Episode: 76
6 Surprising Signs of Adult ADHD
a Solo Episode
This episode is deeply personal, but Mel’s story is shared by so many women.
Mel lived her entire life with symptoms of ADHD and crushing anxiety because of it. But she was never diagnosed until the age of 47.
This is an education in how your brain works, how focus works, and how to help yourself or someone in your life who may have ADHD.
Listen on:
There is nothing wrong with you. In fact, ADHD is linked to some of the most successful, creative, and visionary people on the planet.
Mel Robbins
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (05:19)
And I'm sure a ton of you have had this experience either with your kids or maybe it happened to you when you were a kid or with nieces or nephews, this is super common for people to go through this. When we got the big report kind of telling us all about Oakley's brain, I was sitting with this pediatrician, Dr. Blumenthal, and I'd known Mark for my God, 16 years at this point.
(05:42):
And we're flipping through the thing and Mark's going, yeah, yeah, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. And we were going to talk options about what we could do in terms of therapy or medication or ways that we could support oak now that we had a diagnosis about both his learning style, but more importantly about this attention issue. And I kind of looked at Mark and I said, as I'm reading this, mark, this sounds a lot like me. Do you think that maybe I have ADHD and Dr. Blumenthal, I just love this guy. He leans back in his chair and he looks at me with this sort of stunned look on his face, and he's like, do I think you have ADHD, Mel Robbins? Of course you have ADHD. In fact, you're probably the most ADHD parent I have in my entire practice.
(06:36):
You are so successful and you are a complete bird brain. Do you realize that you will go years and not bring your kids in for their wellness appointments? In fact, every fall we have a joke. We know that you are going to be one of those 20 parents that call in a fucking panic because you need a physical, you need a physical, you kids practice starts from, right? You need a physical and now it's a five alarm fire, but you've missed their wellness appointment and you do it every year. And you'll leave every exam and you'll go, oh, yeah, okay, I'll follow up. I'll call you tomorrow. I'll tell you about it. You never do. I just looked at him as he was talking. I knew he was right. I always felt so incompetent about my ability to keep up with appointments or to remember things like that or any of it.
(07:22):
And then he goes, so do I think you have ADHD? Of course you have a DH adhd. And I looked him square in the eye, you guys. And you know what I said to him? Why did you tell me? Why didn't you tell me I had a DH adhd? And he goes, I'm not your doctor, Mel. I'll tell you, I was 47 years old when I realized that what I had been dealing with for my entire life may not be anxiety. It might just be fucking ADHD. And so I went to my primary care, she referred me to a specialist, sure enough, just like my son, dyslexia, a DH, adhd. And I have since learned because once something happens in my life, I am like a truffle pig, rooting for a truffle. I literally start digging until I find something. And I made it my mission six years ago to find out everything I could possibly discover about ADHD, not only because I wanted to help our son Oakley and eventually our daughter Kendall and our daughter Sawyer, but also because now that I understood that I had this diagnosis, I wanted to understand what the hell was going on so I could help myself.
Mel Robbins (08:32):
And what I learned is incredible. I am part of a lost generation of women who were diagnosed with anxiety or depression or an eating disorder or some other condition in my teens and twenties when the underlying problem all along was that they missed the diagnosis of ADHD. And that's why I want to talk to you about it. I have wanted to have a conversation with you about this ever since we started this podcast eight months ago. But I have been reluctant to do it because I wanted to make sure I had resources to give you, because every time I've talked about this on YouTube or on social, or I've talked about it on a talk show, we receive an avalanche of inbound stories, requests for information. And so I didn't want to unpack everything I'm going to share with you today until I knew I could point you in the right direction.
(09:26):
And what we're going to talk about today is really important. It's really important because what the research shows is that when you are not properly diagnosed with ADHD and you have it, the outcomes for girls in particular are horrendous. And the word horrendous is a word that one of the world's leading experts uses, not me. Lemme just read this to you. This comes from Dr. Ellen Litman, who's a clinical psychologist, co-author of Understanding Girls with ADHD. And this is what she said, anxiety and depression turn into low, and the risk for self-harm and suicide attempts is four times higher for girls with ADHD than girls without. That's terrifying. So the conversation that we're going to have today, it goes way beyond having trouble with homework or having trouble focusing. We'll cover all of this, but I personally believe as I sit here and I look back on my life, I'm now 53 years old. I was diagnosed with ADHD late at the age of 47, 6 years ago. I look back on my life and I know that
Mel Robbins (10:41):
I would not have struggled with anxiety the way that I did had I been properly diagnosed, medicated, and treated for ADHD when I was little, full stop. And so if you're somebody that has struggled with low self-esteem, self-loathing, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, you get diagnosed in your teens and your twenties and you can't seem to turn the corner on this, I truly want you to consider what I'm about to share with you, what I've learned in the last six years of researching this extensively, talking to the world's leading experts about this. Among them, Dr. Ned Hollowell who wrote Driven Distraction. He's like the OG of a DD research. He's at Harvard. He's a world renowned psychologist, Dr. Daniel a Amen who has scanned my brain and taught me all kinds of stuff about what he sees when he does a brain scan of somebody with ADHD.
(11:32):
This is not about organization ADHD, the definition of ADHD, and this was new to me. ADHD is a chronic neurobiological disorder, which affects the brain, structural and chemical capabilities. It impacts the various parts of the brain and the way that your brain communicates with one. And it is also highly inheritable. And there is good news here. There's a lot of good news that you're going to learn. But here's what we're going to cover because this is not just like, Hey, let's get some Adderall and party longer. This is a very serious issue, particularly for women because we are profoundly underdiagnosed. So today what I'm going to share with you is the six surprising signs that I didn't know that I had all six of them. That could be signs that you too have adult ADHD. We're going to talk about why women were so profoundly underdiagnosed and have been profoundly underdiagnosed for decades.
(12:35):
We're going to talk about the mental health implication when you're not properly diagnosed and when you don't seek either therapeutic or occupational or some sort of medicine treatment for it, you're going to learn about the four key differences between how ADHD presents in boys and girls. And we're going to talk about what to do if you think this is you. And finally, we're going to get into what's actually happening in your brain when you have ADHD, because this is so fascinating. I'm going to use a very physical metaphor for you that will have you completely understand this and why this is such a huge issue. And maybe the first place to start is why are so many women underdiagnosed? Why does this go missing in girls? Well, the answer is this. When they first made A-D-H-D-A diagnosis back in the late seventies, they only studied po.
(13:26):
That's it. They only studied boys and boys present very differently than girls. They have totally different symptoms typically. And this is really important to understand because when I first heard the term ADHD, I thought of our son. Our son is like the poster boy for ADHD symptoms. Leg is jittery, hands are fidgeting, raising the hand, bumping up and down, got to run to the bathroom, bopping around, do highly distracted.
Mel Robbins (13:53):
But what always confused me about him is that he could also laser focus on video games. So I sort of dismissed ADHD because I'm like, well, he can focus on video games, so it must be about his interest in things. No, no, no, no, no. ADHD has both physical symptoms that you see on the surface, and those are typically what's present in boys. But the reason why girls went profoundly misdiagnosed is because girls typically do not present those physical, jittery, interrupting kind of physical chaos.
(14:25):
And boys present four key differences with ADHD than girls do. Here they are. Number one, when a boy has ADHD, they have symptoms that appear on the surface, impulsive behavior, fidgeting, getting distracted, being very physical with their inability to concentrate. Girls, we have the opposite symptoms. Ours are all internal. We're restless, we daydream. We're hard on ourselves, we're forgetful, we're disorganized, and we start to aim it at ourselves as a character flaw. So when you're a girl with ADHD, you daydream, you're disorganized, you're hard on yourself, you make careless mistakes. You might be called a tomboy or super creative. But what happens, and this is why this is so scary, and this is what happened to me, is that when you sit in life or in a classroom and you see all your friends turning things in on time or staying organized, or there lockers are clean and yours is a mess, and you're running late and you start to think you have a character defect, you start to think there's something wrong with you.
(15:41):
So you turn it back on yourself. And so that's what happened to me. And it also gets missed because it's internal. We're not sitting there bouncing our leg and jumping a raise in our hand. We have the opposite impact. The second key difference between boys and girls is that boys present earlier, typically around the age of seven girls, however, present later on average, like around 12. The third reason why there's a big difference between girls and boys is because boys wear it on their sleeve. They're very physical, they're fidgety, they're frustrated by it. They have trouble controlling their physical outbursts, whereas girls, girls are excellent at hiding this. Why? Well, because we feel the pressure to conform. We feel like something's wrong with us. We do our best to cope. We do our best to look around and see what everybody else is doing, and we start working harder to compensate for what we feel is a character default in us, that we are lesser than, that we're not good enough that everybody else seems to get this but me.
(16:57):
And we hide it. And here's the big fucking difference between girls and boys with a D. H. D. Boys tend to get better, girls get worse. And that is exactly what happened to me. I got way worse, way worse. What goes from daydreaming, following instructions, making careless mistakes, forgetfulness, allnighters not being able to stay organized. That chronic struggle turns into, I'm fucked up. There's something wrong with me. And a profound correlation between anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts. This is not just me, by the way. Let me pull some of the research out because this shit is scary.
(17:51):
You can hear me flipping through my papers. I prepared for this because I wanted you to have women with ADHD face the feelings of being overwhelmed and exhausted the same way that men do. However, women increasingly have psychological distress, feel inadequate, low self-esteem, chronic stress. This is extremely common. You feel that your life is out of control or chaos. And daily tasks start to seem impossibly huge research shows that ADHD materializes dramatically differently in girls. And one clinical psychologist, Dr. Ellen Litman, this should scare you, says she wrote the book, understanding Girls with ADHD. The outcomes for girls are horrendously negative compared to boys because ADHD materializes dramatically differently in girls as they get older. Anxiety and depression turn into low self-esteem and self-loathing that happened to me. And the risk for self-harm and suicide attempts four to five times greater for girls with ADHD. This is not about having trouble with homework. This is not about remembering birthdays because unlike boys, many of whom just show hyperactivity girls symptoms veer inward.
(19:13):
And that means we aim all this at ourselves. And that's where the anxiety comes in. That's where the depression comes in. That's where the eating disorders come in. That's where the self-harm come in, is because you actually believe something's wrong with you. And here's what I'm here to say. There's nothing wrong with you, absolutely nothing wrong with you. In fact, ADHD has a high correlation to being a successful entrepreneur, to being highly creative, to being a problem solver, a risk taker. There is so much beauty in this. But you also need to understand if you're dealing with a neurobiological disorder, which impacts your prefrontal cortex, most girls that have undiagnosed ADHD, you know what they start to have on the surface anxiety. Because of course, if you're going to go into school every day and you're disorganized and you make careless mistakes and you're hard on yourself and you start to tell yourself there's something wrong with you, of course you're going to feel anxious about going, and it makes perfect sense.
(20:04):
And if you can't control your ability to pay attention to things, a lot of us start seeking other things we can control. And that's why there are so many co-diagnoses with ADHD and eating disorders and anxiety and depression with girls. And that's exactly what happened to me. In fact, I was treated for decades for anxiety. And I am sitting here telling you right now, I a hundred percent believe the issue I had all along was very simple. I had dyslexia and ADHD, and nobody fucking knew it. And instead, I developed anxiety. Why? Because that's what happens when you have undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia, and you don't understand why your brain doesn't work the same way as everybody else. You don't understand why you're always late, why you can't get it together, why things are always a mess, why there's clutter around you, why you're constantly missing deadlines or doctor's appointments or leaving your Kleenex on the counter, or you can't forget that it's relentless.
(21:06):
And so of course, anxiety would develop. And I'm on a mission today to share absolutely everything that I have learned in my own deeply personal research to be a better mother of kids with ADHD, and to be a better partner to myself as I live my life as an adult with ADHD. And what I've learned is life-changing. There are things that you can do. There are very surprising signs that this may be something for you. And I need to say right up front, I'm not a doctor. The purpose of this episode is not meant to diagnose you at all. I am here to entertain you with my story, and I'm here to educate you based on my personal experience. And I'm here to empower you to know that this is a reality for so many women in particular in the world, so that if it rings true for you, you go seek the professional help that's out there to get a very clear answer of what's happening for you.
(22:05):
That's what this is about, because that's how you create a better life. Alright, when we come back, we're going to start with your brain and ADHD, and we're going to talk about your prefrontal cortex, which is right underneath your forehead and its role in the skill of attention. And you're going to learn the two things that your prefrontal cortex needs to be able to do that an ADHD brain can't quite do. And then what we're going to cover a little bit later are the six surprising signs of ADHD in adults, all of which I had, all of which everybody missed. So I can't wait for this. Don't you dare go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and today we're talking ADHD in women in particular. And in just a second, we're going to get to the six surprising signs of adult ADHD.
(23:01):
But first I really want to dig into what's happening in an ADHD brain. And this comes from research from Dr. Ned Hollowell. It comes from Dr. Amon. I know that Huberman lab just did a bunch of podcast episodes on this, but this is how everybody talks about it. So the good thing about ADHD is it seems like the research that's been going on for decades is very conclusive a
Mel Robbins (23:25):
About the prefrontal cortex and how ADHD impacts it. So let's talk about attention, because ADHD is not the inability to focus. ADHD is the inability to direct your attention in appropriate ways, in appropriate settings. That's what it means. That's why you'll often see kids with ADHD that can play video games for hours. That was Oakley. I could literally be banging pots and pans behind this kid. He wouldn't even know it.
(23:59):
He was so focused, but he had an inability to direct that attention in appropriate ways. In other cases, and lemme just use the example that I just gave you, it's not healthy that he was so focused on video games that he couldn't hear pots and pan. That's not an appropriate use of attention either. And so let's unpack what attention is. So attention is a really important skill, right? You've got to be able to pay attention if you want to be successful at work, if you want to learn new things, you need to be able to direct your attention. And in relationships, I mean, just think about it. There are times where somebody's talking and your stomach hurts, or you want to get a bite to eat, or you really don't give a shit and you want to yawn or you want to interrupt them. Your ability to pay attention and suppress the urge to interrupt them or to yawn or to excuse yourself.
(24:56):
That is the skill of attention, and it's critical for relationships. Otherwise, you're going to look like a rude asshole. So attention requires your prefrontal cortex to be able to switch between two neural networks in your brain. One of the neural networks is the part of your brain that is aware and paying attention to everything around you, okay? All the noise around you and all of your thoughts and your feelings in your body. Okay? So one neural network that your prefrontal cortex needs to control is the ability to all the noise around you and all the noise within you. And I'm going to bring in an example that is used throughout the research with ADHD. It's the example of an orchestra conductor. So your prefrontal cortex is an orchestra conductor,
Mel Robbins (25:51):
And I want to just bring in the sound of an orchestra warming up. You hear all the different sounds and of people of an orchestra getting ready and unpacking and warming up. That's you in the world. And one thing that your prefrontal cortex does when it comes to attention is it lifts up the little sticks and it points at the horns who are making too much noise and goes, sh. This is called a top down function. It is able to tap into a neur network to suppress sh, Hey horns, shut the hell up, sh. And silence the noise outside of you and silence the noise within you, your grumbling stomach, your thoughts about what you're doing tonight so that the prefrontal cortex can then tap into the second neural network, which is the ability to raise up and focus on something specific. Hey, strings, it's time for you. Let's magnify and amplify you because now the horns sh are quiet. We can now amplify the string section and hear it. And so that's the network that allows you, if you crack open a book, you focus on the book itself, but you also focus on the words in your mind and what you're learning and processing as you're reading it.
(27:20):
So your prefrontal cortex when it comes to attention has to do those two things, the sh of the distractions outside you and the grumbling stomach in you so that it can turn toward what you want to focus on and direct your attention appropriately. If you can't switch between those two things of the shh and the focus, you can't pay attention. And anybody with ADHD, they're missing the conductor in the brain. You're not able to shh things. You're not able to spotlight on something else. In most settings, you have an orchestra that's warming up all the time around you, and that's what the experts mean when they say that you have a neurobiological disorder that affects the brain structurally and chemically as well as ways in which various parts of the brain communicate with one another. That's what they're talking about, the prefrontal cortex and the inability to switch between suppression of noise and amplification of focus.
(28:33):
That's what it is. I can give you an example because I'm realizing my prefrontal cortex could not fucking do this. I went to Dartmouth College and they have this incredible library, baker library, and I would always go to the stacks in the library to study, and I would carry my stack of books, and I would carry my notebooks and my pens and my highlighters, and I would commit to being there all day. Okay, I'm going to study. I would sit down, and as soon as I sit down and crack open a book, you want to know what happened?
(29:08):
The orchestra started warming up and everyone started chitchatting. I literally would be like, oh my God, I think I'm hungry. I got to go to the bathroom. Do I feel like studying? I'm not quite sure. And then I'd hear somebody walking and he'd be like, who's that? Oh, is that Emily? Hey, Emily, I was incapable of that part of attention that your prefrontal cortex needs you to do. I was incapable of suppressing the sensation in my body, suppressing the monologue in my fucking mind, and tuning out and suppressing the noises around me. I would sit there for eight hours and distract myself because this core function of my prefrontal cortex didn't work, couldn't do it. So of course, I had trouble paying attention because I couldn't suppress my internal and external noise in order to do the second part where the conductor, the prefrontal cortex, turns to the strings after it's gone, sh to the horns and amplifies and ramps up the strings.
(30:13):
Let's hear the first stanza. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then they go, right? And that is your prefrontal cortex ramping up and amplifying either your focus in your head, because if I've got the book cracked open, I can't be paying attention to what my voice is saying. I've got to turn on the part of the brain that can now focus on the words on the page, right? I've got to be able to focus on things in the environment, the book in front of me, the words that are being processed as I'm reading. So attention is controlled by the prefrontal cortex, being able to shush and quiet and suppress one network that is tuned in to all of the outside and internal noise, and to amplify another network in your brain that goes into a focus state. My brain did not work that way. It was missing the conductor.
(31:11):
And people with ADHD are missing a conductor that's working properly. And when you start to understand that, oh my God, there's this conductor in my brain, and this is the way they talk about it in research, what you realize is this, because it goes a little bit further, your brain takes a ton of fuel when you look at the research. If you and I were to simply sit still all day and do nothing, I mean nothing. Not even read a book, just sort of lay on the couch, do next to nothing, simply being awake and alive. You consume 25% of your caloric intake when you start trying to focus. So again, attention is twofold. It takes fuel mentally to suppress the internal fidgeting. The fact that you're hungry, maybe you have to pee your voice going, oh God, I'm going to screw over this test.
(32:07):
Why can't I focus? What's wrong? Oh, is that Emily over there? It takes a lot of mental fuel to quiet that network in your mind. It takes more mental fuel for your prefrontal cortex to then go, Hey, strings, we're going to pay attention to you and to activate a different network that helps you focus on what's happening in your mind and focus on something in your physical environment. This is why after you take a test, you're exhausted because you've drained the energy tank. And so what also happens for everybody with ADHD is the orchestra's playing. You're burning through fuel because both networks are going your attempt to try to focus on something and your attempt to shut down the shit that you can't shut down. And so you're not only spinning your wheels by not actually being able to get done what everybody else can get done, you're also draining the energy tank.
(32:59):
What ultimately happens is that you, if you're a woman, turn this against yourself. Guys are like, fuck this homework. And they get physical and they go do something else. Women aim it at themselves. And this is where it gets important, because this is about both being able to quiet certain neural circuits and enhance others. And what they've found, this is from Dr. Amen who's been on this podcast, one of the world's leading experts in the brain. He's done over 60,000 scans of brains. When he has scanned people's brain, he has scanned my brain. And when you look at anybody's brain scan who has ADHD brain, what they find is there are what appear to be holes in the prefrontal cortex is very, very common. And it's a sign that there's not sufficient blood flow to the conductor. The conductor can't work properly because it's not getting the blood flow that it needs.
(33:58):
And he calls this a sleepy brain that your brain is not getting the blood flow, the dopamine, the Nora reran, or whatever the hell it's called, because we all know I can't say it. And that's why so many people with ADHD, because we're not able to have all of the neurotransmitters and the neuro circuits working properly. It's why so many of us chase dopamine dumps like shopping or alcohol or any other addictive kind of behavior. And it's also why it matters that women have a symptom of being hyper hypercritical, because think about the two networks that the conductor in your brain has to be able to switch on and off. Yes, you've got to be able to switch the ability to pay attention to the book and to the words in your mind as you're processing what you're reading. But if you can't turn off what researchers call the default mode network, if you can't shush the fucking horns as they're like, you're never going to amount to anything, why are you always behind?
(35:10):
If you can't, that you live with a default mode, a voice in your head that is always active, that's always going, and that's always negative. And that's why so many of us develop such poor, it's why the outcomes are horrendous for girls that don't get diagnosed, that have ADHD because you internalize all this shit. So what we're going to do next is I'm going to cover the six lesser known and surprising signs of adult ADHD. Then we're going to get into why this happened. Why are girls underdiagnosed? Why is there a lost generation of women who have been struggling with anxiety and depression and eating disorders and impulsive shopping and all kinds of other things, and beating themselves up? Why did this happen? And more importantly, we're going to cover what you can do about it. If you think this is you or someone you love, don't go anywhere.
(36:14):
We'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and today I'm talking about my diagnosis of ADHD, how I was diagnosed at the age of 47, late in life, and what I have learned in the last six years of digging into this topic, researching it, and learning as much as I can, not only to help myself and our two daughters who also have ADHD, but so that I could share this information because I want as many people to understand this as possible. So these are the six lesser known signs of adult. ADHD. Number one is hyper focus. And this was a surprise to me...
Mel Robbins (36:52):
Because I remember seeing this in our son. I'm like, I'm sorry, this kid does not have ADHD. He just hates homework. I mean, he can sit and laser focus in on his video games so clearly he can laser focus in on homework. That's not true. A surprising sign of ADHD is the ability to hyper, hyper hyperfocus in certain settings, but not be able to pay attention at all in other settings. And this has to do with what's going on in your brain and your prefrontal cortex in particular when you have ADHD, which we will get to in a moment. But hyperfocus is present for me. I can hyperfocus and get lost in my work. I can hyperfocus when I have to give a speech. I literally have those blinders on that horses wear the big Clydesdales. I have tunnel vision when I have to do something like that. It's like the rest of the world does not exist. Now, when I'm done doing something like that, I have a complete collapse. I'm exhausted my brain, the gas tank is empty, but I can hyperfocus, which would make you think, well, then you don't have ADHD.
(37:59):
Well, here's the rub on it. ADHD is not the inability to focus. That's not what it is. ADHD is a disorder in your brain that impacts your prefrontal cortex. And the two jobs that the prefrontal cortex must do around attention itself. And we will get into this because attention is both being able to tune out or suppress external and internal noise. And it is also the ability to ramp up parts of your brain so that you can focus on something effectively. And so it's way more than just paying attention to something. It requires a bunch of switching in your brain in terms of which network your brain is using. And we're going to dig into that. Don't worry. Second sign. That is a lesser known sign of adult ADHD, difficulty controlling your emotions. Lemme say that again. Difficulty controlling your emotions. See, what happens is that you, when you struggle with ADHD, you're using up so much mental energy, trying to pay attention that there's no gas in the tank to be able to tolerate the emotions of being frustrated or tired.
(39:26):
It's why I would snap at my kids all the time. It's why I would get this tone of voice when I'm frustrated with something and I just can't deal anymore. It's why I would get really emotional with myself and erupt at myself. Why the fuck did you forget her birthday again? What is wrong with you? She's your best fucking friend. Why haven't you bought Christmas presents yet? Why do you leave everything to the last minute? You missed that deadline again? So being eruptive at myself as well, the third really surprising sign of adult, ADHD, and boy do I have this one in spades, impulsive shopping and overspending. It's like you're blind to it, and you get this huge rush for buying something, and then all of a sudden you realize that was stupid and you didn't need it. And this has to do with what Dr.
(40:13):
Amen, who's one of the world's leading experts on the brain says, is your attempt to stimulate your brain with a dopamine rush? So shopping isn't the only addictive behavior. A lot of adults that have ADHD and it's not properly being managed have a problem with drinking drugs, other addictions, impulsive behaviors, all tied to the structural issue with the prefrontal cortex. The fourth surprising sign is time blindness. Time blindness. You're terrible with time management. I am terrible with time management. I'm constantly late. I keep myself on track with reminders on my phone. I am the last person to get in the car for our family. I am always a minute late to the call. As hard as I try to be on time, it feels impossible to me. Another surprising sign is that many people with ADHD are actually very high functioning. On the outside, you look like a workaholic. You look very successful. Or if you're not working, you're just one of those people that's super duper, duper, duper busy. But here's the thing, you're busyness and your workaholism is scattered all over the place. And that desire to keep your mind busy is also due to the fact that you have problems in your prefrontal cortex suppressing the noise that is going on outside and also the noise going on with your critical voice. And finally, this leads me to the big one.
(41:54):
Adults with ADHD tend to be highly, highly, highly self-critical. You assume you're always screwing up. You constantly beat yourself up for not being able to do simple things. You're worried that you're disappointing everybody. You're wondering why it looks effortless for everybody else but you. And this is the default mode of what your own inner dialogue sounds like. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Mel Robbins. I got all six. I spent decades of my life beating myself up. Let me just explain some of the ways this played out in my life, because I think this'll give you an insight into what you may be dealing with if this is in fact you. So in relationships, I was plagued, p
Mel Robbins (42:42):
Plagued for 50 years with feeling like I'm not a good enough friend. I'm not a good enough girlfriend. I'm not a good enough sister. I'm not a good enough mom or wife that I should have sent more care packages.
(42:57):
Why can't I remember birthdays? Why am I always missing the signup date for school conferences for this, for that? Why am I always arriving late for pickup? If I were better at this or a better person like this plagued me. It plagued me. And here's the thing, now that I'm diagnosed with it, I still do this shit if I don't put the systems in place. And what did that mean for me? Well, when it comes to birthdays, here's what it meant. I care about birthdays. I feel like an asshole when I miss somebody's birthday. And so I spent an entire day cross-checking Facebook, which is where most people's birthdays are, and putting them on repeat in my Google calendar. And then that worked sort of. But I realized when the thing goes off on the day of somebody's birthday, it just makes me remember to call them or text them. But there are people in my life I'd like to send a present to. So by failing again for a year,
Mel Robbins (43:55):
I realized I need to go a step further and put a week before notification that goes off so I have time to actually get a present or a card in the mail. And so you start to set up systems because you realize this is just not the way your brain works. It's just not wired to remember this shit. And that's okay. That's okay. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I just thought I was a shitty friend. I just thought everybody else figured this out, but me. Another thing work. When I look back at my work history, holy moly, I am a horrendous employee. Unless I'm in an environment where I can move all over the place, I cannot work in an office.
(44:36):
Why? Well, because I can't shh the horns over there. I have this problem where if my kids are two rooms away from me and they're listening to TikTok videos, it's as if they're blaring them in my ears. I can't suppress that noise around me. And so any job that I had in an office, I wanted to die because I could hear everybody at all times. I could hear the door, I could hear the elevator ding. I did not know that this was ADHD. I just thought I had super ears or something. I thought everybody heard like this. And so when I think about the jobs where I was really successful, I was moving around waitressing, loved, waitressing, bartending. Oh, I loved bartending, working at Legal Aid when I was a criminal defense attorney for legal aid in 1994 as a young lawyer, I loved that job because I would start the day in my office, I'd walk across the street to the court at a hundred Canal Street.
(45:30):
I'd be in court, bopping around all day. I'd be out to Rikers, I'd be back to the office. It was always changing. That was beautiful for my brain. What I do now, beautiful for my brain. No day is the same. I excel in what we do now because I am working in a place that works for this kind of brain school. I've already explained to you disaster. Absolute disaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I got into Dartmouth. So I scored really well in the SATs, and I came from a tiny town in Michigan, and not a lot of kids applied there. In fact, nobody had ever applied there. But I was the queen of all-nighters, the queen of procrastination. I can look back now and realize why I almost failed this big engineering class at Dartmouth. It's because there were 400 kids in the class.
(46:16):
I couldn't pay attention. I couldn't organize myself. I was time blind. I missed out on so much because I was so busy thinking that I was a failure. And why couldn't I get this and why couldn't I organize 'em? Why couldn't I read on time? I don't even know how I got through law school, daily life clutter everywhere. Literally, papers everywhere. Kleenexes blow my nose, put 'em on a counter. Overspending. Does this sound familiar? You kind of overspend to compensate for other things you feel bad about yourself. So you buy a new outfit or you forgot to take something to the dry cleaner, and now you don't have a dress to wear. So you got to quickly order a dress, but then you don't like the dress. This is my life. And then the credit card bill comes, and you didn't think that far, this was my life.
(47:03):
I should be the poster child for the container store. Because until we did the episode that we recently did about decluttering versus organizing, I just thought if I just bought more baskets and I made everything look pretty, then I would be organized. But the truth is I just have too much clutter because my mind doesn't organize. And so you have to declutter before you can organize. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. But I think the biggest thing for me, and why I wanted to talk to you about this is because of the heightened impact of the negative self-talk. See, that's the thing that I was never able to suppress until recently. The critical, relentless voice that I constantly had harping in my ear, constantly criticizing what I wasn't doing. I had no clue this was related to ADHD. And the most important aspect of dealing with ADHD for myself is not to make myself wrong for it and not to hate the ADHD.
(48:13):
Think about it this way. If you got diagnosed with diabetes, does it help you to hate diabetes? No. You basically say, oh, thank God I know because now I can help myself. Now I can do things to regulate insulin. Now I can do things to make sure that I am happy and healthy, and I have a long successful life. And that's the way that I feel about ADHD. If you understand it and you know what it is, you can empower yourself to live with it, to have all the great things about it, to laugh at yourself when the stuff happens. That always happens with me, and to really take proactive steps to embrace it and to cope in a positive way. There are so many interventions and modalities that help whether you're going to explore medications which I've done...
Mel Robbins (49:06):
Which have been life-changing. I mean, when I got diagnosed with ADHD and I dug into it and started researching it, I immediately started tapering off anxiety medication like this explains everything. And I went on long acting Adderall. It changed my freaking life because all of a sudden I could go, shh. All of a sudden, I could direct my attention where I needed it to go. And I don't need it in every environment. I don't take it on the weekends. I don't really care if the orchestra's playing. And in certain environments, like whenever I have to give a keynote address and I'm standing backstage, I would never, ever take Adderall on that day. And here's why. The adrenaline that I feel, it's the neuro adrenaline. That's another way you can say that word. I can't say neurore or whatever. The adrenaline that hits your brain, your prefrontal cortex, the go go go of that, it makes the conductor work. I literally have blinders on. And so the adrenaline in that situation makes the switching of the conductor in my brain, everything around me.
(50:10):
I don't even hear the event happening. I literally am so focused on what I'm about to go do that the environment provides the chemical release that stimulates my brain to do what I need it to do. So stimulants have been wildly effective for me and effective for one of our kids, not all of our kids. And it pegs the question, why is it that a stimulant is effective for somebody that has something in their brain that makes them fidgety or makes them distracted? What has to do with the blood flow and the neurotransmitters in your brain, which I'm not going to explain to you right now. We'll bring on a full expert like Dr. Ned Hollowell, who is the world's leading expert on ADHD. He's the goat he wrote, driven to distraction. We can bring on Dr. Amon who is scanned all the brains and can tell you why so many people with ADHD seek a dopamine dump rush from overspending or drinking or some of the other kind of not so great behaviors, but we'll have an expert explain that.
(51:17):
But one of the things that I think is really interesting is that it's important if you think that this is something going on with either a son or a daughter, that you get this looked at by a professional. Because studies after study in the last five years have said and concluded that children with ADHD in particular have far, far, far better outcomes later in life if they are treated for ADHD when they're kids. And they think that this is due to the fact that the stimulants and the dopamine and the neuro or the, I can't say the damn word, like neuro nephro adrenaline or whatever the hell it's called, I can't even say it, that the adrenaline and the dopamine accelerates neuroplasticity. And so there's some theories out there that not only does it have better mental health outcomes, particularly for girls, because when you treat this properly, whether you're doing it, I think behavioral therapy, combination of medication, if that's the right thing, which can be tricky or other, more natural supplements if that's what you care about.
(52:41):
Caffeine is something that a lot of parents give their kids instead of some of the other stimulants. That's a deeply personal choice. But I think it's important to know that kids not treated with drugs and behavioral therapy when they have ADHD have a higher tendency toward addiction and not great outcomes versus the kids with ADHD who are treated with drugs
Mel Robbins (53:06):
And with natural stimulants and behavioral therapy. And this is research in the last five years. I think it's important to say that I'm not telling you what to do, but in order to save your daughter from the profoundly negative impacts of ADHD on psychology and on anxiety and depression and eating disorders, there's a tremendous number of coexisting diagnoses when ADHD is present. This is something I want you to take seriously and dig into and learn about and get educated about.
(53:38):
And the best place to start is your pediatrician. If you're an adult going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, this is me. This is me, this is my sister, this is my daughter, this is my boss, this is my colleague, this is my friend. Great. Send them this episode. Attached to this episode, like all episodes, is a plethora of resources. And one of the resources that we are going to link to is a self-assessment. This is not how you get diagnosed with ADHD, but this is how you can learn more about ADHD and sort of the surprising symptoms and impacts so that you are more empowered to go seek something. And I would start with your general practitioner and ask them where to go. That's the best place to start. Or with a therapist. You can also start with a lot of the online talk therapy platforms, and we've talked a lot about the research showing the lost generation of women, of which I feel like the founding member, that if you are between the ages of, I'm just going to say 20 and 75, you may be in this generation of women who were either called a tomboy or called aggressive or called scattered or daydreamy who are really, really hard on yourself.
(54:58):
You developed anxiety or depression or an eating disorder, and you've always wondered what the hell is wrong with you? I'm encouraging you, if any of this was resonant, please go talk to your primary care doctor. Alright, that's a lot. I feel like the gas tank in my brain, is it empty? So I am going to get up and go for a walk outside. I cannot wait to hear your reaction to this episode. I know that you're going to share your stories, and I would love to do a ton more episodes about this. I want to talk about the medications out there and what they do and why, and how they impact your prefrontal cortex. I would love to dig more into non medicine, prescription drug, whatever, non-stimulant interventions. And again, I know I've said this a number of times, I'm not trying to diagnose you at all, okay?
(55:47):
I'm not a doctor. I feel like I'm an expert in this topic because of lived experience. I have watched our daughters and our son struggle. I have lived the struggle, and I feel so much more empowered now that I know what I'm dealing with. And I think the benefits now that I can address it effectively and in a healthy way far outweigh having a normal brain an on ADHD brain. And I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I sure as hell wish I would've known about this sooner because I know it would have prevented unnecessary headaches and heartaches and suffering in my life. And I would like to think that it would have helped me make way healthier and more empowering choices, particularly when I was struggling profoundly during college and law school. I'll just leave it at that. Okay? I love you. I don't want to forget to say that in case nobody else tells you today, your friend, Mel Robbins, loves you.
(56:57):
I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. I'll talk to you in a few days. Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.
Key takeaways
If you can hyperfocus for hours but feel totally scattered the rest of the time, that laser intensity may actually be a surprising symptom of adult ADHD.
When your inner voice is brutal, always asking what’s wrong with you, that constant self-criticism may be the most damaging symptom of undiagnosed ADHD.
If you’re exhausted after everyday tasks, it’s because your brain burns extra energy trying to suppress distractions and can’t efficiently direct focus.
Girls with ADHD often seem dreamy or disorganized, but the real danger is how they turn that struggle inward and develop shame, anxiety, or self-loathing.
You may think you’re just a chronic procrastinator or a bad friend, but your forgetfulness and emotional overwhelm could be signs of prefrontal cortex dysfunction.
Resources
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- The Guardian: Read about the “lost generation” of women with ADHD.
- Vogue: Why a rising number of women are being diagnosed with ADHD.
- Check out Dr. Ed (Ned) Hallowell’s book, Driven to Distraction.
- TED: Dr. Ed (Ned) Hallowell describes how ADHD is a Ferrari in your brain.
- Read more of the research from Dr. Ellen Littman and colleagues here.
- Dr. Daniel Amen has a brain quiz on his page that I really like.
- Here is a self-assessment that you could bring to your doctor’s appointment.
- ADDA: Foods to eat and avoid when you have ADHD.
- Dr. Ed Hallowell: Exercising an ADHD brain.
- The Atlantic: Exercise is ADHD medication.
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