ADHD: It's Not What You Think (Neuro-Spicy Month)

It's Neuro-Spicy Month here at Rethink Your Rules!

Jenny's gearing up to present about ADHD at a CME about neurodiversity next month. So it seems like the perfect time to revisit some prior RYR episodes about ADHD. (Especially since they are the most downloaded episodes ever!)

We're kicking things off this week with a look at how ADHD is widely misunderstood, leading to misdiagnosis and unnecessary stigma and shame. The formal diagnostic criteria is outdated and incomplete. It doesn’t reflect the latest data or the widespread experience of ADHD experts. In this episode, Jenny breaks down our current understanding of ADHD, some key features you have never heard of, and how it all ties together. By the end of this crash course, you’ll know more about ADHD than 90% of people, and even more than most physicians!

Mentioned in this Episode:
Neurodiversity: A Conference About People Who Think Differently
Click HERE to register for this free virtual CME event, where you can hear me speak, along with other physician experts in neurodiversity.

Adult ADHD: Resources for Physicians
Jenny's favorite evidence-based resources & simple ADHD self-assessments, curated for physicians.

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Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
https://getcoached.jennyhobbsmd.com/consult
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Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.

Transcript

Kevin: 0:09

Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high achieving moms.

Jenny: 0:19

This week, I am actually going to be revisiting a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is ADHD, and even more specifically, thinking about ADHD in women and physicians and in myself and my own journey, and I wanted to bring this topic up again now for a couple of reasons. A few reasons. The first one is that this is one of the most popular episodes when I look back at the downloads of my podcast. And the second reason is that there's some new faces here and you may not even realize that these episodes are buried there that have some really good information about ADHD. And the third reason, and maybe the most exciting, is that I'm actually in the middle of preparing for a really exciting conference where I will be speaking about ADHD in physicians, and I want to be sure that you know about this conference because, although it is a continuing medical education conference that is put on by physicians, and much of the target is physicians and those who work with physicians in the workplace, the conference is actually open to the general public, so anyone is welcome to listen in and, in fact, the topics are very relevant really to anyone who wants to learn more about neurodiversity. So I thought this is a great opportunity to bring back one of the most popular podcasts that I've had and make sure that you have an opportunity to hear it, if you haven't already, and then to also consider joining us for this really cool opportunity to get more information and go even more in depth on this topic. So before I replay the episode in mind, I do want to tell you a bit about this conference. It's kind of unique and kind of cool. It's actually called Neurodiversity a conference about people who think differently, and not only will there be talks on ADHD, like mine, but there also will be talks about autism spectrum disorder and other forms of neurodiversity, and it's a really cool group of physicians, many of whom are neurodiverse themselves, talking about ways that we can work with our neurodiversity strategies for sleep and procrastination and sensory overwhelm and things like that, and then also talking about how we can help our patients who may be neurodiverse. So it's really a very cool eclectic group of people with a lot of practical insight and personal experience.

Jenny: 2:46

And it's entirely virtual and it is actually free. So if you want to show up and watch the CME live from anywhere virtually, you can do that for free and you don't have to be a physician. Now, if you are a physician or someone in the medical field, you can actually apply for CME credits and things like that. It's a truly legit medical education conference and I know for me, the topics that I'm going to be sharing about are things I do speak at when I go to conferences that cost a lot more money than this, and people are there in person, right, and physicians are getting CME credits for it. So it's literally the same content that we would be providing at that type of conference, but it's in a format that is really fun and easily accessible for anyone to attend. So it's a really cool opportunity.

Jenny: 3:32

I'm so grateful that they asked me to be a part of this and I'll just give you the dates so that you're aware of when it's happening. It's going to be this coming June 5th through 7th 2024. And the time is in the evenings, so it can work really nicely around any schedule and, don't worry, I'll put a link in the show notes and everything if you want to check out more about it or register. But again, it's completely free and each evening there's going to be a few speakers and if you decide that you want to have recordings of those speaker talks or if you want to be able to attend a coffee chat with all of us the Saturday afterwards, you really get to know everyone better and explore this in more depth. You can always upgrade to that sort of VIP option.

Jenny: 4:11

That does cost some money, but assuming that you just want to come and get some great information and think more about how you can handle neurodiversity, maybe in yourself or your patients, if you're a clinician of some kind or if you're someone who works with physicians, you know if you're a clinician of some kind or if you're someone who works with physicians, you know. If you're in leadership working with physicians, this is a really great opportunity to get some insight into. You know, when someone's behaving in a certain way that maybe seems problematic or pathologic or frustrating, whether or not there might be an element of neurodiversity there that you would want to be aware of as their employer or someone working in physician leadership. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Again, it's June 5th through 7th 2024, and that's next month, and I'm going to put in the show notes a link that will take you directly to where you can register for that, and that actually is an affiliate link for me. So I just want to disclose that that will actually offer me, you know, kind of credit for you signing up, and if you end up purchasing the VIP thing, I would get a small amount of money for that. If you don't feel comfortable with that for any reason, you'll also be able to find, you know, the conference page and you can just sign up directly there. That's no problem.

Jenny: 5:13

The other thing I will put in the show notes is a link to my resources on ADHD which goes directly to my page and that will provide you a nice free download with lots of information to explore as well. So two different types of links you'll find in the show notes. One is going to be about this really awesome conference called Neurodiversity, a conference about people who think differently, coming up next month in June 2024. And the second link that you are going to see there is a link to my ADHD resources which you can obtain as a free download, and of course, there'll be all the info there to contact and reach out to me if you have any questions. And with that I am going to replay one of my most popular episodes, all about ADHD. So take a listen and I hope that you have as much fun exploring this as I do sharing it. Hey, there it's, jenny. Welcome back to Rethink your Rules.

Jenny: 6:01

And today we are talking about one of my favorite special interests, which is ADHD and adults. I have been meaning to go through this with you for a while. It might even be a couple of episodes because I want to make sure it's not too overwhelming. But for those of us who are in the world of understanding ADHD and sort of diving into the ADHD and sort of diving into the pages and pages of information on the internet and the studies and the podcasts, there is this whole other understanding of ADHD that I've noticed is completely different from what most people picture when they think of it, and I want to try today to give you a brief overview of some of the things that I have learned through these hours of researching to understand my kids and myself better, and I think it will really benefit you.

Jenny: 6:49

First of all, because I think a number of people probably listening to this podcast, who resonate with me, likely have some features that could suggest undiagnosed ADHD or children who have it, and so I definitely want you to kind of be listening to see if any of this might fit with you, because we know ADHD is very treatable and having a diagnosis is a very useful thing for your mindset as well. But I also think, even if you don't fit into this category, there are opportunities to understand other people better when someone is behaving in these ways. I'm going to talk about maybe considering whether or not they may have an undiagnosed ADHD situation going on. So maybe they're not trying to be super annoying and interrupt you and be late to everything and miss all their deadlines and lash out at you when they're frustrated. Maybe they actually are wired differently and those things are very challenging for them, and so maybe you can keep that in mind and interact with them and, if they're close enough to you, maybe even consider bringing it up with them, because I know for most people it's unexpected, I think, but it actually makes you sometimes feel better once you know you have the diagnosis, because it gives you an understanding of what's going on, even though obviously there also is a lot of grief with the diagnosis as well in certain ways. So but I guess I'm of the opinion I've always been of the opinion that knowing what's really going on, even if it's hard to hear, is still better, because then you have the truth and then you can deal with it, and I always think that's better than sort of being blind to what's really going on. Awareness is always better, I guess, is what I'm trying to say there.

Jenny: 8:26

Okay, so, first of all, when we think about ADHD, the most common picture that most of us have is someone who is hyperactive, and typically it's a white boy who's hyperactive in the classroom, and that is because that is really where it was traditionally first noticed, which makes sense, because those situations were by far the most problematic for everyone, right? So you could see the overt hyperactive behavior. It was disrupting the class, so people needed a name for it, they needed to talk about it, and that was what was defined, and that was what was studied and that was what was treated initially. And I think by now most of us realize that in addition to the hyperactive component, there's also an inattentive component, and some people primarily have that inattentive component, so they don't have as much overt hyperactivity with their body, but they may be easily distracted and sort of those are the kids sitting in the back of the classroom not paying attention, and they may go under the radar and not ever be diagnosed because they're not causing a problem to anyone, but they may not be, you know, performing to the levels of their abilities in class and things like that, and it may be affecting them in other ways. So classically we always think about those two types the predominantly hyperactive, the predominantly inattentive, or a combined of those two. And again, really mostly described in children.

Jenny: 9:38

It was thought to be almost completely a disease of children or a diagnosis of children for many years and that most, if not all, people sort of grew out of it over time, which is different than what we're kind of currently thinking now, and I'll talk about that in a second and then the other piece of this inattentive, hyperactive picture that a lot of people also are familiar with. And if you look at our diagnostic criteria that psychiatrists use in the US, the DSM, it will say this as well. So you've got the hyperactivity, the inattentiveness, and then you also have impulsivity right. So making these quick decisions to do something really unsafe whether in a car or with drugs or you know like kind of this really volatile kind of picture, a lot of unsafe choices, and we know that from the data people who have ADHD do end up with a lot more accidents and I think they even have potentially a shorter life expectancy, which is kind of crazy, but definitely more likely to end up in problems with the law, get kicked out of school, teen pregnancy, you know all kinds of things. So having untreated ADHD leads to a lot of impulsive behaviors, not kind of thinking things through. So that was what we've always thought of and that's really what the criteria still mostly talk about in the manual that psychiatrists and other mental health professionals use so inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive.

Jenny: 10:53

However, the DSM is way behind the times. I'm just going to say so. If you spend any time at all talking to anyone who actually treats ADHD and this is true for children and adults, people who treat all ages they will tell you that some of the hallmark features of ADHD are not even mentioned in the DSM. And this is the first problem that we have with really understanding what's going on. So the biggest thing that is really lacking well, there's really kind of two things that are really lacking from the DSM, in my opinion.

Jenny: 11:25

One of them is the emotional dysregulation, so the inability to calm yourself down when you feel really sad, really angry, really happy, right. So a lot of what you're actually seeing when people are acting impulsive or hyperactive is actually a reflection of this emotional dysregulation which, if you're a parent, this is kind of an important distinction, right? Because if someone is emotionally dysregulated, like their feelings are too big for their body and they can't handle them, the response to that that's going to be effective is going to be quite different than if the problem is they're just, like you know, hitting their sister to be mean, right. And so if you think that, like, the problem is the hitting and you set rules around the hitting, well that's great. But if the problem is not really the hitting but the fact that they don't know they're delayed in their ability to handle their anger appropriately because they have a delayed skill set because of the way their brain is wired, right, like you, punishing them for hitting is not getting at the root of the issue and it's just creating this layer of shame and frustration because they wish they could do what you're asking them to do and they can't. And now they just give up and then they think same with school, right. So if the problem is that they feel terrible about themselves because they're messing something up or they get in trouble and that emotion is so big that it's too scary for them to tell anyone about that. And then they fail that class and then they decide, well, I'm actually just stupid. And then they get like really depressed and sad and anxious and then they drop out of school. Right, you can see how this emotional dysregulation really plays a big role and it's not even mentioned in the criteria.

Jenny: 12:57

So when my son was diagnosed and we talked initially to our pediatrician and then originally to some psychologists, I mean, the main problem honestly, was his you know, emotional lability and his inability to just like not hit people and not be so off, you know, have these like crazy temper tantrums that he and he had always been that way, these like really intense emotions that he could not stop. And, um, honestly, I don't think at that point that I really knew that that was such a hallmark feature of ADHD. And now I talk to friends and family and stuff and people will mention something to me about their kid and they'll talk about, like, how they have these like really dysregulated angry behaviors and often they're not even considering that that could be ADHD, right? And I'm thinking as I'm hearing it, I'm like, oh my gosh, I think that it's very likely this kid has ADHD, but no one's even thinking that, because they don't appear to have like the classical symptoms. Otherwise it's just like mostly like gosh. They're like really argumentative and not compliant and, like you know, having these terrible temper tantrums. So the emotional dysregulation, or some people call it emotional hyperarousal that part is really lacking from the DSM criteria and that's really a problem.

Jenny: 14:09

The Other thing that's related to that that's a really key feature that's not included is this what we call rejection sensitivity or rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Some people also have another word that I'm blanking out, but rejection sensitivity dysphoria is. It's not just like oh, someone you know told me I wasn't good or they didn't want to be my friend and that hurt my feelings. Told me I wasn't good or they didn't want to be my friend and that hurt my feelings. But what they're beginning to understand is that for people who have ADHD, it literally feels like someone has physically wounded them when they perceive that they have been rejected. So it's this overwhelming, intense emotion of rejection and shame that is literally dysphoria. It's like going into a depression almost, and obviously it's really hard because they tell me I have an ADHD brain. I've never had any other type of brain, so I don't know how to compare that experience to other people, but I do know that, compared to people I'm very close to, like my husband for example, I definitely am much more sensitive to rejection and more sensitive even to perceived rejection.

Jenny: 15:18

So, for example, you know, years ago I had this friend and she did this really fun dinner club with a group of six of us and everyone took their turns hosting and planning this dinner and it was all her idea and I was the last one to host my dinner and I had it all set up and everyone was coming. And then she was like, yeah, I've been like really busy and I can't come tonight. I've got too much other stuff to do. And she'd gone to every other single one and this was her thing, and I think someone else backed out too. And so then I had this reservation and half the people weren't coming and the person who planned it, who was like my really good friend at the time, and I remember I mean that was an example where I'm not sure, but I possibly cried about that like for a while at home and the thing is like I think my friend was being honest and she was probably setting a healthy boundary for herself that, like that time didn't work for her.

Jenny: 16:05

But I in my mind was like, well, you know, I hate planning things like this. And then I never know if anyone's going to come. And now I put myself out there and everyone thinks this is stupid and she's, this is personal, because she went to everyone else's but not mine. That must mean something, right? And I can think of so many examples of this where you know, people are planning some kind of trip or something that sounds fun at work and they are talking about it and like they don't invite me and it's like not really intent. You know, they maybe don't know, I know about it, but I know that they're not contacting me. Or someone says, oh, like I can see a picture that someone got together with someone on you know Instagram and I'm like, wait, they didn't invite me, right, even if I wasn't going to go, and I can literally take these things.

Jenny: 16:45

So personally, I could give you guys many, many examples, but I won't belabor the point and if you're a person who has this rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, you will know what I'm talking about, because you'll know, sort of objectively, like you can't prove that that person doesn't like you or that it's meant to be a rejection, right, it might literally be as simple, as they have other plans and they can't come to this thing. You planned right, or whatever the case may be, but you just take it to heart so much and this rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, you know, I think is both the big emotions that we talked about, but it's also probably a combination of throughout your life. When you have ADHD and you are, you know, I call it like a too much person, right? When you're too much, you talk too much, do too much, you move too much, you you're too impulsive, you say the wrong thing, all those things you get a lot of negative responses from people, you get a lot of judgment from people. People look down on you, people say to your face that you need to knock it off, and so I think it's a combination of both a lifetime of these micro traumas where you're rejected for being your authentic self and you're trying to mask your authentic self so that other people are more comfortable and like you better, which is hard right. So you're doing all that work and still occasionally like it's not successful and you're getting rejected. And then you have this huge emotional wave that comes on top of all that because you are, as we said, you know, deficient in the ability to regulate your emotions too. So it's like a double whammy. And then, of course, it gets compounded over the years because you are trying so hard to combat that and it's time and time again. It's so exhausting that then, even when really nothing's going on, you're kind of like afraid to take a wrong step because you don't know how to read things Right, and there's also a problem in ADHD of not being super aware of things.

Jenny: 18:43

And so this will happen to me recently, like someone would give me this feedback which, you know, I actually, when I'm in my like, calm, regulated state, I really appreciate feedback and I always want to get better and I certainly, like I've worked really hard on that. You know being open to feedback. But sometimes someone will give me their honest feedback. It's their opinion, right, often it's just someone's opinion and I have no, you know nothing objective to go on and I hear it. But then what will happen is I literally start to run through obsessively like a list of all the times something anywhere close to that has ever happened, right, like if I don't get voted onto something I think of, like every time I didn't get voted and I start to and I, like my brain will just make it this huge thing where you know, I, no one ever likes me, I'm never popular. I obviously this whole time everyone's just been pretending to be nice to me and they all hate me and I never get anything. I mean like my brain.

Jenny: 19:33

And so, again, if you think about how ADHD works, right, you have this hyperactivity, which is not just physical but also mental. So your brain is, you've all this energy and you're just going, going, going with your brain, right. And so you combine that with people rejecting you and not liking you because you're a little too much, right. And then big emotional letdown and the constant worry and anxiety of like, is this feels right to me, but maybe other people don't like it because I'm not like other people, right? And then your brain's just ruminating on it and you can't let it go, even if you can logically tell yourself it's a waste of time to rehash. I mean, I literally did this this past week. I was rehashing something that happened in high school that I completely forgotten about, because something that happened now, kind of like, triggered it and I couldn't turn my brain off. I shouldn't say that I could turn my brain off and I did, and that's part of why coaching, I think, is incredibly powerful for people with ADHD, because we literally need to build skills to turn our brain off and to let these things go and to handle our emotions Like we need those to be explicitly spelled out to us more than other people, which, for me, is what coaching has done for me, right. So I coached myself through that, but I share that with you.

Jenny: 20:44

Just to give you an example of kind of what it's like to be in the ADHD brain and how these symptoms that we talk about kind of all play in together to create a lot of energy and time and effort being put into things that other people maybe have no idea. Your brain is even working on right. You've got the inattentive, the hyperactive and the impulsive, which is covered in the DSM, but then you really have this big piece of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity, both of which are not at all mentioned. So many many people don't even recognize that those are part of it, including the people that you're going to, like your primary care doctor or whoever you're mentioning this to. They wouldn't think of that, right. So that's one really big or two really big pieces to add, right, so that's one really big or two really big pieces to add.

Jenny: 21:38

There's the rejection sensitivity and the emotional dysregulation, and then the other big part you want to think about is that the DSM criteria and the traditional mindset is that you have to have had symptoms in two or more places in your life, so like home and school or home and work, and it has to have started before, like when you were in childhood, and you have to have had those symptoms. And there's some problems with that because obviously people as I've mentioned in the previous podcast about ADHD women and really smart people and people who are predominantly inattentive often don't get diagnosed in childhood and so they find out they have it later, but then when you're looking back to see if they meet the criteria from childhood, you're really relying on that person's memory of when they were a kid or what their parents remember, right, and then you're using these suboptimal criteria which don't even include some of the things. So, while it's most likely that people have ADHD throughout their life, it's really hard to include in the criteria that the strict rule that has to be present in childhood, because it's probably missing some people who just don't fit that picture or we can't remember or get the information to know when their symptoms really started. So there's that caveat to that as well and I do think most clinicians kind of recognize there's that little difficulty with childhood. But I will say you know, there's been an uptick in the number of people recognizing ADHD as adults and looking for diagnosis.

Jenny: 23:05

And the internal medicine doctors, which is my specialty we are being asked to really learn more about ADHD in order to offer diagnosis and prescription because there aren't enough psychiatrists to handle the increased demand and mental health nurse practitioners and things like that. There's just so much demand in the past few years. So one of my journals that I got as being an internal medicine doctor that hat on had a little info article describing characteristics of ADHD in order to really educate the entire population of primary care doctors out there so that they could be aware of it right, and because most of us, being doctors for adults, did not learn much about ADHD in our training because we were not training to be pediatricians right. So over the last 20 years now we have this coming up in adults. So there's this article to explain to everyone how you recognize it and the reason I tell you all that is to say that even there, those medical experts telling other doctors how to diagnose ADHD are still referring to these ideas that you have to have had it in childhood and you have to have had it in two places.

Jenny: 24:13

And also there's an interesting line in there where they actually say that if someone was a valedictorian, they likely don't have ADHD because they would have not been able to be successful in school, which is also you know, as I mentioned in my other episode really not the correct understanding of ADHD, because some people have ADHD wiring but are so smart and so good at holding it together for school that they can be successful academically. You know, many doctors would fall into this category. I would fall into that category, right. So you have to be a little bit cautious when you're going to a primary care doctor or even to some other mental health professionals. If they're relying so strictly on those old criteria. They may be telling you there's absolutely no way you could have ADHD because you don't meet these criteria and you don't have them from a certain age and you are smart. But those things are actually not 100% true and we're likely missing a lot of people as a result. So I think that is a really good perspective for you to have as you think about this, and I want to just wrap this one up by telling you a more useful and accurate way to conceptualize ADHD that covers all of this and kind of pulls it all together.

Jenny: 25:22

So the way that the experts recommend thinking about it really is as a deficiency of self-regulation. So the inability to regulate your thoughts when they go crazy, thinking that everyone hates you and you can't go to sleep, like I was just talking about, right, inability to regulate your big emotions, inability to regulate yourself so that you don't talk back to your teacher, or inability to regulate your attention. So, rather than saying you know they can't pay attention, they have a deficiency of attention, which is why the name is confusing. Right? It's not that People with ADHD can focus just fine on things when they like them. The problem is that they can't regulate that focus. So they're either very intensely hyper-focused on something they love, to the exclusion of all the other things that need to be done for their wellbeing, right, or they're trying to do all the things they need to do to take care of themselves, but they can't motivate because that just feels so boring and not interesting, right?

Jenny: 26:15

So it's a deficiency of the ability to regulate your attention, your focus, your mood, your actions, to just keep yourself regulated and remember that's one of our higher brain functions and they've actually shown the neuroanatomy changes, like on MRIs and things like that, and you can see that there is a difference in the way that people with ADHD's brains are wired. So they just don't have that ability that many other people do to say, oh, I really want to keep playing that video game all night long, but I'm going to stop because I know what I really need to do is get eight hours of sleep so I can have a great day at work tomorrow, or I need to really not hit my sister, like my parents said, so that I can have that reward later on. Like in that moment, that ability to regulate yourself, to do that is diminished and it's not something you can just like think harder or try harder, because it's just physically not possible for you, and likewise a deficiency of the ability to regulate your attention. So, like my son, you know it's like in the morning he literally could not just remember that he was trying to put on his clothes. I mean, still to this day. I'll go in there and he's gotten halfway dressed and he's like sitting there in his underwear reading a book and it's been two minutes and all I said was you know, put on your pants and brush your teeth, and he's oh, I forgot, right. So just can't regulate his attention to say, oh, I'll read my book after I get ready for school.

Jenny: 27:32

And the other kind of piece of this, or way you could think of it, is that it's a disorder of your executive functions, or executive dysfunction disorder, and executive functions, again, are basically the ways that our brain self-regulates. So it's a long list, but it's the kind of things you would think of, like keeping something in your working memory so you can recall what it was you were just doing, remembering something later, etc. It's staying organized, being able to reflect on what worked, what didn't and make changes going forward, being able to keep from getting distracted when it really matters, being able to delay gratification, being able to plan and organize and prioritize without getting overwhelmed, to manage your time and know how long a task is going to take or to ensure that you allow enough time to get somewhere, et cetera. So there's a long list of executive functions and what I'm going to do in the next episode is walk through some specific examples of, now that I have been given this diagnosis, how these executive dysfunctions and disorders of self regulation were evident in my life in the past that were missed by me and other people. I mean honestly, still to this day. When I tell people I have ADHD people who've known me my whole life they're kind of they don't believe me. So we'll talk about why that might be, that it wasn't so obvious in my case, which I think will be relevant to many of you who are also high achieving women.

Jenny: 28:59

And the other thing I'm going to do is go through an article that lists specifically how it presents in the workplace for physicians, which is really illuminating and I think will help you, if you are one of my physician listeners, to really look at your colleagues actions and at least give a quick pause and a thought when they're behaving a certain way, to wonder whether or not their dysregulated behavior or their distracted behavior or their whatever they're doing that's like taking too long with patients or whatever. You could just give yourself a quick pause and say I wonder if it's possible this person's wired differently and it's actually a skill that they're not as good at as I am right. And if they don't know they have ADHD like they may not know it's a skill they need to work on they may not know that medication might help them. So, rather than shaming those people or being pissed off at them or just assuming that they're doing it to be an asshole, you could give them a benefit of the doubt. And same with when you hear people talking about their kids, you know like maybe throwing that idea out there.

Jenny: 29:51

If you hear about a kid who has a really hard time transitioning off of video games and you're thinking, well, they can't have ADHD because they can focus on the video game, or they can focus on their schoolwork when they like it, or they can focus on whatever you know, maybe throw it to your friends, say, hey, like you know, some kids with ADHD actually have this thing called hyperfocus, so maybe it's worth still looking into, even though they don't seem to perfectly meet the criteria on paper, et cetera. So these are really good things to just be aware of. So you can be a good human out in the world, breaking down the stigma and breaking down the shame that surrounds these things Because, remember, 99% of people, probably even higher than that are doing the best. They know how. They are doing the best they can with the resources they have. So if they are acting impulsively and making bad decisions or whatever the case, just pause and remember. Maybe this is the best that they can do because of how their brain is wired. Maybe shaming and blaming and arguing with them and making is just going to make it worse and doesn't need to happen. Now you can hold people accountable Absolutely, but just kind of keeping that in mind, that you can do it from a place of love and support versus shame, all right. So a place of love and support versus shame, all right.

Jenny: 31:04

So I always say I'm going to do these shorter. And here we are. 25 minutes in which I guess right there tells you how I can't really argue with this ADHD diagnosis, because the way my hyperactivity has always presented is in talking too much. But I hope that you found it valuable and, as always, I would absolutely love it if you would leave us a rating and review. I did finish up the podcast contest, so thank you, ladies.

Jenny: 31:26

I will be sending out gifts to the women that won, but I need more help getting this word out to more people. So if you can, please, please, please, leave a rating review. It just takes a minute. It is a hugely impactful way to reach women. Hey, if you think I'm a little bit too much, I get it.

Jenny: 31:43

But maybe you have a friend who kind of you sound like gosh. She sounds like a lot like Jenny. Sometimes she talks too much, she drives me crazy. She's always late. Send her this episode. Maybe she will resonate with me. People with ADHD tend to like how I am and people who don't have ADHD are like, yeah, she's a little much. So think of someone who would benefit. Throw in a review. Send it to them. I will be so appreciative because I want to be able to reach these women and help them and I need your help to do it. That's just the way these algorithms work these days. And, of course, if you are that person who's resonating with every word I'm saying, please know I am here for you. You can set up a free consult anytime. We can talk about this. Let's get on a call.

Kevin: 32:21

Hi friends, kevin here. Thanks for listening to one of Jenny's great episodes on ADHD. Don't forget to check out the show notes for links to register for the free virtual CME coming up on June 5th through 7th of this year, 2024. Also in the show notes you'll find links to access Jenny's free ADHD resources. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at JennyHobbsMDcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a five-star rating so we can reach even more women like you.