Ever felt the experience of being an outsider or battled with managing ADHD? Well, you're not alone. Our awe-inspiring guest, Charlotte, bravely shares her struggle with undiagnosed ADHD, the challenges of employment and her personal journey of self-exploration and acceptance after her diagnosis. She is now thriving in her coaching business, extending a helping hand to other late-diagnosed ADHD women, inspiring them to be self-compassionate and confident.
Charlotte and I also peel back the layers on the complex intersection of mental health services and social media marketing. We unveil the challenges of perceived rejection in this digital arena, and the struggle to maintain authenticity while marketing a business. Also, we examine how understanding oneself and one's unique mind can propel a business forward. You'll gain a new perspective on how the online world intersects with mental health services, and how you can navigate this path personally or in your business.
Lastly, we take a lighter look at life with ADHD. We exchange stories of forgetful incidents, impulse purchases and laugh at the chaos that can come with ADHD. Let's embrace the humor that life offers and slow down to appreciate our journey. Charlotte also shares valuable resources for anyone wanting to learn more about ADHD. By the end of our chat, you’ll be left inspired and informed, having learned to celebrate the unique aspects you or a loved one with ADHD possess. So, grab your headphones and join us for this enlightening conversation. You won't want to miss it.
Outro
This is a special edition episode recorded from a webinar.
Ever felt the experience of being an outsider or battled with managing ADHD? Well, you're not alone. Our awe-inspiring guest, Charlotte, bravely shares her struggle with undiagnosed ADHD, the challenges of employment and her personal journey of self-exploration and acceptance after her diagnosis. She is now thriving in her coaching business, extending a helping hand to other late-diagnosed ADHD women, inspiring them to be self-compassionate and confident.
Charlotte and I also peel back the layers on the complex intersection of mental health services and social media marketing. We unveil the challenges of perceived rejection in this digital arena, and the struggle to maintain authenticity while marketing a business. Also, we examine how understanding oneself and one's unique mind can propel a business forward. You'll gain a new perspective on how the online world intersects with mental health services, and how you can navigate this path personally or in your business.
Lastly, we take a lighter look at life with ADHD. We exchange stories of forgetful incidents, impulse purchases and laugh at the chaos that can come with ADHD. Let's embrace the humor that life offers and slow down to appreciate our journey. Charlotte also shares valuable resources for anyone wanting to learn more about ADHD. By the end of our chat, you’ll be left inspired and informed, having learned to celebrate the unique aspects you or a loved one with ADHD possess. So, grab your headphones and join us for this enlightening conversation. You won't want to miss it.
Outro
This is a special edition episode recorded from a webinar.
Hi Charlotte, thank you for joining us today. We're without Laura as well, which is a shame, but I think, in the true essence of having ADHD, she's got a little bit confused with her schedule and her daughter was coming back from her residential trip, so she is at the airport meeting her. We didn't want to put this off again. I think we can't remember.
Speaker 2:Again, ADHD right, we kind of go with how it unfolds.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, but it's lovely to meet you finally. So it would be good for us to hear what's your story. What's your ADHD story? They're always fascinating. I must be in while you tell me, that's okay.
Speaker 2:And this is where I'm like try and go without too many side quests here. But let's see how we get on.
Speaker 2:So I have always known that there was something different about me. I never had any words for it and I guess the best way that I could ever describe it was like feeling as though I was just on the other side of a really thin pane of glass from other people, even my friends, and this idea like I could see everything, I could hear everything, you know, I could even kind of touch like it was kind of fluid glass, but there was something in the way always like I was always on the outside of stuff looking in and I worked in like loads of jobs that I was good at but hated, like many, many years of just being miserable about friendships, work, everything like struggles in pretty much every area of my life, but never really letting anyone know that I was struggling. And I started out on my coaching journey five years ago, maybe a bit longer, several years ago, and I kind of lent into trying to really start to be employed well, a self employed coach, okay, so the coach?
Speaker 2:was with you. Becoming a coach was me becoming a coach, and I struggled with that too. Couldn't get a business going, and this is relevant because this is how I found out that I have ADHD. So I was in yet another like business mastermind coaching kind of group and a lady in there was talking about her clients and she helped late diagnosed ADHD and autistic women and she was explaining some of the things that her clients experience. Yeah, and I had this like my backdrop moment that I think so many of us have had, where I just thought I've got ADHD. And that was three years ago and it was something that I had never even thought about before.
Speaker 2:No my mom was a headmistress.
Speaker 2:She was aware of ADHD, but in like naughty school boys, like no one had ever highlighted anything to me that could possibly indicate ADHD until this one moment in this morning call, and after that I went on a bit of like mad hyper focus, like couple of months yeah, because that's what we do. And I made the decision because I literally would lose days to online tests reading have I got ADHD? Have I not Like proper hyper focus getting in the way of anything else happening? I took the decision to go for private assessment, which was in March 2021. So two and a half years ago now, and I mean that and it's all present experience which maybe we'll talk about, maybe we won't, who knows but I went on this kind of like validation journey because I had confirmed assessment of combined ADHD. I was like, brilliant, this makes so much sense, let's go on with it. Yeah, tick box, bite, yeah, yeah, yeah, job done, yeah.
Speaker 2:And six months later that all came in court up with me. I had a massive mental health crash and I realized that I needed to do things differently. I needed to ask for help and actually New Year's Eve 2021, I woke up crying and I cried all day because I felt so helpless and that was really the turning point for me to go Okay, this isn't just an answer for you. This is a whole new almost identity, a whole new piece of your character that you didn't know existed Character is not really the right word a whole part of you that you didn't know existed. Let's explore this, because actually going okay, cool about it, hasn't worked, and since then it's been a really beautiful if slightly clunky and pain to the times journey to this brilliant level of self acceptance and really finding my groove and just really accepting myself as a whole a lot more and cracking open self compassion, which I think is really the biggest gift that I've had out of understanding that I have ADHD.
Speaker 1:We're lacking in it so much. I mean, just as humans, we probably lack it more than we should. But then growing up and you're a diverse ADHD no idea, you've got it it's. We're even more lacking, aren't we?
Speaker 2:And we've had decades of being told that the way that we do things isn't right or being made to feel stupid when we're actually going after things in a way that makes sense for us and our self confidence and our self trust and our self image just takes such a battering.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, doesn't it just yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I realized I started that whole story about my ADHD journey without actually saying where I am now, which might be.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you're in. Do you mean physically or mentally?
Speaker 2:Oh no, like the point at which I am at, which is, I guess, a thriving business owner who's now helping other ADHDers, even though I can't say ADHD and you can't say it. I quite often miss out a letter because I talk too quickly.
Speaker 1:Oh, you just disagreed with something.
Speaker 2:I just called myself a HD, I think, or something I don't know. But this whole you know. If you told me three years ago, when I had that realization that I'd now be like fully immersed in the world of ADHD coaching, supporting other late diagnosed ADHD women, that would get to be my life and I would feel so fulfilled and like knowing that what I was doing was right, I would have told you that really not onto the right track. I couldn't understand that life could feel so much easier.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Life feels easier, isn't it? What level of growth are you putting at? How would you say? I mean you describe yourself as successful business owner. Now, how is it different for you now being a business owner than it was before you got diagnosed, before you realized the way your brain worked and how to treat it?
Speaker 2:I think the difference now is that I really trust myself to know what's best for me, whereas I spent years being like now I have to do it XYZ way because that person is more successful than me, or at least that person is successful, and I'm a total mess over here, not making any progress. More successful wasn't even in there. I just wasn't in my own self-concept successful in any way. It's because I was trying to force myself into doing things that other people told me were the right way. That just felt physically painful for me. Now I understand a lot of that, like cold messaging people on social media. Oh, hey guys, the whole hey girl.
Speaker 1:Hi guys.
Speaker 2:Hey, what do you love best about what you do? Just that makes me feel like. So this thing of like I can't be, I mean isn't authentic the right word. I don't really mean that. I mean, if I needed to be, I could be. We're masters of chameleoning into whatever we need to be, but there's this thing of like the intention being message as many people as possible and then something will come out in the wash.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and I struggled with that as well. So my business is mental health care and I really struggled with social media and I struggled with it because I see so many, obviously, adverts and manipulative. You know they're trying to get you to buy something and obviously I want people to buy my services because I like what I do, but I also would like to make money and you know, and grow and all of those things. But I find it so there's such a huge disconnect between what the services I offer and then social media marketing. Do you find that like I don't know, explore people and I don't know. I'm sure if you're selling, you know something that I don't know, something that's less emotive and maybe you don't feel so torn with it, but maybe I feel like there's an element of also getting through this deserving piece.
Speaker 2:I think for a lot of people. Well, I can only speak for my own experience, but in my clients and in myself I have this like Threads that runs through, a feeling as though like if you do something you enjoy, you don't deserve to get paid for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I don't know whether that's because, for so many people with ADHD, a lot of employment structure and what you have to do in jobs and work environments is really, really hard.
Speaker 2:But you're like, ok, I'm getting paid for this, so it's OK that it's hard, and you associate, therefore, with Having to find things difficult to deserve to get paid for them. And it took me a really long time to get out of feeling Like that and Really, the thing that changed for me was when I started to go, ok, what do I actually want to do here? Because you know, especially in the coaching world, there's this kind of this is the way to build a coaching business. Get out there and fill up your one to one slots and then create a group program because you don't have time to deliver everything one to one and you still want to grow. Then create a membership and then create all these passive products and you've got to grow from like the big ticket Down to the kind of more accessible for everyone model and that is like the dumb thing in the coaching world and for me that was totally the wrong Way around.
Speaker 1:It was what kind of model do you, do you adopt then?
Speaker 2:Basically just talking to people, Offering support, running information events where people can find out things that they might not know about ADHD. If they're just starting to think about, do I have ADHD? Maybe this is it. I don't know when I don't know where to turn because there's so much information out there but very few people telling me what to do with it. Like loads of relatable stuff but very few people saying and this could be why, or this is what you can do to support yourself.
Speaker 2:And I just realised that for me, the real thing is like connection and community and being able to connect with other neurodivergent people I mean primarily women I work with and connect with in the online world. But that creates magic. And then you start to get to know people and then it's like you want more connection with them. People generally reach out to me to say, hey, do you offer one-to-one coaching? Like how can I work with you Rather than this. Like, buy my thing, buy my thing? Yeah, I see. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this constant exhausting thing. And I think with ADHD and social media, it's so triggering for our RSD. Like I remember feeling so rejected because I would post something and no one would like or comment. Now that's just no response, right, but it feels like rejection. The lack of response is a very kind of rejection triggering feeling for me. Okay, and so there's no wonder that the kind of three years that I didn't know that I have ADHD felt so painful, kind of slogging my guts out trying to create this content all the time. So yeah, I'm not actually sure I answered the question. I can't even really remember what the question was.
Speaker 1:Well, it was just really. No, you did because it was just exploring the differences between pre and post diagnosis with regards to your approach to business, and it sounds like you've like you said that previously you would be, and I suppose that comes from not having that confidence in yourself as well, doesn't it? That kind of well, that's what everyone's saying I should be doing. So I'll do that, otherwise, how on earth can I be successful? And I think I don't know. If you agree, I think just understanding more about yourself and the way that your mind works gives you the confidence to move forward with it and just say do you know what that's? I'm happy for you that works, but I think that's going to work for me because I don't believe in it, and not for me and not for my business, or you know, whatever the reasons are, and I think that's quite. That's empowering, isn't it? It's really empowering, and so do you. Would you mostly have?
Speaker 2:so your, your business, is coaching mostly women who have ADHD, yeah, and is coaching centered around lots of women who are business owners, or is it kind of a mix, or so primarily, my clients are self employed, because I mean the percentage of self employed people with ADHD, or the percentage of people with ADHD who go into self employment to try and find the right fit for themselves, is so high.
Speaker 1:Is it? I mean someone with?
Speaker 2:ADHD yeah, 300 times more likely to start your own business than a neurotypical person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, multiple times.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I mean I've had multiple starts and fails.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's how we start to like understand that what we might see as a failure isn't actually a failure. It's just something that was a step towards what we were going to do.
Speaker 1:It's so hard to see that, though, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It is at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, In that cycle of negativity, If I think about myself, and before I got diagnosed and started treating my ADHD in in all ways, I just lost complete faith in myself. I wouldn't. I got the point where I was just too afraid. I was afraid to live because the disappointment that came crashing down on me was just so overwhelming for me and for those around me. I couldn't trust myself. I mean, I still don't fully trust myself and I don't know if that's something new experience that, oh, I've got this great business idea and I could do it. And I think about blah, blah, blah, do this, this, this and this, but then I would just go. No, I can't, I'm not trying it again because I look like an idiot. That wasn't that was, you know, one of my main things.
Speaker 1:I don't want to look stupid or that everyone see that I failed. And although that's not what I would say to somebody who was, who would be in my position and were talking to me about it, it's that lack of compassion, isn't it as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah and yes, all the time this lack of self-trust, and I think I'm like pretty proud to say that now, most of the time, I trust myself to at least experiment with something. And I mean the way I do that is to make it a smaller thing that I go and experiment with and I don't put the pressure on it. I say let's see what happens here, rather than there being a well, if this happens, I've succeeded in this. If this happens, I've failed. Like, learning to take the pressure off things can be really helpful, because that then reduces the disappointment.
Speaker 1:How do you do that? How do you take the pressure off?
Speaker 2:Well, an example, I guess, was.
Speaker 2:So I used to try and run five day challenges Because, again, this is another thing like coach world run a free challenge, get loads of people in, sign them up to your high ticket coaching course membership, whatever, and make it a real like this is the deadline, this is when you've got to do it.
Speaker 2:And it felt so aggressive and like to me that I would do all the planning and decide that I'd start to do this thing and I'd be like I don't want to do it, like there'd be this pit in my stomach of like oh, wow, yeah. And earlier on this year I knew that I wanted to create an environment where there was just this like information sharing space for women to come and like feel not alone. And so I decided to do an ADHD style event, that it took the model of a five day challenge but wasn't like trying to help you make more money or do this thing. It was just to come and have a bit of community and learning. And I was like the aim for this is to see if I enjoy doing it. It wasn't to. I've got to get 300 people in, otherwise I failed or I've got to sell this at the end of it.
Speaker 2:It was like, yeah, how about we just create this thing and see if I enjoy doing it and I mean you've got to see, isn't it?
Speaker 1:That's the key You've got to enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And if you find yourself forcing yourself to do something, you are likely going to feel disappointed, either with the outcome If you do it but you've muscled your way through, because you'll feel knackered at the end of it or disappointed in yourself for giving up on it, because you realized it wasn't for you.
Speaker 2:Whereas if we start approaching stuff with curiosity and compassion and just kind of go, let's just see how this goes, let's take the pressure off, because, worst case scenario, five people show up but each one of them takes like a tiny thing away from this and I have shared some of the information that I wish I'd had when I first realized I had ADHD and that felt like such a fulfilling aim just to share what I know that it didn't really matter what the outcome was in terms of client acquisition and pounds of my bank account, because that's not what drives me connection and collaboration and sharing and supporting is what makes NETIC.
Speaker 1:I suppose that must really come across to your clients when they're working with you. So when you just taking a little step back, you said at the beginning that you always felt different. You always knew you were that different. You always that step, that step aside, you know, did you say a glass screen was kind of how you described it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in fact it's probably more like cellophane, but it felt like there was like just cellophane in between me and everyone else.
Speaker 1:Almost everyone says that I just felt different, but how were your musking skills? Were you muster at musking, are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so I think I still am not sure that I know exactly who I am and what I really want for myself. I'm really enjoying exploring that and discovering it and maybe trying new things. But my whole life I have done either what was expected of me by my parents, kind of, as I say, and my teachers. I never did my homework right. I went to quite an academic school and I remember this time where the biology teacher just stopped telling me off for not handing in my homework because I just wasn't going to do it. It didn't connect with me. It didn't make sense why I should do it.
Speaker 1:Oh, so did you feel as though I'm, I'm not, I don't want to do it, I'm not doing it like almost like a bit of a defiant Kind of.
Speaker 2:I can't really remember why I didn't, because on the whole I was quite a goody. Two shoes, yeah. I'm scared of getting told off. Yet with stuff like that homework or like music practice, I would pretend to do my music practice. I'd like to sit with neighbors on really quietly, like if I heard one of my parents walking around the house, like coming close. I'd like to turn the TV off and start with playing piano, as if they wouldn't notice You're going to.
Speaker 1:You'll be able to play the piano like some amazing musician, but never practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of. I mean average, average piano player, but pretty good, given how little I practiced. Yeah, there you go. And that's the same with exams, you know, for me. So this homework isn't actually helping me with exams. So what's the point? Because you're going to make me sit an exam which you're going to grade me on. It's the end result.
Speaker 1:It's, I suppose, for a lot of us with ADHD. It's the reason we do think so last minute is because we need the motivation of the anxiety, the urgency of it, to motivate us, don't we? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Because that falls into our like now or not now, the way our brains work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And our inability to kind of process time in a linear fashion, which I mean I assume some people can, because otherwise time wouldn't exist. But I can't access that.
Speaker 1:And so, so like when you talk about time, are you talking about this kind of time blindness people talk about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I try not to call it time blindness, but okay.
Speaker 1:Is that a bad term, do you think?
Speaker 2:I think it's a complicated term just because there are people who are blind, who are visually impaired, and so I don't know it's something.
Speaker 1:I've been playing with Okay, so maybe it's not as expectable as it could be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I very much used to refer to it as time blindness, and I had a moment where I actually felt really uncomfortable because I was speaking to a lady who is blind. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I said the word time blindness and I suddenly thought hang on.
Speaker 1:This is kind of trivializing.
Speaker 2:Not trivializing, I don't think, because it's a really. It's a really good way of describing it and it's in no way a criticism of you having used that term, by the way at all.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, I know and I was this whole like hmm, how do I feel about that? Because I felt so embarrassed that I actually haven't spoken to that person again and I should probably reach out and say you probably haven't thought about this, but when we last spoke I said time blindness to you and you are blind, did that? How did that make you feel?
Speaker 1:It's quite possible that person wouldn't have. Yeah, I don't know, but that again the very ADHD thing.
Speaker 2:Isn't it Kind of remanagement, remanagement, these tiny moments, yeah, but yes. So that whole concept of I don't know about you you might not experience this in the same way, but for me two weeks away could easily be two years away. It just isn't a thing until it's actually here.
Speaker 1:Oh absolutely that inability to plan, isn't it Exactly? If it's not in front of you, then in the immediate, then what's the point? And I get a sense of that when people talk about oh, when I retire or when the kids are a bit older, and I'm thinking what?
Speaker 2:But what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Just do it now. Yes, and I think that's why I typically get into lots of organisational chaos, because I'm not thinking about I mean, I'm better, I'm better. I think medication helped me with that, along with understanding myself and adopting new techniques. But I mean, like you said when we first started chatting today, who wants to be organised? Really, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, we feel like we have to be organised because that's what society tells us works best, but ultimately, society has been created by the people who won whatever fights they were having to take power, and so it's what works best for those individuals not necessarily all of us and I can go down. Certainly, rabbit holes about this in my brain, about what would happen if we decided that this didn't need to exist or that didn't need to exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you mean like norm or Like what's so? Do you mean social norm? Yes, so we're expected to conform to him. Yeah, what's the social norm you'd like to eradicate? Oh, one of them. I'm sure there's loads no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Obviously, now you've asked me a question where I need to give a specific answer.
Speaker 1:I'd like to eradicate the social norm of having to weed my driveway. Yes, my fucking neighbours. I don't see the weed until my neighbours come around and point them out to me.
Speaker 2:I feel like something's so pointless use of my time, I think in general, that kind of tidying and keeping stuff looking a certain way. You know, on Instagram or in interiors homes. You have these homes that actually, if you think about it, no one lives there, no one uses that space. They can't live there Because it's so ordered and everything is in place. So, yeah, I wish that valuing being tidy wasn't a thing, because I can be tidy, but you know what? I am so busy doing other things that I am more passionate about or more interested in or that actually add value to other people more than like keeping all the kitchen surfaces immaculate all the time or all of those things.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a huge pressure on people in general, ADHD or not, I think we all have this idea that our homes should be a place that someone walks into and thinks, wow, isn't this so beautifully styled and tidy? Rather than wow, I get to go into my loved connection person's house.
Speaker 1:You know what? My mum last weekend she was taking my daughter somewhere and her very best friend, who we're extremely close with she's like the auntie I always wanted, really close. But she said, oh, she's going to meet me at your house and then we'll take the girls and go. And it was a Saturday morning and I was on a course actually it was an online course so I got up and I didn't have time and I felt really stressed that they, both of them you know, my mum and my mum's friend, our friend was coming to our house and I thought I need to tidy up. And I said to my husband I just feel stressed because they're coming into our house and we've got a dog. It was going to smell like dog if the kids put their breakfast dishes away, is it?
Speaker 1:And I think it says so much more about me than anybody else why I was getting so stressed about that. Because my husband said I think you are more bothered about those things than I am. And it's this sense of well, if they for me anyway. I don't know about other people, but for me, if they'd have come in and it had been a bit messy and which actually, it was because I didn't tidy up and it smelled of dog and all whatever and there was wet washing in the machine. Even if they'd noticed it, my worry is that they're going to say, oh, she's not coping, is she? Oh, she's not. But then these are people who are really close to me and care a lot about me. But I think that's said. That speaks volumes about the amount of masking I do. And quite often when I meet people you know on a relatively superficial level and they'll say you know we might be talking about something nice they've got. No, I really do struggle with anxiety. They go. I would never have those thoughts there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, master's masking yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's quite lonely, isn't it? It's really bloody lonely because it's hard work, keeping up that intense all the time. And I remember, after having my second daughter I had really bad postnatal anxiety and depression and I was, I'm really bad. My husband says to me no one would ever have known Like it's because you know you feel guilty about the baby, just baby, pick up on it. My husband said, well, no, you would did everything you should have. No one would ever have picked up on that. And I think, why didn't anyone pick up on that? How artificial am I. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:And I would say probably not at all. You just learned that that was safer, because while masking is exhausting, so is bearing your soul and speaking about what's really going on. You know, and that's why a lot of people who have therapy actually, you know, you come out of a therapy session feeling pretty rung out sometimes.
Speaker 1:Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2:yeah, you know it isn't always accessible for us to talk about how we're really feeling, either, or with people that we really trust, because sometimes we don't feel like we have the capacity to take the lid off that particular jar, and I think we're all guilty of kind of adopting the culture and the beliefs that reward this perceived mental strength.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's celebrated, isn't it? Oh well, you didn't fall apart. That's amazing, and particularly if that's the message you've had from a quite a young child, you're bound to carry that with you. That that's something worth celebrating, because your parents got divorced. But look, she's handling it really well. Our brother's not so much, but you know, it's those things you pick up. It's survival, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think if we're not used to showing that like soft underbelly to people, even people that we've known for years, it's like kind of, in a way, I guess, looping back to the school thing and always feeling different. I'm not sure I ever really talked about how I was feeling or ever actually knew how to express it, because finding the words for something that feels so big can be really, really hard, and obviously there's an element of that being a condition called lexithymia and people not being able to verbalize how they're feeling or connect to how they're feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think as well with ADHD. If we are told that our emotions are too big, you know, say it's a small children. If someone comes and breaks our hyper focus and we're having the most amazing imagination game with our toys or even just our inner world, like out in the garden, and someone comes to get you because you know they've decided it's your bedtime or your mealtime and you throw a tantrum because your hyper focus is broken. I still get irritated if my husband comes in and interrupts me when I'm mid something and as a child, you just emotionally erupts, don't you? If you've got no control.
Speaker 2:And if you're told that's too much or oh, you cry at everything or oh, why are you getting so upset about that thing? That isn't a big thing. You learn to be like okay. So it's not really safe when I show my emotions.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so we grow into adults who don't know how to talk about the fact that we are feeling really lost or isolated or bewildered or just really sad without knowing why. And I don't know if there is a solution to that other than we just have to keep on raising awareness that if people are having emotional outbursts, if children are having emotional outbursts, maybe they're not just being annoying, maybe they're not just being someone who's throwing a tantrum, maybe there's actually something else going on there, maybe it's going to be a lifelong struggle to emotionally regulate. How can we start supporting people from them rather than punishing them, so they don't grow into women who feel that they can't really talk about how they really feel, even with their closest friends?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've just completely nailed it on the head.
Speaker 2:No, I thought we were going to go with this, but there we go.
Speaker 1:You really have to tip the nail on the head, because I see it when I think about myself as a child and how I am now. But then I look at my daughter, for example, who has ADHD and her emotions, and it's a mind-boggling because we want to treat our children with this kind of compassionate, patient textbook approach. How do you do it when you yourself are struggling as well?
Speaker 2:And I don't have the answer to that. Oh, come on, sorry, should I maybe answer? Well, we don't have children and I think now I understand that I live for 36 years with undiagnosed ADHD. There was always a reason to delay trying or not try. And now I understand this better.
Speaker 2:I think that my desire to wait until I felt ready is, in this whole, like I feel every day, like I am barely holding it together way less nowadays, but I feel like I'm now on a really steady, like manageable track where I can understand how I'm feeling. I know when I need to give a bit more, a bit less. I know when I need to step away from the computer, even if it's not convenient. Like I've learned my patterns and the idea of disrupting that with a tiny person who I might either totally hyper focus on and therefore lose all other parts of myself and I know, I know that all parents have an aspect of that. I know because obviously you have a time person who needs you, but I mean literally I would maybe not eat, sleep for myself because I would be on this time thing that you meet me all the time, or I forget about the child because I'm so hyper focused on your stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, quite frankly, scared about either of those, yeah, virtualities happening. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that, given that there is indicators of a very strong genetic link for ADHD, yeah, you know, just knowing that, there's a very high chance that if we had a child, they would have been neurodivergent. And that doesn't mean that I'm saying I'll never do it, but I think I understand my hesitation to do it much better. Now there's this whole. I can't blink and look after myself. How am I going to look after?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's when I think that's when I'm only speaking obviously the female mother when things really start falling apart. If you don't know you have ADHD. If you don't know you've got all of the. I mean, if Laura were here, she'd be able to give us a lot more of the science around the hormonal changes and the effects that that have on our particularly our dopamine levels, and then that affects how our ADHD manifests. If you don't know what's going on, you just think I am going crazy and I can't cope. But I need to show everyone that I can and that is so stressful and I think I well, I know for absolute certain if I'd known that I had ADHD, that I would have coped a lot better. Yeah, well, I coped probably the wrong word, because obviously I did cope and you know my kids are alive still.
Speaker 2:You say, when you saw them, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I saw them. But I think I would have been kinder to myself and made it a lot easier for myself, rather than kind of, I've got to do everything. And why would I need a break? I love my kids. I shouldn't have a break. I love my kids. I don't want anyone thinking I love my kids, yeah, but actually it's so important. It's so important Because when you think about just thinking about executive functioning, you know I think back to when I was single. I mean, I was. I was really good. You know I wouldn't. My bedroom wouldn't be particularly messy, my flat wouldn't be massively messy, I was. But then I had all the time, you know, I had my look back and I was a lot younger as well. I had time to, you know, make sure that my flat was tidy before I went on holiday, or and you have kids, and then that that standard slip, slip, slip, slip, and you think, oh my God, where have I gone? And you're right, you lose a bit of yourself, I think, if you're not careful.
Speaker 2:And there's actually nothing fundamentally wrong with that either. I don't think like I think that that is something, that having acceptance that there is going to be some losing of yourself, I think is inevitable. It's just trying to fight against that, isn't it, I suppose?
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I think you're never to find a bit more balance as your, as your kind of children get that bit older I'm talking like become toddlers, that bit older again and older again. Then you can claw back more of yourself is my experience so far.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there's no wonder, though, that for women who are undiagnosed and actually, I imagine, a lot of parents and fathers who are possibly undiagnosed as well, you know does affect their sleep as well maybe not to the same extent as most mothers, but given that we know that studies have shown that when people are tired, stressed, overstretched, that they behave like they have ADHD, even if they're neurotypical, there's no wonder that the wheels start to come off when someone who is neurodevelopmentally ADHD also has extra stress, extra stress, extra sleep deprivation, extra responsibility, so that all makes so much sense.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does. And you know, before we mindful of time, before we can say goodbye, I have got a question for you Because just talking to you in the short space of time, I feel like see you come across someone who's got it all together. You're very calm. I don't get the impression that you have any chaos in your life. So my challenge is to ask you. My challenge for you is if you tell me what's the most ADHD thing you can think of right now that you've done?
Speaker 2:Well, there are two fairly recent ones. One is hilarious impulse buy. So I was in the supermarket a couple of weekends ago and saw this beautiful mug that I love the look of like perfect size, shape and like green leaves all over it. The only problem was that it says dad on it, because it, I guess, was left over from the father's day, and I was like I don't care, I'm going to buy it anyway. So I now have a mug.
Speaker 1:It says dad on it. Your mind is having something there, you know no no, that's what actually someone else said to me.
Speaker 2:Everyone's going to stop thinking you're pregnant, no, no. But one of the scarier things that has happened is my husband travels quite a bit for work and I quite often go over anything out with my parents when he's away. And I went to my parents for a weekend overnight, came back the next day and the hob was still burning. Yeah, so pretty terrifying. I mean, at least it was burning rather than just leaking, but it was a gas hob, gas hob, yep, and it had been going for a good 24 hours.
Speaker 1:I thought they'd have like a safety thing on them.
Speaker 2:No, if I think, if the pressure drops, it switches off, so the gas doesn't keep coming out, so there is like a safety mechanism. But if it's burning, oh, thank God, and I just came and asked it, why is the hob on? And I'd left it on that afternoon. When I turned it over to my parents and came back the next evening and it was still on.
Speaker 2:And you know, that is just my attention going on to oh, I need to get stuff ready for the dog, for me and their accountless things. You know, like I'm always falling over, I'm always spilling stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What do you think that is Like a dyspraxic kind of.
Speaker 2:It could be, or it could just be, that I like genuinely forget that the tape Rushing and yeah. Yeah, or just obviously. I am aware that there's like a bed in our bedroom, but when I'm focused on getting to the wardrobe to get the clothes that I need, my attention is there, so the bed doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's a bit of furniture there, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I like to walk into the bed. I think I'm so much more accepting of my chaos nowadays that I'm not dashing around in a panic all the time. But that's just come from a good decade of personal development yeah, that's just experience.
Speaker 1:I do that, I think. Just take it a bit slower, Louise. You know you're not going to do that later, but do it properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think it's just acceptance and laughing at stuff and just knowing that there will be the odd thing that happens. That is not ideal, but it's probably not going to matter If you have the fun humour in it.
Speaker 1:Right, You've got to find the humour in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm also going to try and get my paint pens out and change my dad mug into an ADHD mug. Oh yeah, I'm going to school later.
Speaker 1:I did something the other week. Oh my God, I just feel it's urge to share this.
Speaker 2:Please do. I love it.
Speaker 1:Right. So I went on holiday and I was really organised and the most organised I've ever been in my life, right, and I thought this isn't as stressful as it always has been. I was able to, anyway. So we come back, and the day after we arrived back I was unpacking our suitcases and there was like bits of sand and just crumbs for some reason in our suitcases. So I got the hoover. I thought, oh, I'm such a good human being, I'm actually hoovering my suitcase I'm winning.
Speaker 1:Well, someone just film me now, because this is me being a responsible adult hoovering my suitcase. So I had the hoover. You've got the flat bit of the hoover. Yeah, and your hoover. No, sorry, I had the nozzle of the hoover, soothe the sucky bit, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I thought, oh, this is like sucking up the material too much, so I wasn't actually getting any of the crumbs. So when I got to the next suitcase, I thought I'll attach the proper bit onto the hoover you know the flat bit that you use for the carpet and I'll put that on the suitcase. So I turned the hoover on, I popped the flat bit onto the hose of the hoover and I started hoovering the suitcase. Yeah, oh, my God. And then I realised that it wasn't attached to the hoover. The actual nozzle wasn't attached to the hoover, but I turned the hoover on and was using it and thinking as if it was. It wasn't working.
Speaker 1:Oh, I just you know, when you just feel like, oh my God, louise, what are you doing? I was not paying attention. I mean, you could do that if you don't have ADHD as well, but I did manage to laugh at myself. I just thought oh my God, that is just the most. I'm like a child toy playing with a hoover.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just kind of took the shine away from the act of me being an adult and moving out my suitcase, did you then?
Speaker 2:attach it and finish it. Yeah, yeah, so they go. You still got that they just had a little.
Speaker 1:Well, it's really a human act, you know, obviously.
Speaker 2:And then I can categorically say I've never hoovered a suitcase.
Speaker 1:You should do it. It makes you feel really good about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tend to go for the just turn it upside down and shake it on the floor and maybe all hoover up.
Speaker 1:Well, interesting. You say that that's why I ended up doing the other two. Yeah, I'll just hoover the floor. Yeah, oh my God, and there were so many of these little things that I think we actually do without realising over and over again all day every day.
Speaker 1:My dad is. I'm convinced that he has ADHD, but he's never been diagnosed. He never will. Like he's happy with you, know with all. But he, he picked my daughter up from school you know, embarrassing is anywhere when you get picked up from school and he didn't tell me at the time but he's told me it since and he put her in the car, in the back of the car, and then he got in the car, but he also got in the back of the car. She was just sitting in the back of my daughter. I was like, oh dad, what do you do? So I had to just pretend I was looking for something and then I went to drive the seat. Oh crikey, I'm embarrassing. But then we see where it comes from, don't we?
Speaker 2:We do the. And then you're like do you know what? This is just part of how some humans are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's some really interesting evolutionary perspectives on ADHD on there. I find that fascinating because it really gives me a bit of a boost. I watched some do the days of the.
Speaker 2:you know the people in our kind of ancestral tribes who had ADHD would have been more attractive to mate with because they were the risk takers and the you know all of that Well, the people who kept us alive because they noticed the like crackle of a leaf or a twig being snapped behind us if there was a wild animal up to attack and I think that we still see elements of that in a lot of modern people with ADHD oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do notice the tiny things, we notice the little changes, and I think one of the most glorious things we can do is celebrate that about ourselves, rather than finding ourselves lacking all the time Totally totally and before we go, tell me how can people find you if they want to use your certain.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of sorted everywhere. So my where do I start? My name is Charlotte Dover and if you Google me, I'm around. My website is mynamestarlottedovercom, and you can find me on Instagram at maybe ADHD, because I really believe in not having to say that we have ADHD and not having to wait for a diagnosis. You know, self diagnosis, self exploration, is so valid. So if you search for maybe ADHD, you will find me everywhere as well. And for a more specific answer, I'll probably send you where people find you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll also put it in the show notes at the bottom. Charlotte, it's been so lovely talking to you and you.
Speaker 2:I love surprise chat you too. Thanks for having me. Bye.