it's in like half an hour or 15-minute segments so if I had a blog post to write I'd do 15 minutes of they're not maybe make something to eat they're not maybe clean a bedroom one bedroom in my house and then go back to the blog post and then me you know I would I would change what I was doing often but keep like a timetable or alarms to know when to switch tasks so that I always felt stimulated I always felt interested in what I was doing and I didn't get distracted and then also felt fulfilled because I'd have fun and rest and stuff like that so that really worked drinking more water helped it just helps everything doesn't it I knew that I had to cut out coffee but I relied on it so much for my job I felt like I couldn't do my job without it so drinking more water actually after a few days acted like coffee so although I'd have to go toilet every five seconds the energy I got from like my second liter of water or or even just start in you know my second week of drinking more water it felt like coffee so I knew that there that I didn't have to lean on the things that would make me feel worse so yeah that that really helped and and yeah just just speaking speaking to myself as well and affirming myself and understanding where what what are symptoms and what are things that I can actually change and and what what isn't just learning to love myself in in in understanding so doing lots of research and reading stories about other people that had had ADHD and just reaffirming myself really lots lots in there and if I can ask you two to briefly now cover PTSD any any tools that you have used in the past which are helpful and any ongoing ones do you still suffer from flashbacks and what do you do when you have them I'm healing right now so I'm still in the healing process I've just left my job so with in July with all the nightmares and staff I ended up getting signed off sick my therapist advised that you know you can't heal way your her and I kept getting reminded and seeing people that were friends of him and thinking that they knew and so it was just it was like hell it weren't a good place but then I was be I'd be like no I've got to do well I've got I can't be I can't not earn money so I just completely ignore it all but and I'm not saying that if someone's got PTSD they have to leave their job but when I had the time off to heal and to see my therapist without having to rush to work after therapy and to actually deal with the stuff that was mentioned and to actually kind of face it it it it were it really it though I cried I got to cry which I never did I got to I wrote a lot about how I was feeling I wrote a lot about the pain I went through and what would what would happen is I just would and I'll pray just for each section of healing that I knew I had to go down I'd just pray for my mind to be renewed and because he cause trauma is not a mental health issue condition it's not a to me it's not a mental health issue it leads to mental health issues so if I now know that if someone who's been traumatized just has reassurance attention comfort then the the wound can heal so I had obviously infected wounds because they'd never healed and I'd cover them up with plasters or or you know I hadn't healed the infection I'll just cover it up so it would always it would kind of be like a you know you know you touch a scar and it's still full sensitive because it hasn't healed in the best way it felt like that but having time so after being signed off sick I tried to go back to work and it just felt awful so I've recently just taken that leap to kind of do my my blogging and because I haven't written a blog post since last year when it happened I've just been sharing all my old ones and doing other bits but I just felt because he had asked me for my blog links I guess I did I felt like I couldn't blog anymore and I didn't want any so I hadn't above been writing a book a couple of books which I like my blog posts are ones on ADHD ones on trauma and ones on why they're so similar and how they're so similar and how some people might just have undealt with trauma and it's manifesting there's mental health issues that have taken medication for when in actual fact they there are there could be wounds that you haven't you don't even remember so I spent a lot of time alone which made me remember times when I might have felt targeted alone when I was a child which I didn't know so where people might have made me feel you know under threat things that I didn't remember all that had to come up and I had to then kind of reap errant my inner child I guess I came face to face with the part of me that wasn't hurt before but that didn't know trauma and I got I kind of tried to honor her and to let go of it all but yeah it just being around people you love and and you know write in and if you can't you know talking about certain things can be hard but writing about it and praying about it and whatever you can do in private it releases something that then your eyes are open to other things and it's not easy Healing is difficult and I and I know why of a voyeur avoided it honey you've been on such a long journey and and one of constant growth development improvement and it sounds like you're still working on it which is again very commendable and I wonder if we can wrap up with self-care tools so you've spoken about the importance for you of writing of of affirmation cards diet and exercise how do you know how do you know when to deploy each one of them because there's a lot of there's a lot in yourself a fair way before yeah every day so now I've got back into arc so the paint in that avoided I've now a friend of mine which I I see as part of my healing a friend of mine oh do you want to paint and I said yes rather than I don't like you know now I spend time every day doing things that make me feel good and that edifying me and others so that you know it feels good to pass on what you learn you I feel good knowing other people are feeling relief through me so yeah just making sure that you spend the first hour of your day to yourself that is my main if I could give anyone advice you don't have to have any mental health issues this will prevent the longer but I spend I don't look at my phone for the first hour of my day I listen to music I like I dance around the house I do a bit of art or I write or I read I do stuff that makes me feel me and then I get on with my day so doing that every day going for walks I listen to podcasts while walking and I get to move around I get to see things I get to feel nature and I get to be edified in whatever I'm listening to so getting outside and doing that is incredibly healing when someone told me that when I was a bit younger I like bought written no way I don't wanna go out for a walk I want to do stuff I want to be productive but yes so those are at the moment my absolute go twos but moving around doing things that release happy hormones because some people just don't create them don't create as many as much dopamine and so instead of looking for dopamine when it's dropping it's doing things that can create that so you're kind of you know that can create that feeling rather than search him for every five seconds like me honey thank you so much for sharing with us and me so we don't really intentions I can't read it am I on sorry Sharon is very grateful for you joining us thank you thank you it is hardly therapy calm is here to help you book counseling with qualified professional therapists online or in person at the times and prices that suit you wherever you are worldwide if this is your first listen to therapy lab do hit subscribe to keep up to date with new episodes we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Harley Therapy - Psychotherapy & Counselling

Views: 52,826

Keywords: therapylab, cptsd, adult adhd, harley therapy, podcast, penny belle, sheri jacobson, therapy, counselling, online counselling, psychologist, psychotherapist, psychotherapy, mental health, wellbeing, motivation, depression, anxiety, inspirational speaker, harleytherapy.com, harley street therapy, counseling, therapy podcast, psychotherapy podcast, psychology, psychology podcast, mental wellbeing, phone counselling, skype counselling, skype therapy, harley therapy - psychotherapy & counselling

Id: FhXGPCCzjZk

Length: 48min 45sec (2925 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020