Have you ever felt like something wasn't right, even when your life seemed to be objectively together? Our excellent guest, Rachel Walker, delves into the heart of this question. As a former primary school teacher with a successful academic career, Rachel candidly shares her journey leading up to her ADHD diagnosis. Her story is one of revelation and self-discovery, from acknowledging feelings of perfectionism and people-pleasing to navigating romantic relationships under the lens of ADHD.
Rachel's insights don't stop at self-discovery. She leads us into the often arduous process of seeking an ADHD diagnosis, discussing the urgency ADHDers often feel when making decisions and the pressure to prove that her mental health warrants an assessment. What's more, we explore the transformation her life underwent post-diagnosis and its fascinating ripple effect on her family.
But our chat with Rachel is about more than diagnosis. It's about living, thriving, and managing with ADHD. Rachel gives us a glimpse into her journey of juggling PMS with ADHD medication, sharing her experiences of trying different treatments before finding success with stimulants. She also takes us into the bustling classrooms where she once taught, the sensory overload that comes with managing children, and how her diagnosis led her to freelance work. All this while opening up about how her social circle has changed and how she deals with impulsive behaviours. This conversation was authentic and eye-opening about living with ADHD.
Outro
This is a special edition episode recorded from a webinar.
Have you ever felt like something wasn't right, even when your life seemed to be objectively together? Our excellent guest, Rachel Walker, delves into the heart of this question. As a former primary school teacher with a successful academic career, Rachel candidly shares her journey leading up to her ADHD diagnosis. Her story is one of revelation and self-discovery, from acknowledging feelings of perfectionism and people-pleasing to navigating romantic relationships under the lens of ADHD.
Rachel's insights don't stop at self-discovery. She leads us into the often arduous process of seeking an ADHD diagnosis, discussing the urgency ADHDers often feel when making decisions and the pressure to prove that her mental health warrants an assessment. What's more, we explore the transformation her life underwent post-diagnosis and its fascinating ripple effect on her family.
But our chat with Rachel is about more than diagnosis. It's about living, thriving, and managing with ADHD. Rachel gives us a glimpse into her journey of juggling PMS with ADHD medication, sharing her experiences of trying different treatments before finding success with stimulants. She also takes us into the bustling classrooms where she once taught, the sensory overload that comes with managing children, and how her diagnosis led her to freelance work. All this while opening up about how her social circle has changed and how she deals with impulsive behaviours. This conversation was authentic and eye-opening about living with ADHD.
Outro
This is a special edition episode recorded from a webinar.
Good morning everyone. It's me, laura Spence. It's just me on my own today, because Louise is still in Turkey at the moment and I believe today is the day that she is returning back to the UK, so she'll be kind of traveling to the airport and then flying home, which I can imagine comes with a lot of stress when you have three children. But I am here today to have a chat to the lovely Rachel Walker. We've tried to slot this in quite a few times, rachel, haven't we? And kind of eventually managed to secure the time this morning, so it's lovely to finally see you face to face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's lovely. Thanks have me.
Speaker 1:Hearing all about you. So yeah, I'll basically hand over to you if you're happy to chat through a bit about who you are, what you do and how you came to your diagnosis, and yeah, we'll just carry on the chat if that's all right.
Speaker 2:Go for that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I love that. I'm always like, oh, how do I distill the essence of who I am into?
Speaker 1:enter these ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So hello, I'm Rachel. I'll kind of like explain a little bit about my like journey into my diagnosis because I think that probably gives you a bit of an essence of who I am. And it kind of felt reasonably sudden. So I got diagnosed last September, so coming up to a year nearly. But when I backtracked my life a little bit it's like ah, I see, I see the threads coming together. So I kind of like got on relatively well in school, always kind of fine on that kind of regard.
Speaker 2:I went to uni. I studied psychology at uni, which was quite ironic actually, because I did a lot of. I did a lot of my third year modules around autism, adhd. I was like really interested in developmental psychology and then I was a teacher, prime school teacher, for a couple of years but then I thought that didn't really, didn't really kind of stick and so I went into more kind of learning and development type type work, learning operations, people, development, and I feel like for me a lot of like a lot of stuff kind of came to my head because I got to probably 20, what was I? 25, 26, and you know, when you're like my life is objectively together, like I've got a good job. I've got a promotion at work. I was studying for my masters, me and my boyfriend had bought a flat together and I was like this is all. Look at this living life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on paper it's, you know, ideal, the ideal situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. But I just kind of started to unravel because it was actually a catalyst. I'm just going to give you my full unfiltered life story. It was a huge catalyst because I actually I ended up I'd moved in with my boyfriend of them within eight months. I left him because I started having feelings for somebody else and I was like I went that into this spiral because I was like there is something fundamentally wrong with me here.
Speaker 2:I can't manage my emotions. I can't seem to like do what I know is good for me, like your life is good, stick with the good life. You've got something stable. You've got something great. Like what is the issue? So I actually went to therapy and through that realized a lot of stuff about perfectionism, people pleasing. You know, my therapist had a great analogy. That was like you seem to have spent your life trying to fit yourself into a box that you think other people want you in, and now you've got like a hand out of the box and a leg out of the box and you don't fit in it and you're furiously trying to like stuff yourself back in, but you just don't fit. So I went through all that process and I was like great, I'm done now, like I've realized all of my problems. Life is sorted.
Speaker 2:Yeah 2020 rolled around, pandemic rolled around. I was self-employed for the first time and I just I felt like, even though I was learning more and more about myself, things only just seemed to feel harder, like my self-esteem just was getting worse and worse. It didn't really make sense to me. So last year it all kind of came to a head when my friend or somebody close to me got diagnosed and I went through that journey with them where I was like, oh, this sounds familiar, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, oh, bless you that's. It's difficult, isn't it that? Because what age are you now, rachel?
Speaker 2:31.
Speaker 1:31,. So no, you've obviously had the realization at some point that things are just not not quite right or you don't quite feel fulfilled. You don't feel as if you're enough. I'm interested to know a little bit more about the kind of relationship situation then between you and your boyfriend at the time. And you said you had feelings for someone else. Do you, are you with that someone else now? Or yes, oh, you are okay, yeah, yeah. And how has all that now? How did that kind of come about? How did it flourish? How did the breakup affect you and what happened to the flat and all those kind of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting actually, especially because at the time I felt like so one of the things that my therapist asked me to do in that whole process was journal. So I started journaling for the first time, and that was when I realized just the extent of like absolute can I swear, is that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm always. I normally just comes out of me just absolute shit in my head constantly. That was like projecting my assumptions onto my other half about what he did or didn't think about me, and some of it might have been true, some of it might not have been true, but I just had all of these ideas. So that like really surprised me. But it's been interesting to kind of see it with that more of like an ADHD lens on it, I guess, because I think one of the things that didn't so on paper it was a great relationship. We got on well.
Speaker 2:We didn't really have a lot of conflict, which I think is probably, you think, is good at the time. Yeah, you think is good at the time. But actually, like, how much should we communicate? But I'd for a lot of that time just had this sense that was like he's a stable, measured person and I am not and I need to gravitate towards that as much as possible like it's not okay that I'm kind of flight in all over the place. So I always felt like something needed to change or be different there and in some ways I think that's a bit of a shame because I think maybe, you know, we didn't talk about that or communicate that, and I see patterns of that in my relationship now where, because we have that open communication, sometimes I just need that reinforcement. That's like you know that. That's why I love you like.
Speaker 2:These are the things that I appreciate about you but you know, hindsight is a fine thing, and I think I also realised that there was a lot there that I was sort of compromising on myself by going like yeah, like I had a big sense.
Speaker 1:You have to teach yourself almost to kind of yeah, set that mold of who you thought you needed to be, rather than just be in yourself, maybe or yes yeah, exactly just one second.
Speaker 2:My AirPods died and I've literally just charged it. I can hear you with one ear. Honestly, don't want to do it. I'll try. It's just my mic gives me a bit of echo about. I'll just try that.
Speaker 1:Is that alright? Can you hear oh?
Speaker 2:no, I can't hear you at all. One sec Default. Can you hear me? I can.
Speaker 1:Can you hear Echo?
Speaker 2:Are you all right?
Speaker 1:No, I'm all right, thanks, right, sorry, no, no, yeah, so just talking through, I guess, the relationship.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What happened with that? Yeah, I think there's like I have a really big thing with this, actually in terms of like ADHD, because I think I see this a lot in other people with ADHD. I saw it in myself. I think of myself as like a really poor decision maker, because the day to day things that I need to do, I'm like, ah, should I do this first or this first? Or like, is it that or is it that?
Speaker 2:So when it came to my relationship, I just could not trust myself to make a right decision because I was like I'm irresponsible, I'm flighty, I'm emotionally all over the place.
Speaker 2:Like this is not responsible decision to like leave this person Because I never wanted to leave him for somebody else. I wanted to leave because the relationship wasn't right and I wanted to get to that conclusion. And it was funny because my therapist said two things to me when I started. She said a lot of people get to the place that you do because there's a misalignment between their head and their heart. And the other thing she said was you'll know when you don't need to come anymore, like you'll just know. And when we got to the end of that process and I was like I'm going to break up with him I had such a resolute like. Going through that whole process made me so sure in myself of what was the right thing to do that I feel like it's almost given me a real sense since then about like, yes, I might find day to day decisions really difficult, but actually when it comes to the big important life stuff, I know in myself what's right. I just have to let myself listen to what is really like inside of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely and.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people can resonate with that. You know like you're kind of guided by that, almost like the vibe that you get from situations or the environment that you're in, and I think well done for oops sorry, the technical glitch is it keeps trying to connect to my phone between the phone and the laptop yeah, I think a lot of people can resonate with that, that quite often you're not making the decision that you think you should make and kind of going against that. But I think well done for kind of following through and just being true to yourself. I think that's really important. So tell me then about, tell me a bit more about your ADHD diagnosis. How did you go about getting that? Did you go through the NHS? Did you go privately?
Speaker 2:So I went privately the person that I know that got diagnosed had gone private and then when I started trying to figure out what like whether I had it or not, I found it really difficult to exist in that in between. That's like, do I have it? I'm waiting for an answer.
Speaker 1:I didn't see that it comes along with your ADHD. You kind of think, right, well, I need to just do it now and I need to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I was in a fortunate position that I could go for private. I did with work, I get private health care and it didn't cover an ADHD assessment unless it was related to your mental health. So the first route that I explored was to speak to them. But the process was an interesting one and it is funny because funny is probably not the right word, but I do have a habit of not really appreciating the magnitude of how things have impacted my mental health Because I was like I'm depressed.
Speaker 2:It's not like I've not been diagnosed with anxiety or depression, but I do, well, but I do PMS related. So I'd said to them you know I have anxiety and depressive symptoms related to premenstrual syndrome that I take antidepressants for. And they said, ok, well, what we'll do is we'll refer you to a psychiatrist. That's covered by your insurance. They'll pay that you'll have a mental health assessment and like a pre screening questionnaire, they will then decide if they think that it's like legitimate to put you forwards for an ADHD full assessment. But the whole like I could have waited out, but I just felt really uncomfortable because I felt like I'm going to have to wait A long time between all of these steps, you've got a writer report Essentially to me felt like I had to prove that my mental health was bad enough for my assessment to be like expensive on my health care. Yeah, so you know it's a worthy perk, but I was like I'm just going to book an assessment for next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that in itself kind of proves the point, doesn't it? That it's you become very impatient. A lot of ADHDers tend to kind of have that sense of urgency when they decide that they want to do something. And I was exactly the same. I live in the islands and primary care here is private, so you would have to pay to go to the GP, who would then refer you to the local assessment team. And, to be honest, I never even looked into it when I had that kind of light bulb moment that I needed the assessment. I just had researched some of the private companies and just booked it. And I'm so glad I did that, because I think you're in a kind of sense of turmoil when you realize that you have ADHD, versus kind of the admin and the you know, the whole process of having to go through the assessment and stuff. It leaves you feeling with that sense of incompletion, almost, and I don't like that feeling it's something that you can't have ticked off yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how do you feel? As if that, do you feel as if the diagnosis has transformed your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it has. I think it. When I first got diagnosed I was like, oh my goodness, all the pieces of my world have come into a picture. You know I was described as it's like you've spent your life trying to figure out how the pieces of a jigsaw fit together and then you find out that you never had all the pieces to begin with, so like it was really going to be that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good analogy actually.
Speaker 2:And then I think I've been on a bit of a journey since then, because I burned out after about three or four months and I'm in a really good place right now, but I, probably up until about a month ago, was still to continue the analogy. I then felt like I had to go through a period of going great, now I know what pieces I have oh, those are the pieces I have. We have to like work with that. Like there was giving up some hope, hopefulness that things would be different or easier. But then, on the same breath, like I just think it's so validating and like I think, did you get diagnosed after you had children?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've got three children my youngest is six and but I've always struggled with anxiety and depression from a young age 14 years old I was put on antidepressants and just always felt really big emotions. And I've been to university three or four times and the first time I went and handing the first kind of academic essay, they referred me for a dyslexia assessment. This would have been early 2000s. We've got 2002, 2003. And the follow up from that assessment was you're not dyslexic, but you do have very slow processing ability. And then it was just left at that.
Speaker 1:There was no kind of further inquiry, no further investigations, and I just continued along that path of kind of, at different times battling with my mental health, not really fully understanding why I was struggling with friendships. You know, look, we are, we're doing a fit in. But I did feel as if I was constantly, I was a bit of a chameleon, depending on whatever crowd I was in at the time, and then I went on to obviously become a midwife and it was at the very beginning of this year that I kind of was experienced quite a bit of burnout and it was at that point that I thought no, I think I need to get myself assessed, and I think I had suspected it for a while, because my oldest child is my daughter Jodie, and she's 14 now and she had a diagnosis a few years ago of autism and we're along the kind of thought process that she also has ADHD, which I think is a bit of internal conflict for her. Some things, you know. It's more kind of inattentive for her. She just struggles to concentrate on any one task and follow it through.
Speaker 1:For me, I'm the combined type of ADHD, which I find troubles her quite a lot because it means I'm really flighty, I'm really forgetful, my executive function is poor. I mean, there are just so many things that happen, particularly in the run up to my period, that I become very blunderous. This week already I've spilt a whole tray of drinks. I have had conversations with my husband in my head that I've not actually verbalised out loud, but it's in relation to childcare plans. So this morning I had a hospital appointment at nine o'clock, but I only said to him last night about half past 11. Also, is that OK with you then, because I need to be at that appointment like 20 minutes earlier, so can you just have a later start at work? I mean, you're telling me this. I have past 11 at night. The amount of things that happen are just, I mean and I do tend to use humour, as you know like oh.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I guess what's happening to me today is if I'm just a complete walking disaster and I certainly cope with that a lot better now that I've got a diagnosis, I've got the medication. I do my coaching than I used to before, because that really used to upset me. I'd be like, why am I so useless? And how did I manage to walk into that wall or crash into that car? You know just a series of things, calamities, really Sorry, I've completely gone off point and forgot what you.
Speaker 2:No, so good. Yeah. I've so many thoughts, though, like yeah, because the homonal and the PMS element of it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that a bit more, because I know there's quite a high percentage of. This is what I'm really, really interested in is the effect of our menstrual cycle on ADHD. I don't know if you've heard of Kate Moriosev. She does the ADHD Women's Well-Being podcast and she's also got an ADHD hormone series of different kind of experts in their fields, so it's like an online summit. You know, you can buy the kind of the pre-recorded videos as a series and I've done one on there. In terms of pregnancy and the impact of the pregnancy hormones on women's ADHD, Right, I'm about to start my dissertation for my master's research in the experiences of women with ADHD within maternity services Interesting, but I find that absolutely fascinating, you know, in terms of the menopause and premenstrual dysphoria disorder. Do you think that you have premenstrual dysphoria disorder? Tell me about the antidepressants. Are those obviously the treatment for your premenstrual symptoms? Do you only take them at certain times of the month or is that a continuum? Tell me more about what you've experienced.
Speaker 2:So, interestingly, I don't take them anymore because I take stimulants instead, which fixes the problem, which has been very interesting. So I don't know as much as when I was a teenager, but I've always been aware that that time I'm laughing, because I do remember at one point being a teenager and literally crying because I couldn't decide which flavour pizza to have or something, and the person was too much, too much. You know Well what a problem to have, but it was things like I remember having a lesson, an English lesson, when I was about 17, every Thursday. But I would go on this cycle where there'd be a one Thursday where I would just be like I would just find something funny and I would laugh uncontrollably, but then I'd be crying oh my God, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that happens to me now. I was uncontrollably laughing at Robin Romesh versus whatever it is they do that series on Sky Uncontrollably laughing and then I just started sobbing. Yeah, you're like what's happened here?
Speaker 2:What's happened? So I went on the pill combined pill when I was 16 till 24. And I definitely still had PMS then because and crying was a massive one. So, like when I was teaching, I found it quite stressful and overwhelming. But there would be times where I would start crying because I was overwhelmed and I just physically couldn't stop and I'd be like I don't know what this is. But then, when I was 24, I went through that bit of a phase where I was like I've been on the pill for eight years, what is this doing to my system? Let's just come off it.
Speaker 2:So I came off it and that's when I noticed it a lot more significantly. Like my highs were higher and my lows were lower, but I loved the highs and I felt like the highs were a bit more like the actual me. You know I'll be like like peak Eastern. I'm just like absolutely on it, like do, do, do, do. Life could not be better, yeah, yeah, like absolutely living my best life.
Speaker 2:But then there would be a week and a half or so where I would just wake up and cry I little things. The only way I can describe it is it's like normally I walk around with like a safety net of resilience that for a week every month just completely disappears and anything that knocks me. I'm like flat on the floor and I also always had this weird sense of dread that I couldn't place, like something bad is going to happen and I don't know how or why or what it is, but it's there. So after a few years of trying to manage it, I didn't go to the doctor because it's it's a woman's problem, like it's just what we deal with. I don't what's the issue.
Speaker 1:You just think that's normal, don't you? That's for you.
Speaker 2:I went to a clinic and I said, oh, I've got a bit of an issue with PMS. I've been doing non-hormonal stuff, but let's try the implant. So I tried the Progesterone only implant and it was a disaster. I was tired all the time. I ate all the flight. I just was absolutely probably the worst thing I could have done. But essentially, what happened with the antidepressants is in lockdown. So 2020 was a year for everyone, but I was getting more and more beat down by it all.
Speaker 2:I had, at the time, a subscription to a private doctor's service. I got it as a perk with something that I was doing. I spoke to a female doctor and I said I'm struggling with dread anxiety, depression, and at the end of the conversation so we talked about sleeping more, eating healthily, meditation, all of this. At the end of the conversation, I said, oh, sorry, I've forgotten probably the biggest element of this, which is I'm struggling with this generally, but there's a week every month where it's really significant. If I do all of the things that you've just said, will that help? She said, no, not necessarily. If it's hormonal related, that's a legitimate thing. I was like, oh, is it? There's something we can do about this. I did luteal phase dosing of antidepressants. Yeah, okay, day 14 to day 28,. I would take them. I was honestly like it just made such a difference to my mood anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things she asked me to do before prescribing them was to make a bit of a note of my PMS symptoms. I said, hey, I've been keeping a journal for two years. I've been through all of my entries around that time of the month and every single one, one of the main factors was this sense of dread. I don't know what. There's something wrong. There's something going on like this anxiety. So they helped quite a lot, but the stimulants, I think are better. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And what stimulants are you taking, rachel, so?
Speaker 2:I take 36 milligrams of concerta XL.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And now I'm trying for that week topping them up with Ritalin 10 milligrams in the evening.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah. And how are you finding that it's going?
Speaker 2:Good. I find it was an interesting balance because I found the antidepressants covered me for that whole time, yeah, and they helped my mood, but they don't help the like motivation and like the time blindness dready aspect which stimulants fix, but then when they wear off, it's way more noticeable during that time. Okay, yeah, it gets like seven o'clock and I'll be like why do I suddenly feel like everything is a problem? Yeah, yeah, so topping it up just takes the edge off a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's you know, being a woman, it's that you know it's added tax constantly. Isn't it Like hormonal tax, adhd tax, just being a woman tax? Yeah, I mean it's a battle. Did the concerta work for you straight away or did you find that you had to kind of try a few different ones? I tried.
Speaker 2:They started me on 18 milligrams as like an introductory dose which did nothing. I tried 36 and the first couple of days I was like like my boyfriend said to me do you want to go to the driving range to play golf today, which I've no interest in? And I was like, yeah sure, what, what. And then later we were doing something I don't. It was plain like Call of Duty and he kept saying to me you should try it, but I don't.
Speaker 2:I find stuff like that like, oh, you got to learn the things and I'm just I know. And I was like, yeah, sure, and I thought that's weird. But it was the third day where I was like, oh wow, this is made a difference. Yeah, so I'm still on that. I did try going down to 27 because I recognized that sometimes I felt like I'd lost a little bit of a sense of myself. That's a bit kind of more like woohoo and appreciates everything that's going on around me. When I'm on my meds I'm like, meh, but rather than take 27, I prefer to have 36 but then just have more days off, ok, yeah yeah, yeah, I suppose that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's really interesting. Tell me a bit teaching. You mentioned that you felt quite overwhelmed when you were a teacher. Were you a primary teacher?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You found the stress of the job or the children quite overwhelming. What do you think was the?
Speaker 2:I think so it's infant school, so year one, age five and six, yeah, I think there were a few things that worked really well for me. So the fact that you have like terms, so you know you're doing like seven or eight weeks done and then you have a holiday, although because I was training at the same time, all of my holidays I was studying, but it's like you know, there's discrete periods that work. I like the structure, you gotta be there, you can't get out of it. But I felt like I was always counting down the hours until lunch, until the end of the day, until the end of the week, just waiting, I think, in a weird way I felt like it stretched me in every way, apart from like sort of intellectually and creatively.
Speaker 2:There is some creativity with it, you know, in terms of planning lessons and I loved that. But I just always felt like mentally, emotionally and physically spent and I really cared and wanted to make a difference. But that was just outweighed by just me feeling, I think in the end, like this is a lot of responsibility and I just on sustain. There's probably a lot of sensory stuff in there. I don't think I appreciated until now that if I managed it might be better, but I just felt like just mad all of the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can imagine, though there's a lot of kind of hustle and bustle comes with that. You're responsible for how many children? 20 or 30?.
Speaker 1:And I mean their children are noisy. I can imagine it's really frustrating when you are trying to teach them something and they're either not paying attention or talking over you, all those things. Because I know, I find I mean I'm not a teacher and I could never be a teacher because I just don't have the patience at all. I find my own children at home very overstimulating. There's just a lot of sensory input that comes along with them, and especially when they were a little bit younger, I think, because they're kind of clambering all over you all of the time.
Speaker 1:And you just get a bit of doubt and you think, oh no, no, no, no. It's difficult to kind of balance all those things. So tell me a bit about your career now. What does that look like and what are you up to? What do you?
Speaker 2:do, yeah, so I well. Actually just a quick note on the teaching thing, because you just actually made me realise part of the reason that I left was because so we used to do play-based learning in the second year that I had, which I absolutely loved. So it was a little bit of an extension of early years, so it was very immersive. Kids would be roaming around and then you would just teach them spontaneously in the moment based on what they were doing. So I actually loved that and I'd be interested probably in doing that again. But there was a moment and I didn't know, I had ADHD at the time but there was a moment where a lot of schools you're like stand straight, sit still, do this, do that, ask permission to go and do this. Yeah, and I'd been doing the whole. It was Christmas, they were going off to have their Christmas dinner and I'd been like right, we're not leaving the room until everybody's got their hands by their sides, dada, dada, walking down the corridor, nicely. And then I looked, I was at the back and I looked at them and I was like, why are they all over the place? And then I realized that I was dancing, like I was like going like this down the corridor because I was in a good mood and then I thought how can I expect like five year old kids to do things that I can't even do as a grown adult and we shouldn't even need to do anyway? So that was like a big, big kind of thing for me.
Speaker 2:But the playfulness stuff is relevant because I now so I'd worked in like learning operations and kind of leadership and people development and then at the start of the pandemic, I'd always wanted to have a coaching business. That was like my secret, secret hustle that I didn't tell anyone about because I was like, oh, what people gonna think. But I started that in 2020, initially helping people navigate like relationship challenges. So similar to what I'd been through, like trying to make decisions about what they want, based on like who they are and what doesn't doesn't work for them.
Speaker 2:I went back into employment in like a talent and learning and development role last year but I've actually and this will be public knowledge by the time we release this we actually resigned like a couple of weeks ago to go back into doing my own stuff again. So a lot of the work that I do, kind of my freelance work, is about play-based approaches to learning and coaching. And now ADHD, because what's really interesting is that the people that have gravitated towards me, even around like relationship issues, either have now been diagnosed with ADHD or show characteristics of it, and you just think it's very interesting that a lot of those life challenges are kind of mirrored. Yeah, yeah, so now I'm focusing on that.
Speaker 1:Fascinating that actually, when I look, I mean my social circle has quite dramatically reduced and changed since my diagnosis. But Louise my co-host when I was diagnosed I flew over to visit her. She lives in Chester and my daughter and I were going to Crofts so we were going to be staying with Louise and she was coming to Crofts as well and when I told her about my diagnosis when we were over there I said I think you probably need to be assessed, louise, because if I'm ADHD, you are ADHD twice. But that, I think, is why we get on so well together and a few of my friends are having assessments and stuff.
Speaker 1:I do think there's a sense of you gravitate towards your own tribe, almost people that you can just really unashamedly, unapologetically, be yourself around. Because so often and I don't know if this has been your experience, but in groups of friends or acquaintances or colleagues, if I'll be hyper-fixed on something, whatever it is, that's the current fascination. That I think is the be all and end all. I get a lot of eye rolling from maybe the neurotypical counterparts like, oh, here we go again. What is this? Like you're never going to stick to it. When are you going to get bored with that. It's like that's a stupid idea, whatever, whatever, and it just really feeds into that rejection sensitivity for me, whereas I find that fellow neurodivergence have a different approach to that. You know they can, while they can humour you in a sense, I don't know. It's just. There's just something different about relationships between neurodivergent-like friends versus neurotypical friends that maybe don't have the same understanding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And after I got diagnosed and then my friends started getting assessments and things like that, you have this weird sense that's like surely everybody can't have ADHD. But then you're like, oh, it's just like my pool. It's my pool of people that I've, as you say, gravitated towards, which I find quite I don't know. I do feel very fortunate, I guess, in that sense that I've managed. You know, I obviously have neurotypical friends as well, but I've managed to like keep in my life for like great friendships that nurture that. Yeah, and I think there's a big.
Speaker 2:I was thinking a lot about shame recently. So I have a YouTube channel and I've done a video about shame and one of the things that came up for me when I was doing it I was like I need to do like an audit of my life and what are the things and the places and the people that bring up that shame? Because for me, what you just said there about that, like eye rolling is like a huge source of shame, because the stick that I have beaten myself with my whole life has been like inconsistency doesn't follow through, has all these grand ideas, but you know, got wanderlust and I tell myself like it doesn't matter, right, it doesn't matter if I start something and don't finish it. The rate that I start stuff, something's going to stick. Why can't we just do stuff because we want to and we enjoy it and we feel like it? Right, why does it have to stick? Yeah, yeah. But then when you're fighting that in yourself and you spend time with people that reinforce that, it's really hard. You just the shame spiral.
Speaker 1:It's just, and it's boots, isn't it? It's very difficult. Have you found that you try lots of different things in terms of I don't know hobbies, like, for example, I've been through teaching myself how to crochet, how to do my crammy. I've made that much stuff that I ended up doing a Sunday market to sell it all and then I thought this was going to be the best way forward. Maybe I could have a crammy shop.
Speaker 1:Look at, every time you kind of learn a new skill. You think this could be my career. Now, one day you just wake up and go. I'm not interested in that anymore. I'm on to the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing. It's just like an insatiable thirst for learning for me. And the same applies for kind of academic things. I kind of really thrive on that challenge academically and just that sense of achievement. I don't know, it's like you set yourself these challenges and you kind of tick it off and then you're racing on to the next thing, but you almost can't savor a moment to celebrate yourself because you're always trying to catch the next thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on to the next thing. I was laughing because I haven't had it quite this intense for a while, but me and my boyfriend went last weekend to the local pub and there was like a rock band playing and I hadn't seen live music for ages and I'd had a few drinks as well. And I turned to him so like I had piano lessons as a kid and I'd had guitar lessons for a short while and I turned to him and I was like I honestly I need you to know that in this moment, the only future that lies within my grasp is being a bass player. I need to go and buy a bass, I need to learn a bit.
Speaker 2:Like I cannot explain to you how important this is to me, and this is looking to what you just said there about how somebody meets you in that place, right, what I appreciate about him so much, because he hasn't got ADHD, but he has gone through a lot of hobbies and he understands and he's also very good at understanding me. He said, well, let's rent a bass and give it a go, and I thought I appreciate that because we shouldn't be buying a bass. But you're not shutting me down Now, I'll be honest. I haven't thought about it since and I'm probably not going to do it, but like I enjoy that moment, just feeling like, yes, this is the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think my husband is the opposite. I will get very carried away. I mean, we talk about this all the time but I get very carried away and I mean there are essentially harmless little things around the house, Like, quite recently there was a ridiculous little patch of grass that I created across the. Our back garden is all chipped so there's stones all over it, and I bought some artificial grass and I made a very narrow pathway across the stones for the boys, because they're always running about outside in their bare feet. So you know I spent not a lot of money, it was probably about 30 quid. By the artificial grass we have a granite wall out the back door. That's not very secure but for some reason I thought it was a good idea to then take a lot of the granite bits out to bother the little path that I had created with the grass, making the wall even less secure, and sent my husband a photograph to say oh look at this, this is so cute.
Speaker 1:Somebody takes me back saying what the fuck is that? It looks like a fucking pigeon putt and I was like how do you? I become very resentful in that moment then, because he comes along and he just goes and busts my bubble and then I'm like well that's it.
Speaker 1:I want a divorce. You're always trying to clip my creative wings. It all becomes very dramatic. And then, maybe a couple of weeks later, he's then had to spend the time to undo the things that I've done. And then he got into the grass. He put all the stones back in the granite wall, made it as secure as he could, and it's a couple of weeks before I go.
Speaker 1:Actually, that was a really stupid idea. I don't know why. I thought that was. It wasn't even wide enough for people to walk side by side. You'd have to walk very kind of tight, ropey, one foot in front of the other. It was ridiculous. But you can't with somebody that is ADHD. You almost can't talk yourself out of it because you're on the train and you go, and you go, and you go, and you go until you have completed it and then reflect on it a few weeks later. And I think that essentially is harmless. Where I know, obviously, a lot of people with ADHD struggle with drugs, drink, alcohol, crime. So I think I'm very fortunate in that sense that it's never been in those things. And actually, so what if I've built a bit of grass out the back door? It doesn't make me a bad person, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the kind of balance, isn't it? Yeah, or like like I think sometimes I do notice a bit more now because I've got the comparison of when I'm on my meds. So, like when I go to the supermarket and I'm medicated, I actually find it quite tricky because I don't have like an instinctive dopamine. See, like, what should I have to eat? So I'll just be like I guess I'll have this steak slice and then, like last week I went, I went in the morning to go and pick up something for breakfast and I came back and I had like croissants, cake bars, a new hot sauce, like just a load of random, random stuff that excited me, but like that's something where you go.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's minorly irresponsible but really inconsequential on the grand scheme of things. Do you know what I mean? Like why? Well, yeah, it's all balance, because the reason I'm hesitating is because then, but then what I did was I opened up a tub of Ben and Jerry's at 10 o'clock in the morning and started eating it watching TV, and you're like, that's the stuff. That's like for me. Meds helps give me that balance because it's fine and fun, whimsically occasionally, but you can't live your life like that every day.
Speaker 1:Precisely, and that's the issue, isn't it? If you can, if you're just doing it as a one off that day, but if you're doing that every single day, that's, you know, rapid weight gain and poor health, isn't it? Yeah, it's, I mean. I think it's very interesting. The other thing I do is impulsively shop. I'm actually quite grateful that Guernsey's physical shopping is crap. Online, though, amazon gives me a very big dopamine hit because we get the VAT off. So when you get to the, you know, get to the point where you're about to pay for your purchase and it comes down in price. I think I'm getting a bargain here. But the problem with that is in that I am on Amazon multiple times a day, more than I am social media. I just it all gets a little bit wild.
Speaker 1:I take LVANTS, okay, and 50 milligrams. I do probably think that the dose needs to be increased, because I have noticed over the last month or two some of the old habits are starting to creep back in, and I think maybe an increase will be helpful until I get back on an even keel. You know where I can implement all those kind of strategies that were really helpful, like the meditation and stuff, but at the minute I'm just avoiding quite a lot of things and procrastinating. Yeah, probably the school holidays have not helped, because obviously you've got a really kind of unstructured life at that point. But anyway, we'll see how it goes. Do you take regular breaks then on Concerta?
Speaker 2:I haven't really been like paying much attention to when I've been doing it, but I think I probably now because I was taking it all the time, which I just thought actually doesn't I feel like I've lost a piece of myself. So I tend to I always take it during PMS week, but otherwise I reckon I probably have it off twice, maybe three times a week. So the weekend I'll try and have one day, and then if I'm in the office, and I'm especially if I've got like a lot of meetings and things, I won't take it because I don't I need it more to like apply myself when I'm sitting down and getting stuff done. If I've got quite a busy diary, I don't really need it as much. And so, yeah, twice a week ish, I try to Wow okay, cool.
Speaker 1:So I think we're probably coming to the because we're at 47 minutes in. I'd like to try and keep it kind of less than an hour because I think people probably start to lose interest, especially if they have ADHD. We always like to ask at the end of the episode normally this is Louise's question to ask what about? First of all, do you have any advice for those people who are potentially on a very long waiting list? I think there's a misconception that you could only access ADHD coaching if you had a diagnosis. So is there anything in terms of your ADHD coaching that you can recommend to people help themselves while they're waiting on an assessment or a diagnosis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what I would say is before I got diagnosed, there was something in my head that was like this isn't real to me until I've got that stamp of approval and there's a scientific process for a reason and there's a criteria for a reason. Since my diagnosis, I look at that and I go. It's still for me important to have that stamp, but there's so much more to it that is not captured in that assessment process at all. So if you can find people that understand you and relate to you whether that's watching YouTube videos or reading articles attitude is a really good source of that kind of thing. I know it's really difficult to exist in that in between, but I am fully behind the idea that you can self refer or self diagnose and you can access services, access to work scheme. You don't have to have to form a diagnosis. I call my coaching ADHD coaching because it's for people with ADHD, but there's nothing about that that makes it exclusive, if you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's however you identify, or really. Yeah, and I think that's a really important message that you don't have to have the official diagnosis to use the tools that might benefit you, because actually I think a lot of the things that are recommended for people with ADHD would probably benefit many neurotypical people as well, wouldn't it? Yeah, and the other question we like to ask is what is the most ADHD thing you've ever done?
Speaker 2:Oh, that is a good question. Oh, I do think about that. The most ADHD thing I've ever done there's probably quite a few examples, but one of them that the first one that's kind of come up in my mind is because I'm incredibly forgetful in the moment is when I got diagnosed. I decided that because the criteria like forgetful in daily activities is a really weird one and people will like everybody's forgetful sometimes, I was like to assess how forgetful I actually am, so I decided that every single time I had a moment where I was like wait, what was I doing? Or hold on, like I'll be making a cup of tea and I'll be like, hang on, where am I? I decided to mark it on my arm and I think I marked like 24 times in a two hour period.
Speaker 2:But the most ADHD one was genuinely I walked into a room and I was like wait, hang on, what was I doing? Oh, I'll mark it on my arm. I looked in that direction. I looked back at my arm and I was like what's that mark on my arm? Already out of the hedge, already out of the hedge.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating, isn't it? Do you find that your medication helps you be less forgetful? No, me neither. And in terms of what?
Speaker 1:Cognitively speaking, when I am having a conversation with someone, something might distract me in the background, a noise. I hear. The dog might bark, and I'll like that. Somebody's just chapped the front door. You know, very easily that can lead to me just being like I don't know what I was saying. I don't know what I was saying. I can forget words for things. I'll give you.
Speaker 1:An example of mine is that a few weeks ago we were going to Scotland back up for my best friend's wedding and my niece and her partner and their baby were coming over to stay in the house to look after our dog, jack. Now I hadn't had a very good sleep the night before because I left the pack until the last minute, as usual. So I was up until half past one in the morning packing for five of us to go away for 10 days and I went to collect my niece at the airport. Now, I've lived in Guernsey for eight years. The airport is a 10 minute drive away from my house.
Speaker 1:It took us an hour to get home because there was a road closed and I went into a blind panic about how do I get home then? Because that's the way you get a normally go. Quite often here the Guernsey Roadworks people forget that they've sent you on a diversion, so you'll follow the diversion signs for so long and then there are no more signs and you're still not back to where you recognise. But I think because the baby was a little bit unsettled in the back, I was chatting to my niece at the same time I couldn't effectively plan out my journey home because I had been thrown. I couldn't do it an autopilot and therefore I couldn't really think ahead about the alternatives in that moment, I think we've done that three times and I was like, oh my God, this is an absolute nightmare.
Speaker 1:I'm going to need to get my husband to get home. I mean, it's wild, but had I been in the car by myself, I might have been absolutely fine. But I think just because I was in the same dimension as elsewhere. Anyway, thank you so much for chatting to me today. It was lovely. Let's keep in touch on LinkedIn. I'll let you know when the episode is going to be published. Yeah, I will hopefully get to chat again sometime. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks so much. It's been lovely. Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2:Rachel, nice to meet you. Well, chat to you soon, bye, bye.