Latest / Quick Wins for ADHD Moms - Short Episodes, Real Solutions for Burnout and Overwhelm / Why Your Doctor Missed It: The Secret Signs of ADHD in Women | 006

Transcript

Why Your Doctor Missed It: The Secret Signs of ADHD in Women | 006 · Quick Wins for ADHD Moms - Short Episodes, Real Solutions for Burnout and Overwhelm

• 0:01
  Jessica Lewis: This is the ADHD MOM podcast.
• 0:03
  Jessica Lewis: Hey, I'm Jess.
• 0:04
  Jessica Lewis: Today we are talking about being a late bloomer discovering ADHD in adult women.
• 0:10
  Jessica Lewis: And today's quick win is creating a done list, not a to-do list.
• 0:17
  Jessica Lewis: But before we get into that, first, let's understand late diagnosed ADHD in women.
• 0:22
  Jessica Lewis: Did you know that women typically get diagnosed with ADHD about maybe four or five years later than men?
• 0:29
  Jessica Lewis: Many women don't discover they have ADHD until their thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, and here's why.
• 0:37
  Jessica Lewis: Women often present different symptoms than men.
• 0:40
  Jessica Lewis: We tend to be more inattentive rather than hyperactive.
• 0:43
  Jessica Lewis: We especially see this in little boys.
• 0:46
  Jessica Lewis: I have one.
• 0:47
  Jessica Lewis: We're also masters at masking our symptoms through perfectionism and overcompensating, you know, pushing down those scattered brain emotions to make it look like you know exactly what someone's saying.
• 1:00
  Jessica Lewis: You know exactly what happened yesterday and you remember everything.
• 1:05
  Jessica Lewis: Yeah, we pretend we mask that.
• 1:07
  Jessica Lewis: All of that is not overwhelming.
• 1:10
  Jessica Lewis: Healthcare providers sometimes miss the signs because they're focused on other symptoms like anxiety and depression, and although that can happen with ADHD, sometimes it masks the ADHD or the depression masks.
• 1:23
  Jessica Lewis: It's just, it's complicated, right?
• 1:26
  Jessica Lewis: Especially when we're masking it and we don't understand what is going on.
• 1:31
  Jessica Lewis: Many of us spend years feeling like, okay, there's something wrong with me.
• 1:35
  Jessica Lewis: Maybe I'm getting treated for anxiety or depression.
• 1:38
  Jessica Lewis: Maybe it's just ADHD is the root cause all along for me.
• 1:43
  Jessica Lewis: It was like the puzzle pieces finally came together.
• 1:46
  Jessica Lewis: I could see the whole picture.
• 1:48
  Jessica Lewis: It didn't change who I was, but it did help me understand how my brain works.
• 1:54
  Jessica Lewis: Before I was diagnosed and I was dealing with my son's diagnosis, a friend and mental health worker asked, okay, so let's say you get diagnosed.
• 2:02
  Jessica Lewis: Now what?
• 2:03
  Jessica Lewis: And that is such a great question, and I think that the answer is going to be different for each and every one of us.
• 2:10
  Jessica Lewis: Does it change who we are?
• 2:12
  Jessica Lewis: No.
• 2:13
  Jessica Lewis: But for me it was helpful in getting a clearer picture of what I was dealing with, and it also helps with what strategies could help and what strategies do not help.
• 2:23
  Jessica Lewis: So for me, going through the testing, I realized my memory is really bad.
• 2:27
  Jessica Lewis: I mean, I think my husband knew that, and I think I knew that.
• 2:30
  Jessica Lewis: But to see the data on paper is like, oh, okay.
• 2:33
  Jessica Lewis: I do struggle with memory, so I needed to put structure into place to help with that.
• 2:38
  Jessica Lewis: I use Notion in the Second Brain system, but that's a whole other show.
• 2:43
  Jessica Lewis: And also for another show is the whole hormonal connection.
• 2:46
  Jessica Lewis: Our hormones play a huge role.
• 2:49
  Jessica Lewis: Research is showing that ADHD symptoms can actually change during our monthly cycle, pregnancy and postpartum, and perimenopause and menopause.
• 2:59
  Jessica Lewis: Yay.
• 3:00
  Jessica Lewis: This is why some of us might feel like our symptoms are all over the place at different times of the month.
• 3:07
  Jessica Lewis: There are definitely days just before my cycle that I feel completely scatterbrained and I just can't keep everything in focus.
• 3:18
  Jessica Lewis: Hormones are surging and going crazy, and so it makes sense that that is the connection.
• 3:25
  Jessica Lewis: Now, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a researcher.
• 3:27
  Jessica Lewis: These are just things that I have picked up and read.
• 3:30
  Jessica Lewis: So I encourage you to do your own research and look all of this up and see if these are the connections that you're also making.
• 3:38
  Jessica Lewis: So if you're newly diagnosed or you're thinking about getting diagnosed, or you think you have ADHD, but you're not sure, all of that is okay.
• 3:45
  Jessica Lewis: It's a journey.
• 3:46
  Jessica Lewis: But today's quick win is create a done list, not a to-do list.
• 3:52
  Jessica Lewis: Throughout the day, write down tasks as you complete them.
• 3:55
  Jessica Lewis: Even small ones like I made the bed, or I responded to that email that's been sitting there for weeks.
• 4:02
  Jessica Lewis: That's a huge win.
• 4:04
  Jessica Lewis: The practice of creating a done list can help you recognize how much you actually accomplished despite feeling scatterbrained.
• 4:12
  Jessica Lewis: It helps you build confidence in your abilities.
• 4:14
  Jessica Lewis: You accomplish something, you did something.
• 4:17
  Jessica Lewis: Here's the proof.
• 4:19
  Jessica Lewis: It also helps identify your natural patterns in peak productivity times.
• 4:23
  Jessica Lewis: So for me, this is really hard.
• 4:25
  Jessica Lewis: I love to live in the future.
• 4:27
  Jessica Lewis: I'm futuristic, vision minded, and I struggle with memory, which is, you know, looking back and thinking about the past.
• 4:34
  Jessica Lewis: I can't remember things five minutes ago, let alone what I did yesterday or the week before, or what I did for my birthday last year.
• 4:41
  Jessica Lewis: No idea.
• 4:42
  Jessica Lewis: Poof.
• 4:42
  Jessica Lewis: It's gone.
• 4:44
  Jessica Lewis: So my challenge, and it might be your challenge too, is living in the present moment and reflecting on the past.
• 4:52
  Jessica Lewis: It takes time and effort and it's something our ADHD brains don't like effort.
• 4:58
  Jessica Lewis: Uh, no thank you, because it slows us down and it makes us think, and thinking can be really hard to look back.
• 5:06
  Jessica Lewis: It doesn't give us that dopamine hit, but reflecting on our past is really important to help put things in place for the present and to make a better future.
• 5:17
  Jessica Lewis: Right?
• 5:18
  Jessica Lewis: It's hard to build confidence when we don't understand what we accomplish during the day.
• 5:24
  Jessica Lewis: If you took the time to reflect on your day, you realize all the laundry you washed and folded, all of the clients that you lined up and emailed back, all the meal planning you did, all the taking care of the kids, driving them to and from sports.
• 5:40
  Jessica Lewis: We're not trying to be perfect here.
• 5:43
  Jessica Lewis: We're just trying to reflect back on all the things that we do every day and put together our done list.
• 5:50
  Jessica Lewis: So what could your done list look like?
• 5:53
  Jessica Lewis: Do you physically write things down on sticky notes or a notebook?
• 5:57
  Jessica Lewis: Maybe you do post-it notes on the side of the fridge, or I've got one of those magnetic whiteboards that are, that's on the side of the fridge.
• 6:04
  Jessica Lewis: But the idea is that you write your task list down, don't erase it, maybe cross it off, and then you can see all the things that you've done at the end of the day.
• 6:12
  Jessica Lewis: So practically for what that looks like for me, I lose paper.
• 6:16
  Jessica Lewis: I'm not very good at carrying the same piece of paper around with me all the time.
• 6:19
  Jessica Lewis: So I use Google tasks and it's on the side of my email and it syncs to my phone.
• 6:25
  Jessica Lewis: 'cause I have the app, the Google Tasks app on my phone.
• 6:28
  Jessica Lewis: So when I cross off a task, it disappears, which is great because it cleans everything up and it feels like I'm actually making progress.
• 6:35
  Jessica Lewis: But sometimes it's helpful to go back and look at all of the things you've crossed off.
• 6:39
  Jessica Lewis: Like you can look at the archive and sometimes we write one big, huge task down and cross it off.
• 6:45
  Jessica Lewis: And we don't realize that that one big, huge task actually involved 10 different tasks to be able to get to that one cross off.
• 6:53
  Jessica Lewis: So don't forget about the small little tasks that add up.
• 6:57
  Jessica Lewis: Our brains need to see that we have done a lot.
• 7:02
  Jessica Lewis: So count every freaking task that you have done during the day.
• 7:06
  Jessica Lewis: And maybe it sounds crazy, but it's a simple mind shift that helps us combat the negative self-talk that many late diagnosed women have internalized over years of undiagnosed ADHD.
• 7:18
  Jessica Lewis: Your diagnosis does not make you a failure.
• 7:22
  Jessica Lewis: It's just a first step toward understanding yourself better and creating strategies that work for your unique brain.
• 7:28
  Jessica Lewis: Do you have a tip or technique that works for your brain or something that works for your kids?
• 7:34
  Jessica Lewis: I'd love to hear it and share it on the show.
• 7:37
  Jessica Lewis: Email me jessica@theadhdmom.com, or you can visit our website, the adhd mom.com for more resources and blog articles and leave comments on there as well.
• 7:48
  Jessica Lewis: Thanks for listening.
• 7:49
  Jessica Lewis: Share the show, spread the word help.
• 7:51
  Jessica Lewis: Our favorite creative ADHD moms go from surviving to thriving.
• 7:56
  Jessica Lewis: Until next time, make it a beautiful day.