The TRUTH About ADHD in Adults | The Mel Robbins Podcast

foreign I want to tell you a deeply personal story this is something that happened to me six years ago and it changed the trajectory of my life this is a very serious issue particularly for women because we are profoundly under diagnosed so today what I'm going to share with you is the six surprising signs that I didn't know that I had all six of them that could be signs that you too have adult ADHD hey it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast I gotta take a big exhale because today's conversation is going to be a good one I have been dying to share a deeply personal story with you I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 47. and I wanted to talk to you about it because I'm not the only person who's been diagnosed late in life with ADHD in fact researchers say this is very common with women and there's an entire generation of women they've labeled them The Lost Generation who have struggled with ADHD their entire lives and never even knew it and I was one of them and you may be one of them too and when I was finally diagnosed this was just six years ago and I'm going to tell you the whole story about how I got diagnosed because it was by mistake but when I finally got that diagnosis it was both a blessing and a curse it was a blessing because I finally understood all the things that I'd struggled with for my entire life and here's why it was a curse it was a curse because once I understood the impact of living with undiagnosed ADHD on women in particular I couldn't help but reflect back on the past 47 years where I was living my life I had ADHD I wasn't treated for it I didn't know it I felt so much grief about the amount of struggles that I had and I wondered things could have been really different if somebody had figured this out when I was really little if I had gotten the interventions that really helped someone like me I know I wouldn't have struggled with anxiety or did some of the things I deeply regret for more than 30 years that's how big of a deal this has been in my life and so today we're going to talk about a lot of stuff you're going to learn the four key differences about how ADHD affects boys and girls and you're going to understand the reason why women go profoundly undiagnosed you'll learn the surprising way most women find out that they have ADHD and you're also going to hear about the connection between anxiety depression eating disorders and living with undiagnosed ADHD and you will get a lot of good news because there is good news and there's a lot that you can do to support yourself if you or someone you love have ADHD and I'm going to focus on the impact on women but you might not be a woman I mean we're in 194 countries at this point with the Mel Robbins podcast we have fans across the entire gender Spectrum but I want you to listen and here's why you know women and girls in your life and when you hear what I'm about to explain to you this will help you understand and Empower your sister your partner your daughter your girlfriend your niece anybody that you know because this conversation today is going to be full of resources that will help you Empower yourself or other people in your life who have either been diagnosed or who haven't been diagnosed and are wondering what the hell is wrong with me because that's basically how I felt for the first 47 years of my life what the is wrong with me this is something that happened to me six years ago and it changed the trajectory of my life it's a story about our son Oakley he was in the fourth grade and I was 47 years old and he was really struggling in school and we went through the testing that so many of us go through with our kids whenever they're struggling in school to find out you know what are we dealing with what is the casserole of the brain that is Oakley Robbins and the school is trying to tell us that he was having all kinds of Behavioral issues he was interrupting class he was fidgety he didn't pay attention but we knew something was up and luckily this was at a time in our life where we could afford to go outside the school and get a neuropsych exam huge shout out to Dr moldover The Goat in Wellesley Massachusetts and sure enough he did a neuropsych on our son Oakley and the findings were very conclusive he had profound dyslexia he had dysgraphia which is uh kind of related to dyslexia these are both language-based learning styles based on your neural pathway development in the brain and the other thing he was diagnosed with is ADHD and when I started reading the report because when you get these uh assessments done and I'm sure a ton of you have had this experience either with your kids or maybe it happened to you when you were a kid or with uh nieces or nephews is super common for people to go through this when we got the big report kind of telling us all about Oakley's brain I was sitting with this pediatrician Dr Blumenthal and I'd known Mark for my God 16 years at this point and we're flipping through the thing and Mark's going yeah yeah this makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense you know we were going to talk options about what we could do in terms of therapy or medication or you know ways that we could support Oak now that we had a diagnosis about both his learning style but more importantly about this attention issue and I kind of looked at Mark and I said you know as I'm reading this Mark this sounds a lot like me do you think that maybe I have ADHD and Dr Blumenthal I just love this guy he leans back in his chair and he looks at me with this sort of stunned look on his face he's like do I think you have ADHD Mel Robbins of course you have ADHD in fact you're probably the most ADHD parent I have in my entire practice you are so successful and you are a complete bird brain do you realize that you will go years and not bring your kids in for their Wellness appointments in fact every fall we have a joke we know that you are going to be one of those 20 parents that call in a panic because you need a you need a physical you need a physical your kids practice right you need a physical and now you're it's a five alarm fire but you've missed their Wellness appointment and you do it every year and you'll leave every exam and you'll go oh yeah okay I'll follow up I'll call you tomorrow I'll tell you about it you never do and I just looked at him and I said and and as he was talking because I knew he was right I always felt so incompetent about my ability to keep up with appointments or to remember things like that or any of it and then he goes so do I think you have ADHD of course you have ADHD and I looked him Square in the eye you guys and you know what I said him why did you tell me why didn't you tell me I had ADH and he goes I'm not your doctor Mel I'll tell you I was 47 years old when I realized that what I had been dealing with for my entire life may not be anxiety it might just be ADHD and so I went to my uh Primary Care she referred me to a specialist sure enough just like my son dyslexia ADHD and I have since learned because you know once something happens in my life I am like a truffle pig rooting for a truffle I literally start digging until I find something and I made it my mission six years ago to find out everything I could possibly discover about ADHD not only because I wanted to help our son Oakley and eventually our daughter Kendall and our daughter Sawyer but also because now that I understood that I had this diagnosis I wanted to understand what the hell was going on so I could help myself and what I learned is incredible I am part of a Lost Generation of women who were diagnosed with anxiety or depression or an eating disorder or some other condition in my teens and twenties when the underlying problem all along was that they missed the diagnosis of ADHD and that's why I want to talk to you about it I have wanted to have a conversation with you about this ever since we started this podcast eight months ago but I have been reluctant to do it because I wanted to make sure I had resources to give you because every time I've talked about this on YouTube or on social or I've talked about it on a talk show we receive an avalanche of inbound stories requests for information and so I didn't want to unpack everything I'm going to share with you today until I knew I could point you in the right direction and what we're going to talk about today is really important it's really important because what the research shows is that when you are not properly diagnosed with ADHD and you have it the outcomes for girls in particular are horrendous and the word horrendous is a word that one of the world's leading experts uses not me let me just read this to you this comes from Dr Ellen Littman who's a clinical psychologist co-author of understanding girls with ADHD and this is what she said anxiety and depression turn into low self-esteem self-loathing and the risk for self-harm and suicide attempts is four times higher for girls with ADHD than girls without terrifying so the conversation that we're going to have today it goes way beyond having trouble with homework or having trouble focusing we'll cover all of this but I personally believe as I sit here and I look back on my life I'm now 53 years old I was diagnosed with ADHD late at the age of 47 six years ago I look back on my life and I know that I would not have struggled with anxiety the way that I did had I been properly diagnosed medicated and treated for ADHD when I was little full stop and so if you're somebody that has struggled with low self-esteem self-loathing anxiety depression Eating Disorders you get diagnosed in your teens and your 20s and you can't seem to turn the corner on this I truly want you to consider what I'm about to share with you what I've learned in the last six years of researching this extensively talking to the world's leading experts about this among them Dr Ned Hollowell who wrote driven distraction he's like the OG of add research he's uh at Harvard he's a world-renowned psychologist Dr Daniel Amen who has scanned my brain and taught me all kinds of stuff about what he sees when he does a brain scan of somebody with ADHD this is not about organization ADHD the the definition of ADHD and this was new to me ADHD is a chronic neurobiological disorder which affects the brain's structural and chemical capabilities it impacts the various parts of the brain and the way that your brain communicates with one another and it is also highly inheritable and there is good news here there's a lot of good news that you're going to learn but here's what we're going to cover okay because this is not just like hey let's get some Adderall and party longer this is a very serious issue particularly for women because we are profoundly under diagnosed so today what I'm going to share with you is the six surprising signs that I didn't know that I had all six of them that could be signs that you too have adult ADHD we're going to talk about why women were so profoundly under diagnosed and have been profoundly under diagnosed for decades we're going to talk about the mental health implication when you're not properly diagnosed and when you don't seek either therapeutic or occupational or some sort of medic medicine medicine treatment for it you're going to learn about the four key differences between how ADHD presents in boys and girls and we're going to talk about what to do if you think this is you and finally we're going to get into what's actually happening in your brain when you have ADHD because this is so fascinating I'm going to use a very physical metaphor for you that will have you completely understand this and why this is such a huge issue and maybe the first place to start is why are so many women under diagnosed why does this go missing in girls well the answer is this when they first made ADHD a diagnosis back in the late 70s they only study boys that's it they only study boys and boys present very differently than girls they have totally different symptoms typically and this is really important to understand because when I first heard the term ADHD I thought of our son our son is like the poster boy for ADHD symptoms leg is jittery hands are fidgeting you know raising the hand bumping up and down gotta run to the bathroom bopping around highly distracted but what always confused me about him is that he could also laser focus on video games so I sort of dismissed ADHD because I'm like well he can focus on video games so it must be about his interest in things no no no no no ADHD has both physical symptoms that you see on the surface and those are typically what's present in boys but the reason why girls went profoundly misdiagnosed is because girls typically do not present those physical jittery interrupting kind of physical chaos and boys present four key differences with ADHD then girls do here they are number one when a boy has ADHD they have symptoms that appear on the surface impulsive behavior fidgeting getting distracted being very physical with their inability to concentrate girls uh we have the opposite symptoms ours are all internal we're Restless we Daydream we're hard on ourselves we're forgetful we're disorganized and we start to aim it at ourselves as a character flaw so when you're a girl with ADHD you daydream you're disorganized you're hard on yourself you make careless mistakes you might be called a tomboy or super creative but what happens and this is why this is so scary and this is what happened to me is that when you sit in Life or in a classroom and you see all your friends turning things in on time or staying organized or their lockers are clean and yours is a mess and you're running late and you start to think you have a character defect you start to think there's something wrong with you so you turn it back on yourself and so that's what happened to me and it also gets missed because it's internal we're not sitting there bouncing our leg and jumping and raising our hand we have the opposite impact the second key difference between boys and girls is that boys present earlier typically around the age of seven girls however present later on average like around 12. the third reason why there's a big difference between girls and boys is because boys wear it on their sleeve they're very physical they're fidgety they're frustrated by it they have trouble controlling their physical outbursts whereas girls are excellent at hiding this why well because we feel the pressure to conform we feel like something's wrong with us we do our best to cope we do our best to like look around and see what everybody else is doing and we start working harder to compensate for what we feel is a character default in us that we are lesser than that we're not good enough that everybody else seems to get this but me and we hide it and here's the big difference between girls and boys with ADHD boys tend to get better girls get worse and that is exactly what happened to me I got way worse way worse what goes from daydreaming following instructions making careless mistakes forgetfulness all-nighters not being able to stay organized that chronic struggle turns into I'm up there's something wrong with me and a profound correlation between anxiety depression Eating Disorders Suicidal Thoughts this is not just me by the way let me pull some of the research out because this is scary you can hear me flipping through my papers I I prepared for this because I wanted you to have uh women with ADHD face the feelings of being overwhelmed and exhausted the same way that men do however women increasingly have psychological distress feel inadequate low self-esteem chronic stress this is extremely common you feel that your life is out of control or chaos and daily tasks start to seem impossibly huge research shows that ADHD materializes dramatically differently in girls and one clinical psychologist Dr Ellen Littman this should scare you says she wrote the book understanding girls with ADHD the outcomes for girls are horrendously negative compared to boys because ADHD materializes dramatically differently in girls as they get older anxiety and depression turn into low self-esteem and self-loathing that happened to me and the risk for self-harm and suicide attempts four to five times greater for girls with ADHD this is not about having trouble with homework this is not about remembering birthdays because unlike boys many of whom just show hyperactivity girls symptoms Veer inward and that means we aim all this at ourselves and that's where the anxiety comes in that's where the depression comes in that's where the Eating Disorders come in that's where the self-harm come in is because you actually believe something's wrong with you and here's what I'm here to say there's nothing wrong with you absolutely nothing wrong with you in fact ADHD has a high correlation to being a successful entrepreneur to being highly creative to being a problem solver a risk taker there is so much Beauty in this but you also need to understand if you're dealing with a neurobiological disorder which impacts your prefrontal cortex most girls that have undiagnosed ADHD you know what they start to have on the surface anxiety because of course if you're going to go into school every day and you're disorganized and you make careless mistakes and you're hard on yourself and you start to tell yourself there's something wrong with you of course you're going to feel anxious about going and it makes perfect sense right and if you can't control your ability to pay attention to things a lot of us start seeking other things we can control and that's why there are so many co-diagnoses with ADHD and eating disorders and anxiety and depression with girls and that's exactly what happened to me in fact I was treated for decades for anxiety and I am sitting here telling you right now I 100 believe the issue I had all along was very simple I had dyslexia and ADHD and nobody knew it and instead I developed anxiety why because that's what happens when you have undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia and you don't understand why your brain doesn't work the same way as everybody else you don't understand why you're always late why you can't get it together why things are always a mess while there's clutter around you why you're constantly missing deadlines or doctor's appointments or leaving your Kleenex on the counter or you can't forget that like it's relentless and so of course anxiety would develop and I'm on a mission today to share absolutely everything that I have learned in my own deeply personal research to be a better mother of kids with ADHD and to be a better partner to myself as I live my life as an adult with ADHD and what I've learned is life-changing there are things that you can do there are very surprising signs that this may be something for you and I need to say right up front I'm not a doctor the purpose of this episode is not meant to diagnose you at all I am here to entertain you with my story and I am here to educate you based on my personal experience and I am here to empower you to know that this is a reality for so many women in particular in the world so that if it rings true for you you go seek the professional help that's out there to get a very clear answer of what's happening for you that's what this is about because that's how you create a better life all right when we come back we're going to start with your brain and ADHD and we're going to talk about your prefrontal cortex which is right underneath your forehead and its role in the skill of attention and you're gonna learn the two things that your prefrontal cortex needs to be able to do that an ADHD brain can't quite do and then what we're going to cover a little bit later are the six surprising signs of ADHD in adults all of which I had all of which everybody missed so I can't wait for this don't you dare go anywhere we'll be right back welcome back I'm Mel Robbins and today we're talking ADHD in women in particular and in just a second we're going to get to the six surprising signs of adult ADHD but first I really want to dig into what's happening in an ADHD brain and this comes from research from Dr Ned Hollowell it comes from Dr Ayman I know that huberman lab just did a bunch of podcast episodes on this but this is how everybody talks about it so the good thing about ADHD is it seems like the research that's been going on for decades is very conclusive about the prefrontal cortex and how ADHD impacts it so let's talk about attention Okay because ADHD is not the inability to focus ADHD is the inability to direct your attention inappropriate ways in appropriate settings that's what it means that's why you'll often see kids with ADHD that can play video games for hours that was Oakley like I could I could literally be banging pots and pans behind this kid he wouldn't even know it he was so focused but he had an inability to direct that attention in appropriate ways in other cases and let me just use the example that I just gave you it's not healthy that he was so focused on video games that he couldn't hear pots and pans that's not an appropriate use of attention either and so let's unpack what attention is so attention is a really important skill right you've got to be able to pay attention if you want to be successful at work if you want to learn new things you need to be able to direct your attention and um in relationships I mean just think about it there are times where somebody's talking and your stomach hurts or you want to get a bite to eat or you really don't give a and you want to yawn or you want to interrupt them your ability to pay attention and suppress the urge to interrupt them or to yawn or to excuse yourself that is the skill of attention and it's critical for relationships otherwise you're going to look like a rude so attention requires your prefrontal cortex to be able to switch between two neural networks in your brain one of the neural networks is the part of your brain that is aware and paying attention to everything around you okay all the noise around you and all of your thoughts and your feelings in your body okay so one neural network that your prefrontal cortex needs to control is the ability to shh all the noise around you and all the Noise Within you and I'm going to bring in an example that is used throughout the research with ADHD and it's the example of an Orchestra conductor so your prefrontal cortex is an Orchestra conductor and I want to just bring in the sound of an orchestra warming up you hear all the different sounds and that's you know like of people of an orchestra getting ready and unpacking and warming up that's you in the world and one one thing that your prefrontal cortex does when it comes to attention is it lifts up the little sticks and it points at the horn so we're making too much noise and goes shhh this is called a top down function it is able to tap into a neural network to suppress shh hey horns shut the hell up shhh and silence the noise outside of you and silence the Noise Within you your grumbling stomach your thoughts about what you're doing tonight so that the prefrontal cortex can then tap into the second neural network which is the ability to raise up and focus on something specific hey strings it's time for you let's magnify and amplify you because now the horns shh are quiet we can now amplify the string section and hear it and so that's the network that allows you to let you crack open a book you focus on the book itself but you also focus on the words in your mind and what you're learning and processing as you're reading it so your prefrontal cortex when it comes to attention has to do those two things the shh of the distractions outside you and the grumbling stomach in you so that it can turn toward what you want to focus on and direct your attention appropriately if you can't switch between those two things of the sh and the focus you can't pay attention and anybody with ADHD they're missing the conductor in the brain you're not able to shh things you're not able to Spotlight on something else in most settings you have an orchestra that's warming up all the time around you and that's what the experts mean when they say that you have a neurobiological disorder that affects the brain structurally and chemically as well as ways in which various parts of the brain communicate with one another that's what they're talking about the prefrontal cortex and the inability to switch between suppression of noise and amplification of focus that's what it is I can give you an example because I'm realizing my prefrontal cortex could not do this I went to Dartmouth College and they have this incredible Library Baker Library and I would always go to the stacks in the library to study and I would carry my stack of books and I would carry my notebooks and my pens and my highlighters and I would commit to being there all day okay I'm going to study I would sit down and as soon as I sit down and crack open a book you want to know what happened uh the orchestra started warming up and everyone started chit chatting I literally would be like oh my god I think I'm hungry I gotta go to the bathroom do I feel like studying I'm not quite sure and then I hear somebody walking and be like who's that oh is that Emily I was incapable of that part of attention that your prefrontal cortex needs you to do shh I was incapable of suppressing the sensation in my body suppressing the monologue in my mind and tuning out and suppressing the noises around me I would sit there for eight hours and distract myself because this core function of my prefrontal cortex didn't work couldn't do it so of course I had trouble paying attention because I couldn't suppress my internal and external noise in order to do the second part where the conductor the prefrontal cortex turns to the strings after it's gone shhh to the horns and amplifies and ramps up the strings let's hear the first stanza five four three two one and then they go right and that is your prefrontal cortex ramping up and amplifying either your focus in your head because if I've got the book cracked open I can't be paying attention to what my voice is saying I've got to turn on the part of the brain that can now focus on the words on the page right I've got to be able to focus on things in the environment the book in front of me the words that are being processed as I'm reading so attention is controlled by the prefrontal cortex being able to shush and quiet and suppress one network that is tuned in to all of the outside and internal noise and to amplify another Network in your brain that goes into a focus state my brain did not work that way it was missing the conductor and people with ADHD are missing a conductor that's working properly and when you start to understand that that oh my God there's this conductor in my brain and this is the way they talk about it in research you know what you realize is this because it goes a little bit further your brain takes a ton of fuel when you look at the research if you and I were to Simply sit still all day and do nothing I mean nothing not even read a book just sort of lay on the couch do next to nothing simply being awake and alive you consume 25 of your caloric intake when you start trying to focus so again attention is twofold it takes fuel mentally to suppress the internal fidgeting the fact that you're hungry maybe you have to pee your voice going oh God I'm going to screw over this test why can't I focus what's wrong oh is that Emily over there it takes a lot of mental fuel to quiet that Network in your mind it takes more mental fuel for your prefrontal cortex to then go hey strings we're going to pay attention to you and to activate a different network that helps you focus on what's happening in your mind and focus on something in your physical environment this is why after you take a test you're exhausted because you've drained the energy tank and so what also happens for everybody with ADHD is the orchestra's playing you're burning through fuel because both networks are going your attempt to try to focus on something and your attempt to like shut down the that you can't shut down and so you're not only spinning your wheels by not actually being able to get done what everybody else can get done you're also draining the energy tank what ultimately happens is that you if you're a woman turn this against yourself guys are like this homework and they get physical and they go do something else women aim it at themselves and this is where it gets important because this is about both being able to quiet certain neural circuits and enhance others and what they've found this is from Dr Ayman who's been on this podcast one of the world's leading experts in the brain he's done over 60 000 scans of brains when he has scanned people's brains he has scanned my brain and when you look at anybody's brain scan who has a ADHD brain what they find is there are what appear to be holes in the prefrontal cortex is very very common and it's a sign that there's not sufficient blood flow to the conductor the conductor can't work properly because it's not getting the blood flow that it needs and he calls this a sleepy brain that your brain is not getting the blood flow the dopamine the Nora epinephrine or whatever the hell it's called because we all know I can't say it and that's why so many people with ADHD because we're not able to have all of the neurotransmitters and the neuro circuits working properly it's why so many of us chase dopamine dumps like shopping or alcohol or any other addictive kind of behavior and it's also why it matters that women have a symptom of being hyper hyper critical because think about the two networks that the conductor in your brain has to be able to switch on and off yes you've got to be able to switch the ability to pay attention to the book and to the words as your in your mind as you're processing what you're reading but if you can't turn off what researchers call the default mode Network if you can't shush the horns as they're like you're never going to amount to anything why are you always behind why did if you can't shh that you live with a default mode a voice in your head that is always active that's always going and that's always negative and that's why so many of us develop such poor self-esteem it's why the outcomes are horrendous for girls that don't get diagnosed that have ADHD because you internalize all this so what we're going to do next is I'm going to cover the six lesser known and surprising signs of adult ADHD then we're going to get into why this happened why are girls under diagnosed why is there a Lost Generation of women who have been struggling with anxiety and depression and eating disorders and impulsive shopping and all kinds of other things and beating themselves up why did this happen and more importantly we're going to cover what you can do about it if you think this is you or someone you love don't go anywhere we'll be right back welcome back I'm Mel Robbins and today I'm talking about my diagnosis of ADHD how I was diagnosed at the age of 47 late in life and what I have learned in the last six years of digging into this topic researching it and learning as much as I can not only to help myself and our two daughters who also have ADHD but so that I could share this information because I want as many people to understand this as possible so these are the six lesser-known signs of adult ADHD number one is hyper focus and this was a surprise to me because I remember seeing this in our son I'm like I'm sorry this kid does not have ADHD he just hates homework I mean he can sit and laser focus in on his video games so clearly he can laser focus in on homework that's not true a surprising sign of ADHD is the ability to hyper hyper hyper focus in certain settings but not be able to pay attention at all in other settings and this has to do with what's going on in your brain and your prefrontal cortex in particular when you have ADHD which we will get to in a moment but hyper focus is present for me I can hyper focus and get lost in my work I can hyper focus when I have to give a speech like I literally have like those blinders on that horses wear the big Clydesdales I have tunnel vision when I have to do something like that it's like the rest of the world does not exist now when I'm done doing something like that I have a complete collapse I'm exhausted my brain the gas tank is empty but I can hyper Focus which would make you think well then you don't have ADHD well here's the rub on it ADHD is not the inability to focus that's not what it is ADHD is a disorder in your brain that impacts your prefrontal cortex and the two jobs that the prefrontal cortex must do around attention itself and we will get into this because attention is both being able to tune out or suppress external and internal noise and it is also the ability to ramp up parts of your brain so that you can focus on something effectively and so it's way more than just paying attention to something it requires a bunch of switching in your brain in terms of which network your brain is using and we're going to dig into that don't worry second sign that is a lesser-known sign of adult ADHD difficulty controlling your emotions say that again difficulty controlling your emotions see what happens is that you when you struggle with ADHD you're using up so much mental energy trying to pay attention that there's no gas in the tank to be able to tolerate the emotions of being frustrated or tired it's why I would snap at my kids all the time that's why I would get this tone of voice when I'm frustrated with something and I just can't deal anymore it's why I would get really emotional with myself and erupt it myself why the did you forget her birthday again what is wrong with you she's your best friend why haven't you bought Christmas presents yet why do you leave everything to the last minute you missed that deadline again so being eruptive at myself as well the third really surprising sign of adult ADHD and boy do I have this one in Spades impulsive shopping and overspending it's like you're blind to it and you get this huge rush for buying something and then all of a sudden you realize that was stupid and you didn't need it and this has to do with what Dr amen who's one of the world's leading experts on the brain says is your attempt to stimulate your brain with a dopamine Rock so shopping isn't the only addictive behavior a lot of adults that have ADHD and it's not properly being managed have a problem with drinking drugs other addictions impulsive behaviors all tied to the structural issue with the prefrontal cortex the fourth surprising sign is timeliness time blindness you're terrible with time management I am terrible with time management I'm constantly late I keep myself on track with reminders on my phone I am the last person to get in the car for our family I am always a minute late to the call as hard as I try to be on time it feels impossible to me another surprising sign is that many people with ADHD are actually very high functioning on the outside you look like a workaholic you look very successful or if you're not working you're just one of those people that's super duper duper duper busy but here's the thing your busyness and your workaholism is scattered all over the place and that desire to keep your mind busy is also due to the fact that you have problems in your prefrontal cortex suppressing the noise that is going on outside and also the noise going on with your critical voice and finally this leads me to the big one adults with ADHD tend to be highly highly highly self-critical you assume you're always screwing up you constantly beat yourself up for not being able to do simple things you're worried that you're disappointing everybody you're wondering why it looks effortless for everybody else but you and this is the default mode of what your own inner dialogue sounds like Mel Robbins I got all six I spent Decades of my life beating myself up let me let me let me just explain some of the ways this played out in my life because I think this will give you an insight into what you may be dealing with if this is in fact you so in relationships I was plagued plagued for 50 years with feeling like I'm not a good enough friend I'm not a good enough girlfriend I'm not a good enough sister I'm not a good enough mom or wife that I should I should have sent more care packages why can't I remember birthdays why am I always missing the sign up date for school conferences for this for that why am I always arriving late for pickup you know if I were better at this or a better person like this plagued me it plagued me and here's the thing now that I'm diagnosed with it I still do this if I don't put the systems in place and what did that mean for me well when it comes to birthdays here's what it meant I care about birthdays I feel like an when I miss somebody's birthday and so I spent an entire day cross-checking Facebook which is where most people's birthdays are and putting them on repeat in my Google Calendar and then I worked that worked sort of but I realized when the thing goes off on the day of somebody's birthday it just makes me remember to call them or text them but there are people in my life I'd like to send a present to so by failing again for a year I realized I need to go a step further and put a week before notification that goes off so I have time to actually get a present or a card in the mail and so you start to set up systems because you realize this is just not the way your brain works it's just not wired to remember this and that's okay that's okay but I didn't know that I didn't know that I just thought I was a shitty friend I just thought everybody else figured this out but me another thing work when I look back at my work history holy moly I am a horrendous employee unless I am in an environment where I can move all over the place I cannot work in an office why well because I can't shh I can't sh the horns over there I have this like problem where if my kids are two rooms away from me and they're listening to tick tock videos it's as if they're blaring them in my ears I can't suppress that noise around me and so any job that I had in an office I wanted to die because I could hear everybody at all times I could hear the door I could hear the elevator ding I did not know that this was ADHD I just thought I had like super ears or something like I thought everybody heard like this and so when I think about the jobs where I was really successful I was moving around waitressing loved waitressing bartending oh I loved bartending uh working at legal aid when I was a criminal defense attorney for legal aid in 1994 as a young lawyer I love that job because I would start the day in my office I'd walk across the street to the court at 100 Canal Street I'd be in court bopping around all day I'd be out to Rikers I'd be back to the office it was always chained changing that was beautiful for my brain what I do now beautiful for my brain no day is the same I excel in what we do now because I am working in a place that works for this kind of brain School I've already explained to you disaster absolute disaster yeah yeah I know I got into Dartmouth so I scored really well on the SATs and I came from a Tiny Town in Michigan and not a lot of kids applied there in fact nobody had ever applied there but I was the queen of all-nighters the queen of procrastination I can look back now and realize why I almost failed this big engineering class at Dartmouth it's because there were 400 kids in the class I couldn't pay attention I couldn't organize myself I was time blind I I missed out on so much because I was so busy thinking that I was a failure and why couldn't I get this and why couldn't I organize them why couldn't I read on time I don't even know how I got through Law School um daily life clutter everywhere literally papers everywhere kleenexes blow my nose put them on a counter um overspending does this sound familiar you kind of overspend to compensate for other things you feel bad about yourself you buy a new outfit or you forgot to take something to the dry cleaner and now you don't have a dress to wear so you got to quickly order a dress but then you don't like the dress this is my life and then the credit card bill comes and you didn't think that far this was my life I should be the poster child for The Container Store because until we did the episode that we recently did about decluttering versus organizing I just thought if I just bought more baskets and I made everything look pretty then I would be organized but the truth is I just have too much clutter because my mind doesn't organize and so you have to declutter before you can organize I mean it just goes on and on and on but I think the biggest thing for me and why I wanted to talk to you about this is because of the heightened impact of the negative self-talk see that's the thing that I was never able to suppress shh until recently the critical Relentless voice that I constantly had harping in my ear constantly criticizing what I wasn't doing I had no clue this was related to ADHD and the most important aspect of dealing with ADHD for myself is not to make myself wrong for it and not to hate the ADHD think about it this way if you got diagnosed with diabetes does it help you to hate diabetes no you basically say oh thank God I know because now I can help myself now I can do things to regulate insulin now I can do things to make sure that I am happy and healthy and I have a long successful life and that's the way that I feel about ADHD if you understand it and you know what it is you can Empower yourself to live with it to have all the great things about it to laugh at yourself when the stuff happens that always happens with me and to really take proactive steps to embrace it and to COPE in a positive way there are so many interventions and modalities that help whether you're going to explore medications which I've done which have been life-changing I mean when I got diagnosed with ADHD and I dug into it and started researching it I immediately started tapering off anxiety medication because I'm like this explains everything and I went on long-acting Adderall it changed my freaking life because all of a sudden I could go shhh all of a sudden I could direct my attention where I needed it to go and I don't need it in every environment like I don't take it on the weekends because I don't really care if the orchestra is playing and in certain environments like whenever I have to give a keynote address and I'm standing backstage I would never ever take Adderall on that day and here's why the adrenaline that I feel it's the neuroadrenaline that's another way you can say that word I can't say neuro epinephrine or whatever the adrenaline that hits your brain your prefrontal cortex the go go go of that it makes the conductor work I literally have blinders on and so the adrenaline in that situation makes the switching of the conductor in my brain everything around me I don't even hear the event happening I literally am so focused on what I'm about to go do that the environment provides the chemical release that stimulates my brain to do what I need it to do so stimulants have been wildly effective for me and effective for one of our kids not all of our kids and you know pegs the question why is it that a stimulant is effective for somebody that has something in their brain that makes them fidgety or makes them distracted what has to do with the blood flow and the neurotransmitters in your brain which I'm not going to explain to you right now will bring on a full expert like Dr Ned Hollowell who is the world's leading expert on ADHD he's the goat he wrote driven to distraction we can bring on uh Dr Ayman who has scanned all the brains and can tell you why so many people with ADHD seek a dopamine dump Rush from over spending or drinking or some of the other uh kind of not so great behaviors but we'll have an expert explain that but one of the things that I think is really interesting is that it's important if you think that this is something going on with either a son or a daughter that you get this looked at by a professional because studies after study in the last five years have said and concluded that children with ADHD in particular have far far far better outcomes later in life if they are treated for ADHD when they're kids and they think that this is due to the fact that the stimulants and the dopamine and the neuro or the uh the the afro the the I can't say the damn word like neuro no effort adrenaline or whatever the hell it's called I can't even say it um that the adrenaline and the dopamine accelerates neuroplasticity and so there's some theories out there that not only does it have better mental health outcomes particularly for girls because when you treat this properly whether you're doing it you know I think behavioral therapy combination of medication if that's the right thing which can be tricky or other more natural supplements if that's what you care about caffeine is something that a lot of parents give their kids instead of some of the other stimulants that's a deeply personal choice but I think it's important to know that kids not treated with drugs and behavioral therapy when they have ADHD have a higher tendency toward addiction and not great outcomes versus the kids with ADHD who are treated with drugs and with natural stimulants and behavioral therapy and this is research in the last five years I think it's important to say that I'm not telling you what to do but in order to save your daughter from the profoundly negative impacts of ADHD on psychology and on anxiety and depression and eating disorders there's a tremendous number of kind of coexisting diagnoses when ADHD is present this is something I want you to take seriously and dig into and learn about and get educated about and the best place to start is your pediatrician if you're an adult going oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God this is me this is me this is my sister this is my daughter this is my boss this is my colleague this is my friend great send them this episode attached to this episode like all episodes is a plethora of resources and one of the resources that we are going to link to is a self-assessment this is not how you get diagnosed with ADHD but this is how you can learn more about ADHD and sort of the surprising symptoms and impacts so that you are more empowered to go seek something and I would start with your general practitioner and ask them uh where to go that's the best place to start or with a therapist you can also start with a lot of the online talk therapy platforms and we've talked a lot about the research showing The Lost Generation of women of which I feel like the founding member that if you are between the ages of I'm just going to say 20 and 75. you may be in this generation of women who are either called a tomboy or called aggressive or called scattered or daydreamy who are really really hard on yourself you developed anxiety or depression or an eating disorder and you've always wondered what the hell is wrong with you I'm encouraging you if any of this was resonant please go talk to your primary care doctor all right that's a lot I feel like the gas tank in my brain is it empty so I am going to get up and go for a walk outside I cannot wait to hear your reaction to this episode I know that you're going to share your stories and I would love to do a ton more episodes about this I want to talk about the medications out there and what they do and why and how they impact your prefrontal cortex I would love to dig more into non-medic non-medicine prescription drug whatever non-stimulant interventions and again I know I have to say I know I've said this a number of times I'm not trying to diagnose you at all okay I'm not a doctor I feel like I'm an expert in this topic because a lived experience I have watched our daughters and our son struggle I have lived the struggle and I feel so much more empowered now that I know what I'm dealing with and I think the benefits now that I can address it effectively and in a healthy way far outweigh having a normal brain an on ADHD brain and I wouldn't trade it for anything but I sure as hell wish I would have known about this sooner because I know it would have prevented unnecessary headaches and heartaches and suffering in my life and I would like to think that it would have helped me make way healthier and more um empowering choices particularly when I was struggling profoundly during college and Law School I'll just leave it at that okay um I love you I don't want to forget to say that in case nobody else tells you today uh your friend Mel Robbins loves you I love you I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life I'll talk to you in a few days oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper this is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes I'm just your friend I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified professional got it good I'll see you in the next episode [Music] foreign [Music] hey it's Mel thank you so much for being here if you enjoyed that video bye God please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing thank you so much for being here we've got so much amazing stuff coming thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family I love you we create these videos for you so make sure you subscribe

Channel: Mel Robbins

Views: 997,466

Keywords: Mel Robbins, Mel Robbins Motivation, Mel Robbins Advice, inspiration

Id: 0R0xhDNPfwU

Length: 58min 15sec (3495 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023