Latest / ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women / 173 // Why ADHD is a Terrible Name, with Dr. Jennie Byrne

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173 // Why ADHD is a Terrible Name, with Dr. Jennie Byrne · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

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Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast. I'm your host,
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Kelsey Spronk, and today I'm honored to be joined by Dr. Jenny Byrne.
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She's a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, and an author with over 20 years of clinical experience.
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She works on understanding the connection between brain science and human performance.
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Jenny, welcome to the show.
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Hey there, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. So I wanted to talk
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today about the book that you wrote, ADHD in professionals embracing your brain.
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Now, before we get into it, I wanted to hear from you, why do you believe that
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ADHD is a terrible name for it?
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Yeah, so I have a whole chapter in the book called Just That,
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ADHD is a Terrible Name, and here's the reason why.
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So ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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That's the official, you know, diagnostic name that you might see on a doctor's note.
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So the first part, attention deficit, is a terrible name because if you have
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an ADHD brain, you can pay attention.
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In fact, sometimes you may actually pay attention better than somebody else.
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The trouble comes with modulating your attention the way you want to.
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So it may be very easy to get what we call hyper-focused, really attentive for
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something you're passionate about.
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And then something super easy and boring, like doing the wash, is really a big chore.
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So that's why that part is a bad name. The second part is hyperactivity.
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This is a bad name because, first of all, people with ADHD brains don't necessarily
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have hyperactivity. There's actually a whole group of them where they don't
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have any hyperactive symptoms at all.
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The second reason that's a terrible name is because in adults,
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hyperactivity typically shows up as restlessness or an internal sense of restlessness,
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which actually can be very similar to anxiety.
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So one of the tricky parts with ADHD brains is the overlap with anxiety.
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And then the final part, disorder. There's a lot of debate out there about whether
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to look at ADHD as a strength or a disability, and there's reasons for both.
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I personally lean into a strength-based model, and I believe that ADHD is a brain variant.
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It's probably at least 10% of the adult population.
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So from my anatomy days as training for a doctor, you know, our bodies have all sorts of variants.
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The blood vessels in our hands, the way we have hair on our body.
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I mean, like literally everything in our body has different variability.
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So that's why I think ADHD is a type of brain rather than a disorder.
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Thank you for clarifying that. That was something that I really appreciated in your book was,
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the in-depth perspective of actually talking about how an ADHD brain is legitimately
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different, but at the same time,
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how that focus on instead of fixing an ADHD brain or trying to treat it,
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so to speak, It was about helping an ADHD brain, a person with ADHD.
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To thrive in their environment.
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And that is a perspective that I am a huge fan of.
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I definitely take the strengths-based approach. And I found that for myself
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reading your book, ADHD and Professionals, I found it was in-depth,
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insightful, but also very encouraging.
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You know, reading things that resonated with me, things that made me feel understood,
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but it also gave that lens of hope of you're not broken. And this is something
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that is a variant, and I really appreciated that.
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So with this book here, what inspired you to write this book?
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What are the kind of connections that you have with ADHD, both personally and professionally?
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Yeah, so full disclosure, I do not have ADHD. Many people who work in this space
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do, and they have that kind of lived experience.
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But I actually came at it from a research angle. So I've been interested in,
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cognition and attention since my undergrad days.
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And so I did a little bit of work as an undergrad, and then I did my PhD on
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the topic of attention with much more of a basic science focus.
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And then when I was a resident training to be a psychiatrist,
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I did more research, more on the clinical side of attention using brain scans.
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So I actually came at it from a research angle.
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And when I decided to leave academics and open a private practice,
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I at that time was living in North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where I live today,
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which I am five minutes down the road from the University of North Carolina.
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And when I started my practice, they started sending me people because they
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actually weren't treating ADHD.
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And I very quickly realized, even though I knew the neuroscience of attention
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really well, I didn't know how to do it clinically. I got a 45-minute lecture
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on child ADHD, and that was it.
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So I had to educate myself and go to conferences and read, et cetera, et cetera.
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That was almost 20 years ago. So the reason I got inspired to write the book
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now is, you know, fast forward through my career, I've done different things.
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And I started a new practice that was kind of non-traditional.
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And once again, started getting a lot of professionals with ADHD. And I was very...
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Discouraged and sad and a little angry that there was still so much misinformation and stigma.
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And I felt like for this group of professionals, it was actually worse.
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And some of them were seeking help. You know, they were learning about ADHD.
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Maybe their kid just got a diagnosis and they were going to a trusted,
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you know, primary care therapist and saying, hey, wait, I, you know,
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my kid has ADHD. This sounds exactly like me.
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And then they're being told, like, you're too high-functioning to have ADHD,
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or, oh, you couldn't be a doctor and have ADHD, or, oh, you can't do this,
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blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And so the years of misdiagnosis, underdiagnosis, mistreatment,
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I mean, it was just really upsetting to me, frankly.
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And so that's why I decided to write the book, because I felt like more high-quality
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information for this particular population needed to get out there.
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And I think I appreciate, too, the fact that you're up front about the fact
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that you personally don't have ADHD. But I think...
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What's actually really beautiful about that is that you chose to do research,
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you said, on cognition and attention.
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And the research that you found has also led you to believe that this is a brain
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variant and not a disorder or a deficit per se.
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And I think that's really nice to hear because I think oftentimes I will be
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in conversation with other people who also have ADHD.
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And in the back of my mind, there's always that little bit of a question of,
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are we saying this is strengths-based because it's our own lived experience,
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it's our own lives, it's our own brains.
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But hearing the research that you've done and the interviews that you did and
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the fact that you are still coming to that same conclusion is really encouraging.
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Something you mentioned was the stigma around ADHD.
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Can you take us on a bit of a journey of how you've seen, how has that changed
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over the last several decades, in particular for women with ADHD?
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Yeah, so maybe a good parallel to think about would be other mental health issues.
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So, for example, depression and anxiety.
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You know, when I started my training in the 90s, I thought it was still pretty stigmatized.
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A lot of people said, oh, it's just you need willpower, get over it.
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You know, depression's not real.
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And today, obviously, that's very different. And I think the stigma level around
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depression and anxiety, especially post-pandemic, has improved a lot.
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I mean, there's still debates and people have different feelings,
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but I really feel like stigma is much, much better.
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Another parallel that happened a little later was around opioid use.
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And when I started practicing in the 2000s, that was highly stigmatized,
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right? Like people who had opioid use disorders, doctors who treated people
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with substance use problems, like super stigmatized.
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Well, fast forward to today, it's much more openly talked about.
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Doctors who treat substance abuse are not stigmatized in the same way.
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So, you know, there's always this history. I think ADHD now,
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the stigma is still very real.
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And I really see it more for adults even than with kids.
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There's still some stigma with kids, but when it comes to adults,
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there's still a high, high level of stigma. Like, if you have ADHD, blank.
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You know, you can't do this. You can't do that. You are always late.
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You are unreliable. You are not trustworthy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And the stigma for the doctors who treat, or I say doctors, but,
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you know, doctors and others who treat ADHD.
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I think we are actually still stigmatized, and that has to do with the medication
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because one, not all, one of the medication classes to treat ADHD are stimulants.
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And because they activate the reward pathway of the brain—.
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They are controlled substances. So a lot of the misinformation out there,
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and I think the stigma comes from the fact that these are the medications.
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So ironically, it's probably less about the brain function of ADHD,
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and more about one of the medicines that treats it, because any substance that
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can be misused, obviously it's monitored by the DEA, it's criminal,
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It's got all this baggage with it.
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So I think that's part of it. I think the fact that stimulant medications are
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one of the treatments is one of the big stigma.
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But the other one is that when you think about cognition and people's ability
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to perform at work or maybe even be a good parent, you know,
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it's still really like high on the list. Like, you have to be on time.
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You have to be able to get everything done. You have to start all these tasks.
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You know, our culture that we live in today is a hustle culture, right?
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And so we're still very beholden to the Ford factory floor model of employment,
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which I wrote about in my first book, which is fascinating. It's a little bit
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of a tangent. But, you know, our culture is a hustle factory industrial culture.
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And so most people think to be successful at work, you have to be efficient,
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you have to be on time, you have to get a whole bunch of stuff done quickly,
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blank, blank, blank, blank.
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So the idea that you could be successful and high-achieving with an ADHD brain,
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where some of these things like time management may be a challenge is completely at odds.
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So nobody wants to say they have ADHD at work because then it would mean,
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oh, I'm less trustworthy. I'm less efficient.
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It has so much baggage that people don't talk about it.
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And so because people don't talk about it,
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There's misinformation, right? And we don't know. I mean, I can sit here and
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tell you all the professionals I know with ADHD. And again, that's why I interviewed
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people for the book. But it's still a very common misperception that you can't
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be high achieving and have ADHD.
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And I think that it does such a disservice and that was something that,
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I've heard other people share their experience and then my experience as well
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when I was quite a few years ago looking at getting a diagnosis and I had people
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close to me in my life say but you did so well in school and you were so smart
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and you are a very high achiever and,
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there was this frustration for me of saying those things are not mutually exclusive
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those things can exist together as one and so I think,
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like you said there is that that stigma about it like you said with medication
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or you can't be a high achiever,
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and then also that idea of how our culture our society measures success with
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being on time and being reliable and I think what happens with that,
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is we often internalize those messages I think about what you're saying,
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as far as you know being on time and I look at for my kids, dropping them off at school.
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And it's hard. It's a constant battle of if I'm late, you know,
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what messages am I internalizing?
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Because I've heard them of, I'm not reliable. I'm not a good mom.
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I'm not, you know, those other moms wouldn't be late three times in a row kind of thing, you know?
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And so I think just being able to rewrite that and to understand that those
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things are not character flaws and that there is still that opportunity for
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success. And you talked about in your book, often...
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People with ADHD will become entrepreneurs because of that flexibility for success.
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And, you know, getting kids to school, that's a great example.
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We just shared, you know, today is the first day of school for my kiddo.
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So that's a great example of how the intersection of culture,
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and you mentioned women with ADHD and gender and ADHD all come together.
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So, for example, you know, if you look at school in the 1850s or whatever.
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Or even more recently, like in the 1900s, kids walk to school.
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So let's imagine you're a mom and you have an ADHD brain in like 1950 or whatever.
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You know, you have kids. Those kids walk to school.
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So first of all, it's not your job to get there, get them there on time,
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right? They have to get to school. They have to walk. Second of all,
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kids are walking. Right.
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That's if the kid has ADHD and they're walking to school. What a great way for
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an ADHD kid to start the day with movement, which we know is like such a critical part of their day.
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Right. And then as a mom with ADHD, you know, back in the 1950s,
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well, you know, life as a housewife in the 50s, if that's what you did,
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was not that complicated.
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You know, you weren't getting 5,000 emails a day. You weren't getting the bind.
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I mean, I'm sure you get this, the binder of papers that comes home from school
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with the 25 different things.
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Our school sends us text messages and emails and phone calls.
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And like, it's constant, right? And that's our culture. And then the gendered
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aspect of it, where now in today's world, women who have ADHD who are dropping
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the kid to school, they might also be going into work as a professional.
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They're not just going home as a housekeeper. Oh, and by the way,
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the housewives in the 1950s, if you had money, you had help in your house, right?
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How many women with ADHD would even think about getting help?
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It's just not our cultural norm anymore. And so school starting now,
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I don't know when your kids go to school, but some schools, kids start school
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at like 730 in the morning.
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Which is completely non-brain-friendly to kids and to parents with ADHD.
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You know, ADHD brains tend to be circadian rhythm shifted ahead three hours.
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So it's just like all of these things, right? It's like death by a thousand paper cuts.
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It's just there's so many things about our culture and our way of being that
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people just take for granted and make these assumptions that it has to be that way.
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But when you're an entrepreneur, like you said, you can kind of,
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it's easier to break those assumptions to do things that work for you.
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Although I would challenge that there are many jobs and workplaces where you
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can actually challenge assumptions there as well.
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But it is definitely easier when you work for yourself. Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, I think, too, talking about some of the expectations of society and what
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you're talking about, the differences of, you know, even in the 1950s or whenever
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it is, to now the changes that we've had.
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And like you said, walking to school and the fact that you're not,
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you know, being bombarded with ads and text messages and emails and these expectations
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that all demand so much executive functioning.
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I think another part of that is we have so much access to information and.
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You know, factual research backed information, but also a lot of comparison
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on social media, watching these other people who look like they're thriving
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and succeeding while looking beautifully manicured and put together, you know.
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And so there's all these different areas where we feel like we can we can fail.
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So I want to pivot a little bit and ask through the research that you did and
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in writing this book, what were some of the strengths that you saw in those
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that you talked with that have ADHD?
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And again, these are individuals, so it's definitely overgeneralizing to say everybody.
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But some of the commonalities were really thinking in a different way.
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So that often would look like connecting the dots between ideas in a way that other people weren't.
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Which you could call creativity, right? Like that's one type of creative thinking.
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Being able to hyper-focus and lock in on areas of interest or passion.
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Being very good under pressure. Typically high adrenaline situations.
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So the doctors typically are in the ER or the OR.
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The lawyers are in the courtroom, right? So sometimes in that environment,
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being able to operate under high adrenaline situations, they do better.
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And then overall, I would say the professionals who are high achieving obviously,
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did something to get there.
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So typically they're very hardworking, very resilient, very hardworking.
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Many of them didn't know they had an ADHD brain and they creatively came up
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with their own solutions to mask it.
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Now, that often comes at a cost, but they're very resilient and they're very
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hardworking. So one of the biggest myths about ADHD is, oh, that person's just lazy.
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And in my experience, that couldn't be farther from the truth,
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that the folks with ADHD who are successful have worked probably like three,
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four times harder than the rest of us to be where they're at.
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And they're very resilient.
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I appreciate you sharing that. Even too, thinking about how much work it would
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be to become a doctor, let's say, or a lawyer.
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How much work that is, just as a general perspective for anybody.
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Now to do that while also having a brain that,
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doesn't fit super well into the society that we've created and the culture that we have right now,
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so trying to make that work and then on top of that to spend all of that effort
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masking so that nobody knows that it is different for you that,
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does sound like a lot of hard work absolutely and I appreciate that perspective
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you're right there it has still been,
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a lot of stigma even in people I've talked to previously where they said well,
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you know, I knew she had ADHD because she was so unreliable.
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And those kinds of things are devastating to hear. And for myself,
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the clients that I have, the people that I know, I know that not to be true.
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They're not unreliable. They're not lazy.
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There's a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions with that.
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I wanted to ask as well, what are some of the major struggles that you see in
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professionals with ADHD.
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And what I mean by this is that I think often we focus so much on,
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you know, the executive functioning and getting the day-to-day things done.
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But what are some of the deeper struggles that you see in professionals with ADHD?
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I think the most common struggle I see is they put so much energy into work,
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to kind of mask or to cope or to be that high achiever that things kind of go off the rails at home.
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So I have, for example, a very high-functioning attorney who is amazing at work,
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and she confided in me that her electricity has been turned off because she
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didn't pay the bill on time.
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Right or I have people who are doing amazing work at home but they're amazing
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work and they're like maybe I should leave my work because I feel like I'm falling apart at home,
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and then they leave their work and it gets worse that's really sad when I see
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people who love their work who leave to try to be better parents and then it
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gets worse another area it comes up is in managing your own health,
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so because our health care system is so fragmented and difficult and has all
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these tasks and hoops and loops.
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And often what happens with ADHD professionals is they don't take care of their health.
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And as a result, they have worse health outcomes. So there's actually some sad
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studies that adults with ADHD have a decreased lifespan.
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Because probably because they don't take care of their health.
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And that's because our health care system makes it hard for anyone to take care of their health.
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But in particular, you know, being to appointments on time and managing the
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passwords for all the portals and getting the labs and going to the other side of town.
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And it's just like a recipe for disaster.
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So I think, I guess, if someone's listening, you know, sometimes it really just
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shows up emotionally for people that they melt down.
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And that's often when life starts to throw a lot at them. So for women,
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sometimes that's with children or perimenopause.
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Sometimes it's caring for aging parents. Sometimes it's a work thing.
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Something just happened at work that you can't do your routines anymore.
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Or sometimes it's moving to a new house. When life just starts to throw layers
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at you, sometimes all of your skills that worked in the past,
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they just aren't working anymore.
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And that's when people reach out for help. But it's really been there all along.
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It's just that now they can't really hide it anymore.
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Yeah and i think something you had mentioned in the book as well as far as,
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the struggles with adhd is often that shame that we feel that internalizing those,
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messages that we've that we've heard that we've been told directly that we feel
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within our work and within our home that was one that actually,
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i took a screenshot of this on the other day in your book and sent it to my husband on page,
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55, I'll just share it, said,
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for the ADHD brain, maintaining a household is a particular type of challenge.
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Much of housework is repetitive, detail-oriented, and multi-step.
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That rang so true for me, and I think it's difficult in the society we live
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in as well. I think there's.
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A lot of, you know, misunderstandings and misplaced expectations on mothers as well.
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Whether we are working, whether we're professionals or not, a lot of the responsibility
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in our homes is still expected to be ours. And I think that is incredibly difficult for an ADHD brain.
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We love our kids. We want to do well. But I think, like you said,
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a lot of the housework is not very interesting.
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It's not very rewarding. you know things like that and so i do think that can be.
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A really big challenge for those of us with adhd i think it was interesting
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what you said too though about the fact that some of these women that you had talked with,
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they wanted to leave their work to come home to try and focus on home but what
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happened was it actually made it worse and that rings so incredibly true and
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i think a part of that from from my understanding my perspective is that,
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when we have something that feels purposeful, something that's meaningful,
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like our work, where we feel like we excel, we're using our strengths,
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we feel like we are able to contribute in a meaningful way, and,
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we have gifts and talents that can be utilized in that setting,
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I believe that gives us more energy that then pours into the rest of our life.
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And when we take that away, we're just focusing on the things that are such
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a struggle for us, the things that can be draining, whether we want them to
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be or not, I agree. I think that would be incredibly challenging for sure.
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Yeah, and I don't want to get too much on my soapbox about women in the workplace and at home.
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But again, what I find from my own, and this is from my own lived experience,
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even though I don't have ADHD, and women I've worked with and friends and everyone I see is like.
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We're in a culture. You can choose how you interact with your culture.
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So, for example, if you have ADHD, a woman with ADHD, and you have kids,
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the ADHD, if it's not well-managed or controlled, may have tendencies to do
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things like lose the kids' clothes,
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then you go buy more clothes, or you don't do the wash, and so then you have
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twice as many clothes because you got to have spares in case the wash isn't done, right?
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You feel like you're on social media. Social media is brilliant at making you buy things, okay?
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It is literally, I mean, again, I don't want to be too much on my soapbox,
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but like, I believe, this is my belief,
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that Instagram is one of the most effective ways to get people to buy things
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that we've seen in recent years, and it's because it makes you feel inadequate.
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And if you buy the thing, you will become more adequate. So the more stuff you
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buy, the more clutter you have, the harder it is to find stuff.
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The wash doesn't get done.
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Then the kid is late for school. And then the blah, blah, blah,
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blah, you know what I mean? It's a never-ending cycle.
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So I find that when I work with women and I coach them, I'll be like,
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well, let's look at these assumptions.
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Do you need to look at Instagram?
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Do you need to have 20 pairs of shorts for each kid?
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Do you need to buy this thing?
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Do you like all like when you really start challenging all these assumptions,
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you don't have to participate in wholesale culture.
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It's really optional. And I think people forget that they're in it.
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So another example was a woman I worked with, and she was going to leave her job or pull back,
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because she had this idea from growing up and from others around her that she
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needed to cook a three-course meal every night for the family and that the kids
26:36
had the right to say they wanted something different every night.
26:40
So she thought it was her job to make three courses a night with separate meals
26:44
for each child, and then they'd sit down to eat, and the family was allowed
26:48
to criticize everything that she had made.
26:51
So I was like wait a minute let's take a step back you're coming home from work
26:56
making a three course meal every single night and short you know doing different
27:01
meals for each kid and then they're complaining and then you're crying at night and you're like.
27:06
Feeling upset well like let's take a step back like there's so many assumptions
27:10
and all of that and once we worked on it she's like you know what I don't have
27:14
to cook this every night and she found a way to get some pre-packed meals and to prep on the weekend.
27:20
And she made a rule that no one was allowed to criticize the food.
27:22
And if they wanted something else, there were sandwiches. They could go anytime
27:25
they wanted and make themselves a sandwich.
27:27
So we unraveled a lot of this baggage she was carrying around.
27:31
And she didn't leave her job. She was totally happy at her job.
27:34
Everything was great. But she freed herself from this expectation around food
27:40
and meal prep, which was taking her, you know, hours.
27:43
Hours of her day were being taken. So that's just an example.
27:47
Again, remember in the 1950s when women didn't work and they were at home,
27:50
if they had money, they had help.
27:52
So they had people coming in to do their wash, to help them cook,
27:56
to help them clean. And that was without hustle culture.
27:59
So I think this fantasy of like the 1950s housewife is...
28:05
This is my soapbox. I think it's a fantasy. And I think that social media is
28:10
using the fantasy to make you buy things.
28:13
And they, you know, this device...
28:17
People spend billions of dollars to make this addictive.
28:21
So you can't blame yourself, ADHD or not ADHD, if you can't get off this thing once you get on.
28:28
Because people have invested billions and trillions of dollars to make you do
28:31
it. So anyway, that's my soapbox. But I think with ADHD, people,
28:36
like you said, tend to internalize it and be like, this is a me problem.
28:40
And many of the things are not it's actually just a society culture issue that
28:46
they are internalizing the blame for.
28:48
I just wanted to quickly add there when you were saying for those who are listening
28:52
this thing she was talking about a phone oh sorry no that's okay my my apple my smartphone i'm yeah
29:00
yeah and so even just how that you know the addiction and the apps and how they,
29:05
they they make it purposefully addictive for those of us with ADHD or not.
29:10
And the fact that that is kind of a trap, I have very much taken on the perspective
29:16
that it's not a matter of my willpower.
29:19
It's a matter of keeping my phone completely out of sight because I know that
29:24
if I can even see it out of the corner of my eye, it will draw me to its power.
29:30
So I just keep it completely out of site.
29:32
Something I wanted to clarify. So you talked about the fact that we live in
29:36
this culture, but we get to choose how we respond.
29:40
Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? You talked about looking at assumptions.
29:44
Is that what you mean by choosing how we respond to our culture is re-evaluating
29:49
some of those assumptions we have?
29:51
Yeah, totally. And it can be as simple as, you know, I just pointed to my phone again.
29:56
You know, we control these devices. There are actually settings on these devices,
30:02
right, to make them turn off or not notify us.
30:04
Or the very simple solution, as you said, is like, okay.
30:08
I recommend that people put their devices on what I call a landing pad by the
30:13
front door so that it goes out with you every morning, but you're not like on
30:17
it all the time. I know that's not always possible.
30:21
Bottom line, we can control this thing, right? Pointing to my phone.
30:25
The second set of assumptions, I think, especially for women,
30:28
although for many men too, are managing a household.
30:32
And what really needs to be, really needs to happen and what is optional and what is just culture.
30:38
So a great example from the mom world, this is my experience as well, is the snacks, right?
30:44
Oh, my child needs to have 20 snacks a day. Well, do they really need,
30:48
you know, what if they go play soccer and they don't have a snack?
30:52
Are they going to die or are they going to be okay to get to dinner in 45 minutes?
30:58
They're going to be fine, right? So just because every kid has a snack all the
31:03
time, if you forget a snack, like it's really not the end of the world, right?
31:07
But again, this is where the culture. So simple things like that,
31:10
or in a more complicated way, when you go to work, well, the nine to five, okay?
31:17
Nine to five is an assumption. It goes back to Ford factory floor.
31:22
Jobs do need you to be somewhere physically from nine to five,
31:25
but many do not. And the pandemic helped break some of that.
31:29
But what I see now is when people get anxious because their business isn't going
31:33
well or they're not making a set.
31:35
When people get anxious, leaders and CEOs get anxious, they're like want to
31:39
revert back to Ford factory because then they think, oh, if we all just go to
31:43
the office, everything will be fine.
31:45
Oh, if we just work nine to five, it'll be fine. Oh, we get rid of these stupid
31:48
flexible hours, everything will be fine.
31:50
That's a fantasy. It's just an anxiety response to go back to that Ford factory.
31:56
So sometimes at work, you know, it's very reasonable, especially if you're a
31:59
professional, you've worked hard to get where you are. Like,
32:02
it's totally reasonable to say, hey, I'm going to look at email in the morning
32:07
for half an hour and I'm turning it off.
32:10
And if there's something that needs to happen more urgently,
32:13
well, there's another way to reach me.
32:15
And many people, many jobs, you do not have to sit on email all day long.
32:21
Email is like one of the classic ADHD brain-like explosions,
32:25
right? So it can be very simple or it can be very profound in terms of what
32:31
are these assumptions that we're operating under.
32:35
Delegating is a big one, both at home and at work.
32:38
Well, I had one woman, she, young lawyer I'm working with right now,
32:44
and she has an issue getting her wash done.
32:47
So one of her assignments is, do you need to do wash? You live in New York.
32:52
People do wash for you in New York.
32:54
Why don't you investigate how much it would cost to get your wash done?
32:58
Maybe you never do wash again. Like, there's no law that says you have to do your wash. Right.
33:02
Sounds like a dream. Well, and I'm very open about, you know,
33:08
again, non-ADHD professional.
33:11
For me to be successful and to be a good parent and to be a good spouse,
33:15
I had to delegate a huge part of my house because my spouse was a very high-achieving professional too.
33:21
And I wanted to be present with my kids. So we made financial decisions to not
33:26
do certain things so that we could have help at home. So I had someone to do
33:30
our laundry. I had someone to cook for us.
33:33
And when I would tell people this, you know, again, head exploding,
33:35
they'd be like, what do you mean?
33:36
You can do that? Are you like crazy rich? And I'd be like, well,
33:39
we have money, but like we choose not to do certain things so that we can do
33:43
this and have that be our priority. And many professionals, again,
33:48
people have gotten to a good place.
33:50
They have way more options on the table than they're even aware of.
33:54
So coaching can really help with some of that.
33:57
And I do think something that you said is, I think it is those internal assumptions
34:02
that are more likely to be what's holding us back.
34:04
Those assumptions of expectations for ourselves as a spouse,
34:09
as a parent, as an employee or a business owner, whatever it is,
34:14
those assumptions. And I think a major one is that we have to do everything ourselves.
34:20
Ourselves and that when we haven't done absolutely everything and done it well
34:24
ourselves then somehow we've failed and I do think that is a really important,
34:29
perspective is to look at those assumptions and that's something I'm going to
34:32
do after our conversation is look at those because there are some of those that are so deeply
34:36
ingrained and I think that will be helpful and like you said with coaching as
34:40
well is that you're able to actually
34:43
work through those and have somebody repeat those back to you and say
34:46
you know are you saying you expect yourself to work full-time,
34:50
to clean your house every day or every Saturday, to make a three-course meal,
34:54
to get your kids to all their sports and whatever it is by yourself.
34:58
You know, and when you hear it back, you recognize, okay, you know what?
35:00
I'm actually, my expectations, my assumptions do not align with.
35:07
What a human can possibly do. Maybe a robot, but not a human.
35:11
So I think that's really important to look at those assumptions.
35:14
I wanted to also ask, so for those listening, what would you recommend as far
35:19
as living well with ADHD?
35:21
This is kind of a broad question. Take it where you'd like, what would you recommend
35:26
that they do or don't do to live well with ADHD?
35:31
I think the top number one thing, know thyself.
35:36
Find out what kind of brain you have. If you have an ADHD brain, great.
35:39
You have an autistic brain. If you have an autistic and an ADHD brain,
35:43
if you have a neurotypical brain, whatever, like know your brain and know your body.
35:48
Are you a morning person? Are you an afternoon person?
35:51
How much downtime do you need? What actually relaxes you, et cetera.
35:55
Like know yourself first. I think that's the key first step.
35:59
And then the next tier of things I would say to live well, number one,
36:04
pretty much for everybody, I would say is move your body.
36:08
Movement is extremely important, especially if you have hyperactive,
36:12
impulsive traits of your ADHD.
36:15
Movement is super important.
36:18
I think if getting a diagnosis, I personally believe getting a formal diagnosis is very helpful.
36:26
Having said that, I know that it's sometimes difficult and hard to know where to start.
36:30
I believe getting a formal diagnosis is helpful so that you know the areas that
36:36
you can improve and that also you get a sense of whether medicine might be helpful for you or not.
36:42
Because some people, if your ADHD is way off the chart, like I do computer testing
36:47
for people, if it's off the chart and you spend all your time trying to implement
36:51
environmental changes, you might just make yourself more frustrated.
36:54
Sometimes medicine is really helpful or really needed, even just to learn the
36:59
new habits and skills that you can do in your environment.
37:03
So I believe getting a diagnosis is helpful, even if you never take medicine.
37:08
And then I think the final part is what we've been talking about is like really
37:11
just an inventory of like what's important. What is the priority?
37:17
What can I let go? And this is kind of advice for anybody, really,
37:20
because when you're clearer on what's important and what the priority is,
37:24
then you can think about, okay, this is my ADHD brain.
37:28
This is when I'm best at the day. Okay, this 10 to 12 on Tuesdays is a good
37:33
time for me to heads down. So what is the top thing that needs to be the heads down?
37:38
And then you can kind of start to map it out. But it does require often delegating,
37:43
letting things go, letting go of assumptions and expectations.
37:47
And so I think, I don't want to overgeneralize, but I think for most people
37:51
with ADHD, minimizing exposure to.
37:56
Social media, news, anything that's like alert-based that's trying to get your attention.
38:03
So any sort of tech or news or anything that's like designed to grab your attention,
38:09
I think if you can really minimize your exposure to that, you're not letting
38:14
someone else vacuum away all of your attention.
38:17
So I'm not saying never engage with anything that's not possible,
38:20
but, you know, minimizing things that are going to just inherently grab your attention away.
38:27
I think that is a good reminder. And it's not just for the moment that it's
38:32
grabbing your attention away.
38:33
I know for me, I can get sucked into these stories. And often,
38:37
you know, we can be drawn into things that are having to do with our greatest fears.
38:44
Right. And so anything having to do with something happening to my kids,
38:47
I'll get drawn into these stories. But what happens at 3am?
38:50
I wake up at 3am and that's what I'm thinking about. And now it's affecting my sleep.
38:54
Now it's affecting my next day. And so I do think that is a good reminder to
38:59
minimize the exposure to those alert-based types of information. Absolutely.
39:05
All right, last question. Oh, I was going to say one thing. You make a good
39:08
point, which we didn't touch on yet, which is in addition to all of our devices
39:12
and things being designed, billions, trillions of dollars to get our attention,
39:17
A lot of what sells is either feelings of inadequacy or fear.
39:21
So most of them are designed around fear or feeling inadequate.
39:25
So it's very natural that you're going to feel that way because that is literally
39:30
what they want you to feel like so that you will go buy the thing that they
39:33
want you to buy. So we didn't say that explicitly. I wanted to make sure we did.
39:37
Yes. No, I think that is a good reminder. It's not just about the inadequacy,
39:40
but the fears. I have definitely purchased things out of fear, I will admit.
39:45
Okay. So to end us off here, can you let us know where can we go to find out
39:49
more about you, about your book, and about the work that you're doing?
39:54
Yeah. So having just talked about social media, I am on LinkedIn and YouTube.
39:58
Those are the two places you can find me, Dr. Jenny Byrne.
40:02
If you are interested in ADHD assessment and care, I am medically licensed in 25 states currently.
40:10
So that's on my website, constellationplc.com.
40:14
I can coach in anywhere in the country anywhere in the world and I do have some
40:19
free ADHD resources on that website as well so if you just wanted to check out
40:23
some resources you can put your info it'll email that to you,
40:27
perfect okay well thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here today
40:30
I know that this is going to be helpful inspiring encouraging for those who
40:35
are listening so thank you yeah thanks for having me.