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ADHDtime on Air: You're Not the Problem · ADHDtime On Air

• Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining me at ADHD Time on Air. Today we're talking with Liz. She wrote an amazing book about ADHD and women that I really think you should read. And she's gonna talk to us about this upcoming book. You are not the problem. Late diagnosed ADHD women and the invisible s ⁓ look at me. I'm gonna try that again. Okay, you are not the problem. Late diagnosed ADHD women and the invisible force that shapes us. liz lewis: Yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And I'm hoping that we get an opportunity to talk about a lot of things in this book, but I do have to say that we are not, because there's so many good topics. So you're going to have to go out there and read the book or listen to it or anything, whatever mode that you consume information, go consume it. So Liz, do a better job introducing yourself, please. liz lewis: ⁓ well, that was pretty good. ⁓ my name is Liz Lewis. ⁓ I wrote a book about late-in-life diagnosis. I'm not gonna say the name again because it's so long. That's a whole story too, the title. ⁓ but ⁓ I've been writing about ADHD in women and mothers for like 12 years or something ⁓ now, and now it's a book. And I love talking about writing ADHD nerdy science stuff, like all of it. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Love it. So you're in the right place. ⁓ at ADHD Time on Up until now, we've been talking with authors about books ⁓ that relate to ADHD. And ⁓ in we are going to have a whole about ADHD and technology following this series of ADHD and books. But today we're gonna talk about books, me and you. And specifically, I'm gonna ask about how is it writing a book when you have ADHD yourself? liz lewis: Whew, it's a lot. ⁓ so my experience was a little this is what I will say. I did not come into publishing the way most people do. ⁓ I had been writing online. I was an original, I guess you'd call me mom blogger. Like I was I was a mom blogger. I used to actually make a portion of my income on ad revenue just from my my site. So I didn't come into publishing the way most people do, especially when they're writing about ADHD. So I ⁓ came into it a little differently. And for me, just to start off, I had a contract to write a book. ⁓ basically it was a two-year contract. And I will say that with ADHD, having two years was too much. Like there too much of life can happen in two years and ⁓ too much can change in ADHD, right? And the way we talk about ADHD and the conversation online. So It was not easy ⁓ to write a book with ADHD, but I will say that because it was so meaningful to me and because I love digging into the research, I actually love editing. Most people don't like it. But I love doing all that stuff. I love ⁓ developmental writing and fleshing things out. So for me, yes, it was a long process and I had to keep myself engaged with it because there aren't a lot of there isn't a lot of feedback over the course of two years. Like you're just kind of like writing in the dark. And hoping that you're gonna get somewhere with this. ⁓ So it wasn't easy, but I set certain like goals for myself, or I would maybe send in a chunk to one of the editors, like somebody to read and I would ask for feedback on it, or I'd ask somebody who I felt in ADHD knew more than me. I would ask them to read a section and say, can you just pick this apart and just leave notes like in the margins of this Google Doc? And it helped me to keep going. And I turned it in on time, actually like five days early. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Wow, that's amazing. Anything early in ADHD is amazing. liz lewis: Wi-Fi Daniella Karidi, PhD: ⁓ Yeah, ⁓ so wrote a book about late diagnosis in ADHD and women. So my first question is, what people get ⁓ wrong these days about ADHD and women? liz lewis: Well, I think the big thing and sort of the overarching point of the book is that ADHD, the conversation around ADHD usually comes down to ⁓ I'm gonna say fixing it, managing it. ⁓ how do I I've actually had people ask me, how do I heal? How do I heal from ADHD? ⁓ and I really wanted people to think about it in a different way. Like maybe it's not about fixing or managing, and I'm not saying you we should ignore it. And not acknowledge it at all. But ⁓ maybe it's about removing some of the unfair pressures from women that make ADHD so unlivable. ⁓ I think that is a bigger problem. I think ADHD itself, we know more about brain-based challenges and how to support people than we ever have before. ⁓ but I think it's the pressures for women specifically that make ADHD so hard to integrate into your life, especially if you didn't know for like fifty years or more that it was even part of your life. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And talking about not knowing, ⁓ I'm a big fan of diagnosing ADHD at any age. I have clients in the retirement age that are getting diagnosed. I have clients that get diagnosed because their grandchildren get diagnosed. so people that are getting diagnosed at every point, but there's a lot that come out and ask why bother? Why is a late diagnosis even important? liz lewis: ⁓ well, I would say for self-understanding, if you really do want to understand up to this point why things have felt harder than they need to be, then maybe having a diagnosis would be ⁓ good for you. Plus, there's this whole welcoming community of people to surround you if that's what you want. But I also think that there's a lot of women who are, I don't know, I was just talking about this with someone the other night. There's a lot of women living their lives with ADHD that don't necessarily make it the center of their lives all the time. So I would say in general, yes, having that information is ⁓ better than not having it. But I also have met some women over the years who after the diagnosis, there's really a strange, not strange, but hard and sad spiral that can happen. A lot of questioning the past, sort of reversing in our minds and reliving all of our past mistakes. And that can be really problematic. So it's like if you're gonna do, if the diagnosis is gonna help you move forward, awesome. Get it. If the diagnosis is gonna pull you into something, maybe hold off for a little while. Talk to a therapist or counselor about some of your post your your life experiences and if you have post-traumatic stress stuff, like talk about all of that and then put the ADHD to the side maybe for a little I don't know. Daniella Karidi, PhD: So I I think that the understanding that the diagnosis is for us and not for anyone else. So then you do it when you kind of need it sometimes. I do know that a lot of people talk about the grief that happens after understanding that life could be different. But I think that would be true. liz lewis: Yeah. Yes. Daniella Karidi, PhD: For any diagnosis that we're receiving later in life. It's if we finally understand our OCD or anxiety or any mental health that we were told to didn't exist or wasn't treated or any of that, thinking how our life could look different, knowing the diagnosis. I do had a feeling reading the book that you have some hope for young women that that life could be different. So tell me a bit about that. liz lewis: Yeah, I do. I really think, well, okay, so I'm a late Gen Xer just based on the year I was born. I I really do think that ⁓ there's a lot more power in the collective, in women saying, No, no, no, there are some structural societal things here that need to shift. I think there's a lot more power in that than in focusing on your individual Again, not to ignore ADHD, but focusing on self-improvement, individual like solutions. I wrote an article once and I think I called it something to the effect of if you're the problem, you must be the solution, right? ⁓ and I do think that our lives are much more complex than just everything that's wrong in my life is me. Like I have caused every relational issue, every career issue, every, you know, I'm the one who's disorganized, I'm the one who's this, I'm the one who's that. I think, ⁓ I think if we can shift that conversation, if we can start it younger for ⁓ like I used to work with teenagers, if we can start with young people helping them to get out of what Stephen Hinshaw calls the triple bind. Like if we can help these girls a little bit earlier, I do think that we won't have a generation of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond who are angry, feel like they've been ignored. are just discovering this part of themselves and having to reinvent themselves in midlife. I just think I think we could save a lot of people a lot of heartache ⁓ we identified girls younger. Yes. ⁓ Daniella Karidi, PhD: I I second everything you just said. And I think that also ⁓ understanding that early diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean negative stuff that our generation kind of used to think. I think it ⁓ has a lot more positives. And early diagnosis could promise even ⁓ a smoother sale. It doesn't mean you're not going to have bumps in the words, or like having the diagnosis is not going to solve everything. liz lewis: Thank you. No. Daniella Karidi, PhD: But it will kind of help. the other day I someone said to me, ⁓ we're all in the same boat. And I'm like, no, honey, with my ADHD, you might be on the same river with me. You're in a yacht, I'm in a kayak with holes, trying to go across the same river, maybe. But if my kayak had maybe some patches, maybe I'd had more chances getting to the other side of the river like you did. liz lewis: Yeah. Yeah. I always cause I was diagnosed pretty young. ⁓ and I tell a little bit of that story, but I was only diagnosed because of my little brother. Like it was sort of a a an accident. Like I just got taken in at the same time and it was like, ⁓ she has it too. Yeah. And my mom was like, What? ⁓ so I I'm the poster child for like someone who was diagnosed pretty young. And by all accounts, I had support, what support looked like in the early nineties. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. Bonus package liz lewis: But to this day, I am still sort of like my brother and I both have it, right? But I'm still the problem child. You know, and I think that's an interesting gendered sort of like in my family, and I just say it, like in my family, I I people come down on me a lot harder for how I show up now in my 40s than they do for my brother. So there are advantages. Like I was able to integrate this when I was starting when I was 11, 12 years old, right? Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. Very interesting. liz lewis: I was able in college, I was able to sort of I knew what I had to do to get through. Like I knew I had I had the tool of medication. I had some a idea about my ADHD, but so I've had that advantage, but it wasn't all like smooth sailing for sure, and it still isn't. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. My mom was told many times that girls don't have ADHD, so I can't have it. And that this is just being a redhead. ⁓ so, and I'm severely dyslexic. So luckily I got all these accommodations and services from my reading disability, from my dyslexia. ⁓ so that kind of helped me receive some of these accommodation and support and understanding in the system. But whenever my mother brought up the potential of then it was called ADD, She was like, nope, she's just a redhead. She's a girl. She's a redhead. ⁓ so when people talk about like how our gender affects our diagnosis, which will be my next question, I always remind people that for many, many years, people were told that for a girl to have it is very rare, or you have to be very extremely hyperactive. The standards to get diagnosed were were different. ⁓ and we have a lot to catch up. So tell me a bit what you think or feel about the minority, especially women, gap in diagnosing. liz lewis: Well the gap in diagnosis, I think we know a little bit now about how that is happening. I think women, especially even when we're young, I think ⁓ I mean, I have a niece who's only six, and ⁓ I think girls develop strategies a lot earlier. I did for sure. I have weird memories of like things I did in first, second grade, like stuff I did because I knew that like if I didn't do this thing or act this certain way or say the right thing, that it would be bad. Like Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. liz lewis: And I also think, ⁓ so we know why why women like I'm forty s I'll be forty seven next week. So we know why women in this age group, why a lot of us were kind of missed. ⁓ I forget what your question was. Daniella Karidi, PhD: It's okay. There we go. Real life ADHD coming out. ⁓ I was asking about why women are getting missed in the diagnosis process ⁓ or getting even later diagnosed than men. liz lewis: ⁓ my sim, I I think it has a lot to do with our ability to compensate. and I think the more depending on your family background or, you know, the situation you grew up in and what resources you did have available to you, I feel like you were a lot of people are able to sort of cope, especially a girl who's like motivated and really cares about fitting in, or ⁓ maybe academically is really motivated or in a gifted like I was I always took the Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. liz lewis: That's part of the reason I never got accommodations because I took a lot of gifted classes as a kid. And I think that that it's pretty clear that lots and lots of women are able to develop strategies, compensatory strategies. And then for most people, there is some ⁓ in their life. ⁓ it could be your first job, it could be losing a job, it could be getting married, getting divorced, having a family, ⁓ lots of different things. I've actually met women who didn't really start to Have issues until they were in like that perimenopause, like right around 45, things started to get weird and they couldn't figure out what was happening. So I just think that for most of us, something happens. Like there'll be an inciting incident or or a transitional phase of our life where we sort of hit this wall and everything we've always done stops working. And you start to question everything about your life. And then they tell you you have anxiety and depression or something. And then you get on Instagram. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Post stress disorder, yeah. liz lewis: Yeah. And then you get on Instagram and you're like, wait, maybe I actually have ADHD or someone in your family is diagnosed, like a cousin or a sister or a and then you start the wheels start turning. But yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. A hundred percent. I think I get a lot of like there's too much diagnosis and then I answer with there's not enough. Like there's like they're like but I I get a lot of like, what do you think about especially when I go into the world of ⁓ academic memory research, when I get into that world of the neuroscientists, they always add like to ask, What do you think about the overdiagnosis? And I'm like, I only see underdiagnosis of minority. I I have not seen but it's the telescope. We finally have a telescope, so we see more stars. I think we're finally having a conversation about women with ADHD. So we're finding more women with ADHD. liz lewis: Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it's being overdiagnosed. The only thing I would caution against is say sitting in front of a clinician and telling the clinician what you want to hear. You know what I mean? Like directing the clinician, because I kind of feel like you need to be open to whatever, you know, you have to be willing to go through the process. and ⁓ I personally wouldn't want a clinician to just tell me what I wanted to hear. Like I would actually want a Daniella Karidi, PhD: Right. A an assessment, yes. An assessment that rules out if this is X, Y, or Z or X, Y, N Z, which is an end, yeah. X and yes. and and I think that the comorbidity aspect of having this and that, I think puts us women sometimes even more at risk. ⁓ correct if I'm wrong, but we talk a lot about having the I think you talked about the things that travel together. ⁓ liz lewis: What a differential diagram. Yes, and Daniella Karidi, PhD: But we talk a lot about having combinations. I feel like sometimes when we get one of the labels, we stop the search, even if it's not a perfect fit, because we wanna satisfy some societal, you know, j just not to cause trouble or whatever the reason. Different women have different reasons why they don't fight a label that they don't fit feel fits totally or don't feel that it fits correctly. liz lewis: Yes. And it's it's funny, I yeah. I had that conversation a little bit ⁓ I when she contributed to my book, Sari Solden. And Sari and I had a brief conversation about how in a lot of ways, ⁓ especially I'm not a huge I like social media to be social, but ⁓ I think the way ADHD looks on social media for I'm gonna say white women in their mid midlife years, ⁓ I think we have made ADHD a more desirable diagnosis and more accepted than some other things. And my whole take is yes and like that's why I call my substack yes and because I'm like it's never just about the ADHD. It's it's plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. It's this whole other broader conversation we need to be having. And Sari made this comment that I thought was really interesting. She said, Well, you know, if if at the end of the day all you're dealing with is ADHD. then you're doing great. And most people aren't just dealing with ADHD. And I think that's your point. Like it doesn't do you any good to get a partial diagnosis. You really need to make sure you're looking at a whole person perspective. You're looking at a whole person because we're all very complex. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yes, for sure. And I I wanna say that when we talk about ADHD in general, there's come topics that we kind of sometimes avoid. We sometimes we find like we when I when I say ⁓ we I have a ⁓ book club called Focus on ADHD Books, we month month meet and read a book. and one of the books we were reading a few months ago was related to ADHD in sex. I had one person come to that meeting. Okay. To every other single meeting, there's like twenty people. people felt uncomfortable to be on camera or to have a conversation. People wrote to me later personally, ⁓ we we we skipped this one book because we like we feel it's a hard topic. I don't want that on my bookshelf, all these weird things that I so did not expect when I chose that book. so I unpurposely am gonna do the opposite and bring that topic up as much as I can. ⁓ Because I feel that people don't bring it up enough and don't talk about enough about relationships, friendships, sex. Those are things that we should be talking about when we talk about ADHD. So you you wrote a whole chapter about that. liz lewis: I did, because I felt like, and again, I'm not trying to I like social media to be social, I do, but I feel like the conversation on social media tends to be ⁓ individual symptoms focused. Like, ⁓ you're having emotional reactivity. Let me sell you a product or service or coaching package for that. You're having trouble with your with managing time and productivity. I'm gonna I'm gonna teach you a system. Know for eight week, I would give you an eight-week system, you know, I'm gonna do this. I think we fall into this, like we discuss certain things and we hit them really hard in ADHD. But some of these relational issues that are a little bit more nuanced and maybe harder to have these conversations about, we tend to skip over that. And we go for like the I don't know, the more fun or monetizable or flashy conversations. And I really wanted to write. Chapters. And I I could have gone even deeper. But be for the purposes of that book, I needed to keep things like in a chapter about friendship and like a chapter about relationships and sex. And we don't talk like, for instance, long-term relationships. I did talk about sex in the book, but we often don't talk about the element of sharing space in a long-term relationship. And with ADHD, sharing like I always say, it must be terrible to live with me. Like I'm a mess. Like, I mean, literally like physically, my space is a mess all the time. So that aspect of it, we don't talk about that. You know, we just Daniella Karidi, PhD: So your your space is representing the internal chaos and and ⁓ we talk a lot about the fixes of it, like how to organize selling that put promoting that, but we don't talk always about this emotional consequence. ⁓ I liz lewis: Yeah. Yes. I feel like we we have a pr a package or service or product, but we don't wanna have the conversations. We just wanna like band aid it, sort of. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Right. Right. And I think that those are important topics. And it's important to kind of say that we should be talking of our effect on our on ⁓ our effect of attention on relationships and all levels of those. if it's how we relate to our friends that in our office or in how we relate to our long term partners, ⁓ or if we have long term partners, I think that ADHD will affect all of that and looking at ADHD only in the pr productivity or only in the academic part or only in the work is the the dish honest approach, but also maybe by comprom by putting it in these categories, it helps us kind of I don't know, swallow it or or process it, making it more socially appealing. I I'm not really sure. But I can tell you that you can get banned from some of these platforms. liz lewis: Yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: For having some of the conversations that some of us creators wanna have. ⁓ and that's also something important to to bring out. If you wanna talk about the risks of you know harming self or like, you know, those are some topics that are important for HDS to bring up and they're not always available for us on on the social media platforms. liz lewis: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think I kind of wish more. I mean, again, I took all the coaching classes, I've done some coaching. I I think a lot of the content is made for entertainment purposes. Like it's made by coaches, influencers, or the like. And I I think a lot of it is meant to be quick, soundbitey, and entertaining. I kind of wish that more Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. liz lewis: And I don't say this because I I think anyone should take time from their practice, but I wish some of our more professional people were making a little bit more informational content. But I also know that's not what that's not what people see. Yeah. So yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: consumers. Yeah. It's not always what people want. but I I will bring up ⁓ you do talk about topics that some topics that are not brought another topic that I appreciated seeing that's not brought up a lot was ⁓ in the motherhood topic, which is discussed, you can find that on social media. You don't always find in the same conversation the fertility topic. And and in the last two or three ADHD conferences I attended, which I strongly recommend if anyone wants to attend an ADHD conference, there I I'll put the link for the Chad, the ADA ⁓ conference in December. But ⁓ talked about the fertility topic. And I think that so many people don't, they kind of gloss over it. They go right to the motherhood and not about the processes of getting there. And and the side, the other side of it is the ⁓ also the unexpected pregnancies, which I hear sometimes coming up. So I did appreciate you bringing up those topics. How did you feel about liz lewis: Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: o about doing that. liz lewis: Well, I really wanted to. And again, well, funny, fun fact, this book was actually supposed to originally ⁓ be a book about motherhood. And what happened was as I I gave them writing samples and all that stuff, and they came to me and they asked if I wanted to write a little bit more expansive of a book. And so the motherhood thing was written a long time ago. And that was just sort of they they were like, we still want the motherhood, but could you do some other stuff over here? Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. liz lewis: So I I wanted to talk about the experience of motherhood because that's how I started. Like I started writing about me being a mom with ADHD, having a child with autism, and me trying to run my house with a husband who travels, still not as much as I used to, but still travels. And that's how I started writing. So for me, the experience of being somebody's mother and ⁓ trying to find meaning and trying to be the best version of a mom you can. That was always important to me. And the fertility thing, the reason that even came up for me was because a group of I think they were women that I had just known or coached or people that were in my community, I was talking to them about this motherhood thing one night. And a couple of people said, Well, I've been trying to have a baby for years. And I was like, ⁓ my gosh, you guys, I'm sorry. Like, let's let's put it in. And I did, and they didn't delete it. They didn't edit it. So yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Well, good. I'm happy that in ⁓ it I I think that that's that that the idea of having the conversation, including that in it automatically, I I think it's really important. I think we kind of gloss over some of the challenges of becoming a mom and adding that ADHD, adding the executive function that you need to to to do that. ⁓ I remember when I was pregnant with my first one, ⁓ the a research came out that that year that women that eat chocolate have happier babies. That was the title on all the newspapers. It was like, and I'm like, yes, I've been like ⁓ consuming chocolate instead of meals. My ADHD brain is to eat, so I'm eating chocolate. So I'm a winning. And then I decided when I felt a little better, I'm gonna really read this research. And the results basically were you gave the the researchers gave women, sent them this box with like 20 bars of chocolate, and they were supposed to eat. Like two cubes or three cubes a day. And then they brought their babies like a year after they were born or a few months after they were born to the lab and they did all these testings. And the calmer babies were the ones of the moms that ate more reported eating more chocolate. And my first response was, Wait, you send me a box of chocolate and I succeeded to eat only two bloc two cubes a day, and you're surprised that I have a calm kid? liz lewis: You know what? When I was pregnant, the big thing was fish oil. Daniella Karidi, PhD: there you go. liz lewis: So I took a bunch of fish oil and I always tell my kid, 'cause he takes now that he's a teenager, he takes all these honors classes, I always say, It's the fish oil. It's the fish oil. That's why you're in those honors classes. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. Yeah, yes, yes, exactly. ⁓ but but I think that that these title of the research sometimes, and especially if it comes to like you read it in a newspaper, but it but as a parent, that like that need for consistency that they they push and like that we need like comes out a lot. So what would be like your like biggest takeaway that you'd want p moms to get about parenting with ADHD? liz lewis: Yeah. Well, I don't want to say something, like I don't want to say something that you will hear a hundred times, like put on your own oxygen mask first. I get annoyed with that kind of advice. I do. Cause I like specificity. Maybe that's my DHD. ⁓ but this is what I will say is ⁓ you do not have to be a perfect mother. You just have to be the best mother you can for your child. And I always say that like, I feel like my son was sent to me as like a Personal development. Like the universe sent me the child I needed to like for me to really manage myself and to be the best version of me. ⁓ I just feel like you can only take so much advice. So I would say find a community of other mothers, and you they don't have to have ADHD necessarily, but find other mothers that have been there and done that that you feel comfortable with. Have a support system around you. ⁓ try not to personalize, like try not to overthink everything you eat, say the whole time you're pregnant. Try not to overthink everything you eat. ⁓ babies go through phases. You can't control so much of the outcome of life. You know, we want so badly to control for every like potential thing. You can't control all of it. So all you can do is control how you respond, especially when they're really little. ⁓ I don't know. It's really easy for me to say relax, be the best and and understand like your no one knows your circumstances but you. You know. So try to figure out what I wrote a whole article about this. You'd think I have a better answer. Try to Daniella Karidi, PhD: No, I like it. I actually like your answer. I I was once asked, some some ladies like s in the park said, I have the best advice for you. And I'm like, I didn't even ask for advice. She's like, Don't listen to anyone's advice. That's my best advice to you. Trust yourself. ⁓ and and then she corrected it and said, Listen, but then do what you want to do. So I ⁓ think that especially advice we don't ask for, especially now that we get so much from social media and we didn't necessarily ask for that advice. We ⁓ liz lewis: Yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And then I do much, very much appreciate the the wanting specificity. Like someone tells you put on your a gas ⁓ your mask and like breathe it first and like how do I do that? How do I physically do that? So finding a community of others, I I think that's a great doable. liz lewis: Don't I would rely on those people, rely on real life people and don't overconsume, I don't know what to say, stylized information about parenting and motherhood. Don't overconsume it. Like rely on the real life experience of people around you. Daniella Karidi, PhD: I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that ⁓ parent for the for the kid you have and for the time you're in, because the parenting like, you know, I'm parenting a seventeen and twenty year old, that is so different than parenting a little one that you can't that can't, you know, that you have to make sure that ⁓ that they're ⁓ still breathing. ⁓ so you're you're you're definitely doing different different things in their different stages. liz lewis: Mm. Yeah. Yes. I remember the little stage. That's just I mean, I went through a whole anxiety post postpartum anxiety situation where I was having intense anxiety. Yes. Yeah. It's it's a lot. And now the things the things that stress you out when they're little are very different. Mine's fifteen. So the things that stress me out now are entirely different than the things than when he was little. And I I have tried very hard to not be too controlling. ⁓ you know. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. liz lewis: I I could be easily be a helicopter and I'm not. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yes. Well, we all have the potential of being I I think it's it I I mean, I know I have potential of being a Jewish mama and a helicoptering my kid. Like it's built in in my genes, right? Generations of it. ⁓ but to be honest, I'm gonna like say say a little thing about I got your book. ⁓ I I had the honor of reading a pre copy and thank you for that. And I really enjoyed it. but I mean skipped to the to the episodes about the hormones. I like to like, you know, ⁓ like liz lewis: Ha ha Yes. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Like, you know, it's hard to skip in a PDF. I want to tell everyone. I strongly recommend ski holding a real book if you want to skip. But I did. I went right there. So tell us a bit about those episodes, especially for those people that have not yet had a chance to read the book. liz lewis: Well, ⁓ because I am not a ⁓ doctor and I have never played one on television, ⁓ I had to do a lot of research on ⁓ the interaction of hormones and the ADHD brain and estrogen and like all that stuff. And I got really lucky because right when I was starting to write that, I had talked with he's now gone, Dr. Brown. ⁓ and he had had a colleague who had done some research on this ⁓ before we all started talking about it. Daniella Karidi, PhD: yeah. liz lewis: And he recommended a couple of articles that he gave me. So I started with those articles. And those articles were about, I think a they tested some methylphenidate or something on women in perimenopause who didn't have other mood disorders. Like they there was a whole I love, I love science. So I was reading these articles. I was like, this is so cool. And then I tried to also find some more contemporary stuff to read. And I ended up referring a lot to a woman named Dr. Jen Gunter. ⁓ the menopause, I think she wrote the menopause manifesto, and maybe there's another book she wrote too. I can't remember. She's Canadian. But ⁓ I ended up gathering, that's how I write. I gather a ton of information and I kind of like form an angle or like something in my head, and I just start writing a bunch of nonsense. So I I knew that I wanted to talk about estrogen, and I knew I wanted to talk about all of this late diagnosis. And is it possible that, you know. Perimenopause. I don't think perimenopause gives you ADHD, but is it possible that something is happening here? And so I found that from what I could tell, yes, there's something to this. We can't 100% explain it. And it's very individual, but yes, there's something going on. And so I just took a shot at it and wrote as much as I could. And I heavily edited it, like several times, worked with the editors, and because I had a UK editor, there was some back and forth about how to spell the word estrogen. Like there was all this, like, you know, back in, you know, funny things like that. But and I do think culturally Americans were very different about perimenopause than than Europeans or Asian, the Asian population for sure. So it was that I had a whole section actually about ⁓ cultural stuff around ADHD and well, around menopause. But they said it wasn't enough about ADHD. So we deleted that. ⁓ but yeah, like it was really important to me. I think it's relevant. to the now. And I felt like if I was gonna write a book for people diagnosed later, of course I have to talk about hormones in some way. And I'm very non expert, but I tried to like check my sources and cite my book, I tried really hard. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. No, I get it. And I really appreciate it. I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate the the language and the level of knowledge. And I found it a really useful. so I I just thought I should share with you that I found them useful. ⁓ so here's the point where I get to ask you what do you think you'd want ⁓ who should be reading this book and what do think you want them to get out of this book? liz lewis: Well, I would say anyone who got diagnosed later than they wish, and I mean that could be that's wide open. Like if you feel like you should have been diagnosed when you were young and you're only 25, that's fine. I am very Gen X, so some of my my references in the book are very old school probably ⁓ people ⁓ like 80s. ⁓ I I really I really think that it's for women who ⁓ living their lives and they still have to keep going. Like I think there's this Again, online, the conversation seems to be like you should be centering ADHD all the time in your life. You should be working on this. You should be talking about this. You should be announcing to everybody you know that you think you have ADHD or you've been diagnosed with ADHD. I want, I wrote a book for women who are just living their lives. They want to understand themselves better. They want to understand how this all how they got to this place in their lives, but they're not necessarily, you know, like looking to start a business based on ADHD. These are just people with. Aging parents and families and maybe a work, a career, a work in the world that they love and they just want to understand themselves better. And I wanted to give people a different way to think about ADHD. Instead of like, my gosh, I have this thing. Who am I? What am I going to do? How do I fix it? How do I either, either tell everybody or tell nobody? I I wanted it to be a different conversation. And that's why I wrote it about the pressures put on women. Daniella Karidi, PhD: So now that you know all these things about ADHD, if you could go back and talk to past self, young Liz, what would you tell her? liz lewis: Young Liz, ⁓ I would probably tell her that ⁓ let me think about this. I would probably tell her it's not as bad as you think. You are absolutely not crazy. You are not misinterpreting any of this. You are not crazy and you will get through it, ⁓ you will feel ⁓ different. Like you will feel so much better about yourself when you look back and realize that you proved everybody wrong. Daniella Karidi, PhD: What do you tell future Liz? liz lewis: Hmm. It was worth it. Like all of the work, all of the frustration. even if only a hundred people ever read the book, it was actually worth it, I think. Daniella Karidi, PhD: There you go. Okay, so tell people again what's the book and where they can find you. liz lewis: The book is called You Are Not the Problem. I think it's easier just to remember you are not the problem than the whole long title. what is it? Late diagnosed ADHD women and the invisible forces that shape us. Don't worry about it. ⁓ you can actually buy the book anywhere. You can buy it on Amazon, bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble. ⁓ you can buy it pretty much anywhere. Books are sold. ⁓ it's available for pre order. And what was your the rest of your question? Daniella Karidi, PhD: ⁓ just where they can find you if they want coaching with you or if they want any other of your stuff. liz lewis: ⁓ well, you can find me. I would say the easiest way to get me is to just to email me at this point because I need to redo my whole website and it's not looking so hot. So I wouldn't do that. You can also find me on Substack. ⁓ you can search, you can search Liz Lewis, you can search Yes and Healthy ADHD, any of those things, and it will come up. I'm the only one with that name on their Substack. and in terms of coaching, I do, I've always been a part-time coach. I do take women now and again. And if anyone is really into like writing and creative work and creative coaching, I would love to try that on. ⁓ Daniella Karidi, PhD: There you go. So grab it while you still can. Liz, thank you so much for joining us and talking about these important topics. I think we touched the ice the the tip of the iceberg, but ⁓ there there always will be things we can talk about in this area and hopefully the conversations will keep on going. liz lewis: Thanks for having me. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Thank you.