--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I got to take a big exhale because today's conversation is going to be a good one. I have been dying to share a deeply personal story with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 47, and I wanted to talk to you about it because I'm not the only person who's been diagnosed late in life with ADHD. In fact, researchers say this is very common with women. There's an entire generation of women—they've labeled them the lost generation—who have struggled with ADHD their entire lives and never even knew it. I was one of them. And you may be one of them too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When I was finally diagnosed, this was just six years ago, and I'm going to tell you the whole story about how I got diagnosed because it was by mistake. But when I finally got that diagnosis, it was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because I finally understood all the things that I had struggled with for my entire life. And here's why it was a curse: I couldn't help but reflect back on the past 47 years. I felt so much grief about the amount of struggles that I had. I wondered how things would have been different. If somebody had figured this out when I was really little, I wouldn't have struggled with anxiety or done some of the things I deeply regret. That's how big of a deal this has been in my life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Today you're going to learn the four key differences about how ADHD affects boys and girls. You're going to learn the reason why women go profoundly undiagnosed. You'll learn the surprising way most women find out that they have ADHD and the connection between anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and living with undiagnosed ADHD. And you will get a lot of good news because there is good news. There's a lot that you can do to support yourself if you or someone you love have ADHD.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to focus on the impact on women, but we have fans across the entire gender spectrum. When you hear what I'm about to explain to you, this will help you understand and empower your sister, your partner, your daughter, your girlfriend, your niece—anybody that you know. This conversation today is going to be full of resources that will help you empower yourself or other people in your life who have either been diagnosed or who haven't been diagnosed and are wondering, "What the hell is wrong with me?" Because that's basically how I felt for the first 47 years of my life. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: So six years ago, our son Oakley was in the fourth grade and I was 47 years old. He was really struggling in school. He was interrupting class. He was fidgety. He didn't pay attention, blah, bitty, blah, bitty, blah. Luckily, this was at a time in our life where we could afford to go outside the school and get a neuropsych exam. Huge shout out to Dr. Moldover. Sure enough, findings were very conclusive. He had profound dyslexia. He had dysgraphia, which is related to dyslexia. And the other thing he was diagnosed with is ADHD.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When I started reading the report—because when you get these assessments done, and I'm sure a ton of you have had this experience either with your kids or maybe it happened to you when you were a kid—we got the big report telling us all about Oakley's brain. I was sitting with this pediatrician, Dr. Blumenthal, and I'd known Mark for, my God, 16 years at this point. We're flipping through the thing and Mark's going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, this makes a lot of sense, makes a lot of sense." We were going to talk options about what we could do in terms of therapy or medication or ways that we could support Oak. I kind of looked at Mark and I said, "You know, as I'm reading this, Mark, this sounds a lot like me. Do you think that maybe I have ADHD?"
--:-- Dr. Blumenthal: [Leans back in his chair, stunned] Do I think you have ADHD? Mel Robbins, of course you have ADHD. In fact, you're probably the most ADHD parent I have in my entire practice. You are so successful and you are a complete bird brain. Do you realize that you will go years and not bring your kids in for their wellness appointments? In fact, every fall, we have a joke. We know that you are going to be one of those 20 parents that call in a fucking panic because you need a physical. Your kid's practice starts tomorrow. You need a physical. And now it's a five alarm fire, but you've missed their wellness appointment. And you do it every year. And you'll leave every exam and you'll go, "Oh, yeah, okay, I'll follow up. I'll call you tomorrow. I'll tell you about it." You never do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I just looked at him because I knew he was right. I always felt so incompetent about my ability to keep up with appointments or to remember things like that or any of it. Then he goes, "So do I think you have ADHD? Of course you have ADHD." I looked him square in the eye, you guys. And you know what I said to him? "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me I had ADHD?"
--:-- Dr. Blumenthal: I'm not your doctor, Mel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'll tell you, I was 47 years old when I realized that what I had been dealing with for my entire life may not be anxiety. It might just be fucking ADHD. So I went to my primary care. She referred me to a specialist. Sure enough, just like my son: dyslexia, ADHD.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Once something happens in my life, I am like a truffle pig rooting for a truffle. I literally start digging until I find something. I made it my mission six years ago to find out everything I could possibly discover about ADHD, not only because I wanted to help our son Oakley and eventually our daughter Kendall and our daughter Sawyer, but also because now that I had this diagnosis, I wanted to understand what the hell was going on so I could help myself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I learned is incredible. I am part of a lost generation of women who were diagnosed with anxiety or depression or an eating disorder or some other condition in my teens and twenties when the underlying problem all along was that they missed the diagnosis of ADHD. That's why I want to talk to you about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I have wanted to have a conversation with you about this ever since we started this podcast eight months ago, but I have been reluctant to do it because I wanted to make sure I had resources to give you. Every time I've talked about this on YouTube or on social, or I've talked about it on a talk show, we receive an avalanche of inbound stories, requests for information. I didn't want to unpack everything I'm going to share with you today until I knew I could point you in the right direction.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What we're going to talk about today is really important. What the research shows is that when you are not properly diagnosed with ADHD and you have it, the outcomes for girls in particular are horrendous. The word "horrendous" is a word that one of the world's leading experts uses, not me. Let me just read this to you. This comes from Dr. Ellen Littman, clinical psychologist, co-author of *Understanding Girls with ADHD*. This is what she said: "The risk for self-harm and suicide attempts is four times higher for girls with ADHD than girls without." That's terrifying.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The conversation that we're going to have today goes way beyond having trouble with homework or having trouble focusing. I personally believe, as I sit here and I look back on my life—I'm now 53 years old—I know that I would not have struggled with anxiety the way that I did had I been properly diagnosed, medicated, and treated for ADHD when I was little. Full stop.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're somebody that has struggled with low self-esteem, self-loathing, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and you can't seem to turn the corner on this, I truly want you to consider what I'm about to share with you. What I've learned in the last six years of researching this extensively, talking to the world's leading experts about this—among them Dr. Ned Hallowell, who wrote *Driven to Distraction*—he's like the OG of ADD research at Harvard. He's a world-renowned psychologist, Dr. Daniel Amen.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The definition of ADHD—and this was new to me—ADHD is a chronic neurobiological disorder which affects the brain's structural and chemical capabilities and the way that your brain communicates. It is also highly inheritable. There is good news here. There's a lot of good news that you're going to learn, but here's what we're going to cover.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The six surprising signs that I didn't know—I had all six of them—that could be signs that you too have adult ADHD. We're going to talk about why women were so profoundly underdiagnosed and have been for decades. We're going to talk about the mental health implication when you're not properly diagnosed and when you don't seek either therapeutic or occupational treatment for it. You're going to learn about the four key differences between how ADHD presents in boys and girls. We're going to talk about what to do if you think this is you. And finally, we're going to get into what's actually happening in your brain when you have ADHD, because this is so fascinating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The first place to start is: why are so many women underdiagnosed? Why does this go missing in girls? The answer is this: when they first made ADHD a diagnosis back in the late 70s, they only studied boys. That's it. They only studied boys. Boys present very differently than girls. They have totally different symptoms.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is really important to understand because when I first heard the term ADHD, I thought of our son. Leg is jittery, hands are fidgeting, raising the hand, bumping up and down, got to run to the bathroom, bopping around, highly distracted. But what always confused me about him is that he could also laser focus on video games. So I sort of dismissed ADHD because I'm like, "Well, he can focus on video games, so it must be about his interest in things." No, no, no. ADHD has both physical symptoms that you see on the surface, and those are typically what's present in boys. But girls typically do not present those jittery, interrupting kind of physical chaos.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Boys present four key differences with ADHD than girls do. Here they are. Number one: when a boy has ADHD, they have symptoms that appear on the surface—impulsive behavior, fidgeting, getting distracted, being very physical with their inability to concentrate. Girls, we have the opposite symptoms. Ours are all internal. We're restless. We daydream. We're hard on ourselves. We're forgetful. We're disorganized. We start to aim it at ourselves as a character flaw.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When you're a girl with ADHD, you daydream. You're disorganized. You're hard on yourself. You make careless mistakes. You might be called a tomboy or super creative. But what happens—and this is why this is so scary, and this is what happened to me—is that when you sit in a classroom and you see all your friends turning things in on time or staying organized or their lockers are clean and yours is a mess and you're running late, you start to think you have a character defect. You start to think there's something wrong with you. It also gets missed because it's internal. We're not sitting there bouncing our leg and jumping and raising our hand. We have the opposite impact.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The second key difference between boys and girls is that boys present earlier, typically around the age of seven. Girls, however, present later, on average like around 12.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The third reason why there's a big difference between girls and boys is because boys wear it on their sleeve. They have trouble controlling their physical outbursts. Whereas girls are excellent at hiding this. Why? Because we feel the pressure to conform. We do our best to cope, look around and see what everybody else is doing, and we start working harder to compensate for what we feel is a character default in us—that we are lesser than, that we're not good enough, that everybody else seems to get this but me. And we hide it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the big fucking difference between girls and boys with ADHD: boys tend to get better. Girls get worse. That is exactly what happened to me. I got way worse. Way worse. What goes from daydreaming, following instructions, making careless mistakes, forgetfulness, all-nighters, not being able to stay organized—that chronic struggle turns into "I'm fucked up, there's something wrong with me," and a profound correlation between anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is not just me, by the way. Let me pull some of the research out because this shit is scary. [Sound of papers flipping] Women with ADHD face the feelings of being overwhelmed and exhausted the same way that men do. However, women increasingly have psychological distress, feel inadequate, low self-esteem, chronic stress. This is extremely common.
--:-- Mel Robbins: One clinical psychologist, Dr. Ellen Littman, wrote the book *Understanding Girls with ADHD*. The outcomes for girls are horrendously negative compared to boys because ADHD materializes dramatically differently in girls as they get older. Anxiety and depression turn into low self-esteem and self-loathing. That happened to me. The risk for self-harm and suicide attempts—four to five times greater for girls with ADHD. This is not about having trouble with homework. This is not about remembering birthdays.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Unlike boys, girls' symptoms veer inward. That's where the anxiety comes in. That's where the depression comes in. That's where the eating disorders come in. That's where the self-harm comes in. It's because you actually believe something's wrong with you. Here's what I'm here to say: there's nothing wrong with you. Absolutely nothing wrong with you. In fact, ADHD has a high correlation to being a successful entrepreneur, to being highly creative, to being a problem solver, a risk taker. There is so much beauty in this, but you also need to understand if you're dealing with a neurobiological disorder which impacts your prefrontal cortex.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Girls' symptoms are almost entirely internal and they happen later. Most girls that have undiagnosed ADHD—you know what they start to have on the surface? Anxiety. Because of course, if you're going to go into school every day and you're disorganized and you make careless mistakes and you're hard on yourself and you start to tell yourself there's something wrong with you, of course you're going to feel anxious about going. It makes perfect sense. That's exactly what happened to me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, I was treated for decades for anxiety and I am sitting here telling you right now, I 100% believe the issue I had all along was very simple. I had dyslexia and ADHD and nobody fucking knew it. Instead, I developed anxiety. Why? Because that's what happens when you have undiagnosed ADHD and you don't understand why your brain doesn't work the same way as everybody else. You don't understand why you're always late, why you can't get it together, why things are always a mess, why there's clutter around you, why you're constantly missing deadlines or doctor's appointments or leaving your Kleenex on the counter. It's relentless. So of course anxiety would develop.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm on a mission today to share absolutely everything that I have learned in my own deeply personal research to be a better mother of kids with ADHD and to be a better partner to myself as I live my life as an adult with ADHD. What I've learned is life-changing. There are things that you can do. There are very surprising signs.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I need to say right up front, I'm not a doctor. The purpose of this episode is not meant to diagnose you at all. I am here to entertain you with my story and I'm here to educate you based on my personal experience. I'm here to empower you to know that this is a reality for so many women in particular, so that if it rings true for you, you go seek the professional help that's out there to get a very clear answer of what's happening for you. That's what this is about, because that's how you create a better life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, when we come back, we're going to start with your brain and ADHD. Then what we're going to cover a little bit later are the six surprising signs of ADHD in adults, all of which I had, all of which everybody missed. Don't you dare go anywhere. We'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and today we're talking ADHD in women in particular. In just a second, we're going to get to the six surprising signs of adult ADHD. But first, I really want to dig into what's happening in an ADHD brain. This comes from research from Dr. Ned Hallowell. It comes from Dr. Amen. I know that Huberman Lab just did a bunch of podcast episodes on this, but this is how everybody talks about it. The good thing about ADHD is it seems like the research that's been going on for decades is very conclusive about the prefrontal cortex and how ADHD impacts it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to make sure we invite everybody into this conversation, whether you're somebody that loves the PhD type stuff and you already understand the prefrontal cortex, or you're somebody that's never even heard that term before. Everybody is included in the Mel Robbins podcast.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The prefrontal cortex is basically a part of your brain that's behind your forehead in what they call the frontal lobe. Your prefrontal cortex has the important job of switching between different neural networks that regulate your thoughts, your actions, and emotions. For example, if you've ever heard the term "executive functioning," that term gets thrown around a lot when kids are getting assessed for learning style differences or for attention. Executive functioning is also used to refer to your prefrontal cortex and its ability to act like a secretary, to be able to switch gears and help you plan ahead and get organized.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's an example. Imagine you're packing for a two-day business trip. Executive functioning, or your prefrontal cortex, that's the secretary that kind of talks to you as you're packing. It goes, "Okay, okay, you're going to be gone for two nights, so you probably need three pairs of underwear. Are you going to exercise while you're gone? Yeah, okay. What's the weather like? Oh, so I should use shorts, not sweatpants. Oh, I should probably bring a pair of socks if I'm going to go for a long walk. If I want to go to Pilates, you're going to need the grippy socks." That little voice in your head, that thing that's helping you plan—you don't really notice it, do you? That secretary, that's your prefrontal cortex. That is the act of executive functioning. Pretty cool, huh?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I like to think about the prefrontal cortex almost like an old-fashioned phone operator switcher, where you see in the movies where somebody unplugs one chord and sticks it into another hole to connect things. Another example that a lot of researchers use is an orchestra conductor or a teacher in a classroom—somebody that's responsible for quieting down a large number of people and then calling on a certain student.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I played the flute in elementary school. I remember the orchestra conductor was always like, "Tap, tap, tap, shh," at me. The first chair of the flute could play the little stanza song thingy—my job—and get everybody started. Thanks a lot, dude. That brings me back to your prefrontal cortex and the fact that its main role is to be able to switch between different neural networks, like an orchestra conductor, that regulate your thoughts, actions, and emotions in your brain. That's important when it comes to attention, because attention isn't just focusing on something. The skill of attention requires your prefrontal cortex because there are two very different networks and functions in your brain that you use at the same time while you're trying to focus and pay attention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's talk about attention. One mistake that people make with ADHD is they think that ADHD means you can't focus on something. That's not what it means. ADHD is the inability to direct and hold your attention in appropriate ways, in appropriate settings and situations. That's why you'll often see kids with ADHD that can play video games for hours. That was what our son Oakley did. I could literally be banging pots and pans behind this kid and he wouldn't even know it. He was so focused, but he had an inability to direct that attention in appropriate ways in other cases. It's not healthy that he was so focused on video games that he couldn't hear pots and pans.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's unpack what attention is. Attention is a really important skill. You've got to be able to pay attention if you want to be successful at work, if you want to learn new things. You need to be able to direct your attention in relationships. Just think about it. There are times where somebody's talking and your stomach hurts or you want to get a bite to eat or you really don't give a shit and you want to yawn or you want to interrupt them. Your ability to pay attention and suppress the urge to interrupt them or to yawn or to excuse yourself—that is the skill of attention. It's critical for relationships. Otherwise you're going to look like a rude asshole.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Attention requires your prefrontal cortex to be able to switch between two neural networks in your brain. One of the neural networks is the part of your brain that is aware and paying attention to everything around you—all the noise around you and all of your thoughts and your feelings in your body. So one neural network that your prefrontal cortex needs to control is the ability to shh all the noise around you and all the noise within you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to bring in an example that is used throughout the research with ADHD—the example of an orchestra conductor. Your prefrontal cortex is an orchestra conductor. I want to bring in the sound of an orchestra warming up. You hear all the different sounds—that's like an orchestra getting ready and unpacking and warming up. That's you in the world. One thing that your prefrontal cortex does when it comes to attention is it lifts up the little sticks and it points at the horns who are making too much noise and goes, "Shh." This is called a top function. It is able to tap into a neural network to suppress—"Shh, hey horns, shut the hell up, shh, shh, shh"—and silence the noise outside of you and silence the noise within you—your grumbling stomach, your thoughts about what you're doing tonight—so that the prefrontal cortex can then tap into the second neural network, which is the ability to raise up and focus on something specific. "Hey, strings, it's time for you. Let's magnify and amplify you, because now the horns are quiet, we can now amplify the string section and hear it."
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's the network that allows you, if you crack open a book, to focus on the book itself, but also focus on the words in your mind and what you're learning and processing as you're reading it. Your prefrontal cortex, when it comes to attention, has to do those two things: the shh of the distractions outside you and the grumbling stomach in you, so that it can turn toward what you want to focus on and direct your attention appropriately. If you can't switch between those two things—the shh and the focus—you can't pay attention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can give you an example because I'm realizing my prefrontal cortex could not fucking do this. I went to Dartmouth College and they have this incredible library, Baker Library. I would always go to the stacks in the library to study. I would carry my stack of books and my notebooks and my pens and my highlighters. I would commit to being there all day. "I'm going to study." I would sit down and as soon as I crack open a book, you want to know what happened? I literally would be like, "Oh my God, I think I'm hungry. I got to go to the bathroom. Do I feel like studying? I'm not quite sure." Then I hear somebody walking and be like, "Who's that? Oh, is that Emily? Hey, Emily!"
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was incapable of that part of attention that your prefrontal cortex needs you to do. I was incapable of suppressing the sensation in my body, suppressing the monologue in my fucking mind, and tuning out and suppressing the noises around me. I would sit there for eight hours and distract myself because this core function of my prefrontal cortex didn't work. Couldn't do it. So of course I had trouble paying attention because I couldn't suppress my internal noise. If I've got the book cracked open, I can't be paying attention to what my voice is saying. I've got to turn on the part of the brain that can now focus on the words on the page. My brain did not work that way.
--:-- Mel Robbins: People with ADHD are missing a conductor that's working properly. That's what the experts mean when they say that you have a neurobiological disorder that affects the brain structurally and chemically, as well as ways in which various parts of the brain communicate with one another. It takes a lot of mental fuel to quiet that network in your mind. It takes more mental fuel to activate a different network that helps you focus. What also happens for everybody with ADHD is you're not only spinning your wheels, you're also draining the energy tank.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Amen, who's been on this podcast, one of the world's leading experts in the brain, has done over 60,000 scans of brains. When you look at anybody's brain scan who has an ADHD brain, what they find is there's not sufficient blood flow. The conductor can't work properly because it's not getting the blood flow that it needs. He calls this a sleepy brain—your brain is not getting the blood flow, the dopamine, the norepinephrine. That's why so many people with ADHD chase dopamine dumps like shopping or alcohol or any other addictive kind of behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What we're going to do next is I'm going to cover the six lesser known and surprising signs of adult ADHD. More importantly, we're going to cover what you can do about it. If you think this is you or someone you love, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. Today I'm talking about my diagnosis of ADHD, how I was diagnosed at the age of 47 late in life, and what I have learned in the last six years of digging into this topic, researching it and learning as much as I can, not only to help myself and our two daughters who also have ADHD, but so that I could share this information because I want as many people to understand this as possible.
--:-- Mel Robbins: These are the six lesser known signs of adult ADHD. Number one is hyper focus. This was a surprise to me because I remember seeing this in our son. I'm like, "I'm sorry, this kid does not have ADHD. He just hates homework. I mean, he can sit and laser focus in on his video games. So clearly he can laser focus in on homework." That's not true. A surprising sign of ADHD is the ability to hyper, hyper, hyper focus in certain settings, but not be able to pay attention at all in other settings. This has to do with what's going on in your brain and your prefrontal cortex in particular when you have ADHD, which we will get to in a moment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hyper focus is present for me. I can hyper focus and get lost in my work. I can hyper focus when I have to give a speech. I literally have like those blinders on that horses wear, the big Clydesdales. I have tunnel vision when I have to do something like that. The rest of the world does not exist. Now, when I'm done doing something like that, I have a complete collapse. I'm exhausted. My brain, the gas tank is empty. But I can hyper focus, which would make you think, "Well, then you don't have ADHD." Here's the rub on it: ADHD is not the inability to focus. That's not what it is. ADHD is a disorder in your brain that impacts your prefrontal cortex and the two jobs that the prefrontal cortex must do around attention itself. We will get into this because attention is both being able to tune out or suppress external and internal noise, and it is also the ability to ramp up parts of your brain so that you can focus on something effectively. It's way more than just paying attention to something. It requires a bunch of switching in your brain in terms of which network your brain is using.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Second sign that is a lesser known sign of adult ADHD: difficulty controlling your emotions. Say that again—difficulty controlling your emotions. When you struggle with ADHD, you're using up so much mental energy trying to pay attention that there's no gas in the tank to be able to tolerate the emotions of being frustrated or tired. Guys are like, "Fuck this homework," and they get physical and they go do something else. Women aim it at themselves. It's why I would snap at my kids all the time. It's why I would get this tone of voice when I'm frustrated with something and I just can't deal anymore. It's why I would get really emotional with myself and erupt at myself. "Why the fuck did you forget her birthday again? What is wrong with you? She's your best fucking friend. Why haven't you bought Christmas presents yet? Why do you leave everything to the last minute?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: You missed that deadline again. So being eruptive at myself as well.
--:-- The third really surprising sign of adult ADHD, and boy, do I have this one in spades: impulsive shopping and overspending. It's like you're blind to it. You get this huge rush from buying something, and then all of a sudden you realize that was stupid and you didn't need it. This has to do with what Dr. Amen, one of the world's leading experts on the brain, says is your attempt to stimulate your brain with a dopamine rush.
--:-- Shopping isn't the only addictive behavior. A lot of adults with ADHD that isn't properly managed have a problem with drinking, drugs, other addictions, impulsive behaviors—all tied to the structural issue with the prefrontal cortex.
--:-- The fourth surprising sign is time blindness. Time blindness. You're terrible with time management. I am terrible with time management. I'm constantly late. I keep myself on track with reminders on my phone. I am the last person to get in the car for our family. I am always a minute late to the call. As hard as I try to be on time, it feels impossible to me.
--:-- Another surprising sign is that many people with ADHD are actually very high functioning. On the outside, you look like a workaholic. You look very successful. Or if you're not working, you're just one of those people that's super duper, duper, duper busy. But here's the thing: your busyness and your workaholism is scattered all over the place. That desire to keep your mind busy is also due to the fact that you have problems in your prefrontal cortex suppressing the noise that is going on outside and also the noise going on with your critical voice.
--:-- Finally, this leads me to the big one. Adults with ADHD tend to be highly, highly, highly self-critical. You constantly beat yourself up for not being able to do simple things. You're worried that you're disappointing everybody. You're wondering why it looks effortless for everybody else but you. This is the default mode of what your own inner dialogue sounds like. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Mel Robbins, I got all six.
--:-- Let me explain some of the ways this played out in my life, because I think this will give you insight into what you may be dealing with if this is in fact you.
--:-- In relationships, I was plagued for 50 years with feeling like I'm not a good enough friend. I'm not a good enough girlfriend. I'm not a good enough sister. I'm not a good enough mom or wife. I should have sent more care packages. Why can't I remember birthdays? Why am I always missing the signup date for school conferences? Why am I always arriving late for pickup? If I were better at this or a better person, this plagued me.
--:-- Now that I'm diagnosed with it, I still do this stuff if I don't put the systems in place. When it comes to birthdays, I feel like an asshole when I miss somebody's birthday. So I spent an entire day cross-checking Facebook, where most people's birthdays are, and putting them on repeat in my Google calendar. That worked sort of, but I realized when the thing goes off on the day of somebody's birthday, it just makes me remember to call them or text them. But there are people in my life I'd like to send a present to. So by failing again for a year, I realized I need to go a step further and put a week-before notification that goes off so I have time to actually get a present or a card in the mail.
--:-- You start to set up systems because you realize this is just not the way your brain works. It's just not wired to remember this shit. And that's okay. But I didn't know that. I just thought I was a shitty friend. I just thought everybody else figured this out but me.
--:-- Another thing: work. When I look back at my work history, holy moly, I am a horrendous employee unless I'm in an environment where I can move all over the place. I cannot work in an office. Why? Because I have this problem where if my kids are two rooms away from me and they're listening to TikTok videos, it's as if they're blaring them in my ears. I can't suppress that noise around me. Any job I had in an office, I wanted to die because I could hear everybody at all times. I could hear the door. I could hear the elevator ding. I did not know that this was ADHD. I just thought I had super ears or something. I thought everybody heard like this.
--:-- When I think about the jobs where I was really successful, I was moving around. Waitressing—loved waitressing. Bartending—oh, I loved bartending. Working at legal aid when I was a criminal defense attorney in 1994 as a young lawyer. I loved that job because I would start the day in my office, walk across the street to the court at 100 Canal Street, be in court bopping around all day, out to Rikers, back to the office. It was always changing. That was beautiful for my brain.
--:-- What I do now is beautiful for my brain. No day is the same. I excel in what we do now because I am working in a place that works for this kind of brain.
--:-- School—I've already explained to you. Disaster. Absolute disaster. I know, I know. I got into Dartmouth. I scored really well on the SATs and I came from a tiny town in Michigan. In fact, nobody had ever applied there. But I was the queen of all-nighters, the queen of procrastination. I can look back now and realize why I almost failed this big engineering class at Dartmouth. There were 400 kids in the class. I couldn't pay attention. I couldn't organize myself. I was time blind. I missed out on so much because I was so busy thinking that I was a failure. Why couldn't I get this? Why couldn't I organize? Why couldn't I read on time? I don't even know how I got through law school.
--:-- Daily life: clutter everywhere. Literally papers everywhere. Kleenexes—blow my nose, put them on a counter. Overspending. Does this sound familiar? You overspend to compensate for other things. You feel bad about yourself, so you buy a new outfit. Or you forgot to take something to the dry cleaner and now you don't have a dress to wear, so you got to quickly order a dress, but then you don't like the dress. This is my life. Then the credit card bill comes.
--:-- I should be the poster child for The Container Store, because until we did the episode about decluttering versus organizing, I just thought if I bought more baskets and made everything look pretty, then I would be organized. It just goes on and on and on.
--:-- But I think the biggest thing for me, and why I wanted to talk to you about this, is the heightened impact of the negative self-talk. That's the thing I was never able to suppress until recently. The critical, relentless voice harping in my ear, constantly criticizing what I wasn't doing. I had no clue this was related to ADHD.
--:-- The most important aspect of dealing with ADHD for myself is not to make myself wrong for it and not to hate the ADHD. Think about it this way: if you got diagnosed with diabetes, does it help you to hate diabetes? No.
--:-- The benefits now that I can address it effectively and in a healthy way far outweigh having a normal brain, a non-ADHD brain. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I sure as hell wish I would have known about this sooner. That would have helped me make way healthier and more empowering choices, particularly when I was struggling profoundly during college and law school.
--:-- If you understand it and you know what it is, you can empower yourself to live with it and take proactive steps to embrace it and cope in a positive way. The good news is there's so much you can do to support yourself. There are so many interventions and modalities that help, whether you're going to explore medications, which I've done, which have been life-changing.
--:-- When I got diagnosed with ADHD and I dug into it and started researching it, I immediately started tapering off anxiety medication because I realized this explains everything. I went on long-acting Adderall. It changed my freaking life. I don't need it in every environment. I don't take it on the weekends because I don't really care if the orchestra's playing. And in certain environments, like whenever I have to give a keynote address and I'm standing backstage, I would never take Adderall on that day. Here's why: the adrenaline that I feel—the neuroadrenaline—the adrenaline that hits your brain, the go-go-go of that, it makes the conductor work. I literally have blinders on. The adrenaline in that situation makes the switching of the conductor in my brain happen. I don't even hear the event happening. I am so focused on what I'm about to go do that the environment provides the chemical release that stimulates my brain to do what I need to do.
--:-- Stimulants have been wildly effective for me and effective for one of our kids, not all of our kids. It begs the question: why is a stimulant effective for somebody that has something in their brain that makes them fidgety or distracted? It has to do with the blood flow and the neurotransmitters in your brain, which I'm not going to explain right now. We'll bring on a full expert like Dr. Ned Hallowell, who is the world's leading expert on ADHD. He's the GOAT. He wrote *Driven to Distraction*. We can bring on Dr. Amen, who has scanned all the brains and can tell you why so many people with ADHD seek a dopamine dump rush from overspending or drinking or some of the other not-so-great behaviors. We'll have an expert explain that.
--:-- One of the things I think is really interesting is that it's important, if you think this is something going on with a son or a daughter, that you get this looked at by a professional. Studies after study in the last five years have concluded that children with ADHD in particular have far, far, far better outcomes later in life if they are treated for ADHD when they're kids. They think this is due to the fact that the stimulants and the adrenaline and the dopamine accelerate neuroplasticity. There are theories out there that not only does it have better mental health outcomes, particularly for girls, because when you treat this properly—whether you're doing behavioral therapy, a combination of medication if that's the right thing, which can be tricky, or other more natural supplements if that's what you care about—caffeine is something a lot of parents give their kids instead of some of the other stimulants. That's a deeply personal choice.
--:-- But I think it's important to know that kids not treated with drugs and behavioral therapy when they have ADHD have a higher tendency toward addiction and not great outcomes, versus the kids with ADHD who are treated with drugs and with natural stimulants and behavioral therapy. This is research from the last five years. I'm not telling you what to do, but in order to save your daughter from the profoundly negative impacts of ADHD on psychology, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, I want you to take this seriously and dig into it and get educated about it. The best place to start is your pediatrician.
--:-- If you're an adult going, "Oh my God, this is me, this is my sister, this is my daughter, this is my boss, this is my colleague, this is my friend"—great. Send them this episode. Attached to this episode, like all episodes, is a plethora of resources. One of the resources we are going to link to is a self-assessment. This is not how you get diagnosed with ADHD, but this is how you can learn more about ADHD and the surprising symptoms and impacts so that you are more empowered to go seek something. I would start with your general practitioner and ask them where to go. That's the best place to start, or with a therapist. You can also start with a lot of the online talk therapy platforms.
--:-- If you are between the ages of 20 and 75, you may be in this generation of women who developed anxiety or depression or an eating disorder, and you've always wondered what the hell is wrong with you. I'm encouraging you: if any of this was resonant, please go talk to your primary care doctor. I feel like the gas tank in my brain is empty.
--:-- So I am going to get up and go for a walk outside. I cannot wait to hear your reaction to this episode. I know you're going to share your stories, and I would love to do a ton more episodes about this. I want to talk about the medications out there and what they do and why and how they impact your prefrontal cortex. I would love to dig more into non-stimulant interventions.
--:-- Okay. I love you. I don't want to forget to say that. In case nobody else tells you today, the bloopers on this episode are going to be fucking amazing. And they're coming next. All right. I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- [Sound of a loud noise in the background]
--:-- Mel Robbins: What the hell is that? Oh, this is the fucking—let me put that there. Goes the tree cutter. And here I was on a roll. Damn it. Oh my god, welcome to my marriage. My husband decided right about now would be a great time to get in the tractor and move rocks. Oh my god. Okay, hold on, let me just call him and be like, "Could you possibly do this two hours from now?" You know, he sees us recording. He was just in here. So I think I'll just go outside the podcast window and move some rocks.
--:-- And you know, here's why I feel like an ass. He's moving those rocks for my planting beds. My husband never has his phone on him. Let me go ask him if it's possible to do this later.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dopamine and the neuro—the—I can't say the damn word. Neuro—norepinephrine, or whatever the hell it's called. I can't even say it.
--:-- Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
