5 Simple Tricks to HACK Your ADHD - Dr James Kustow

don't forget the D of ADHD automatically implies that the person has significant impairment Dr James custa the brilliant mind behind how to thrive with ADHD I think I'm getting better at unmasking do you have any advice for someone who have spent years and years and years pretending to be someone that they're not when you are super sensitive to rejection there are personality shifts that take place and they fit into three main categories as far as I can see one is people pleasing you don't want to ruffle feathers because you you don't want to get rejected

the other one is avoidance if I don't do it I won't be judged enough if I don't go to the party no one will reject me the third one is perfectionism and I think that is to protect yourself from being judged negatively I know for a fact that there's going to be lots of people listening nodding their head at what you just said but what's the solution one of the solutions is and when you stop beating yourself up and not feeling guilty all the time and shameful all the time there's nothing to feel shameful about

this episode is dedicated to anyone who can give someone their perfect eye contact or their undivided attention but never both at the same [Music] time this sponsored ad was agreed to be 90 seconds long but because I know most of you have ADHD I negotiated it down to 89 seconds I challenge you to test your ADHD by seeing if you can sit still for 1 minute 30 seconds while I tell you about our sponsor Teemo app if I can sit down and record take after take of this message message for 2 hours that I'm sure

you can listen to 90 seconds so here's a short word from our sponsor Teemo app is a perfectly tailored app that I use daily and maybe it's worth you giving it a try to see how it might improve organizing your life too running a podcast is actually a lot harder than you might think and juggling all of the moving Parts would be near impossible if it weren't for Teemo app how well Teemo is designed specifically to hack the neurode Divergent brain a brain that might struggle with time agnosia object permanence memory cognitive load task initiation

anxiety or procrastination all things I'm extremely guilty of too and how on Earth does it help you Alex I hear you scream impatiently at your computer or phone screens well the award-winning Teemo app is the perfect life hacking tool to help your time management and kick you up the bum when you need it most if you want to stay ahead of the competition then the visual planning Teemo app is specifically designed to help your structuring organizing focusing and goal setting it has a visual timer providing a tangible and visual representation of time to help users

paste themselves so you never miss a deadline ever again it also has an efficient lock screen reminder service to alert those of you who are very out of sight out of mind with your chores and Afraid you might forget them It brilliantly Centers all of your tasks in one place across devices both on a web and mobile apps to streamline your overflowing schedules and make them much more digestible and a lot less intimidating and for those who find big tasks too overwhelming to even start Teemo breaks them down into more manageable subtasks to get the

ball rolling in fact this app helps me so much that it actually reminded me to record this message to advertise the app give it a go why not it might just help anyway back to the episode James thank you so much for joining us my pleasure good to be here I'm incredibly excited about this episode because your book how to thrive with adult ADHD I think is going to genuinely help so many people um and I'm excited to hear you share some of your tips today before we get into the meat of the episode I

want to reveal your ADHD item I ask all my guests to bring in an item that most represents HD for them and you've chosen an owl an Night Owl a night ow I have indeed so we're going to talk about that a little bit later on Okie doie that's fine I'm enjoying seeing the rest of the items here it's great these are all the items of past guests in the hour we'll join those is there a displacement of energy in someone with ADHD in which they use energy in places that a neurotypical person might not

not and is there a knock-on effect of their physical health because of this it's amazing you know I talked um well I think it was before we went on on camera but uh I have developed a model for understanding ADHD I think much better than the existing model which we use which is actually the model that we use to diagnose ADHD which is different from how best to understand it uh my models um well the 10 domains of disregulation it's basically understanding ADHD as a a disorder and I use that word cautiously I think I

believe that ADHD when it's when it causes problems is a disorder I know a lot of people don't agree with that I also see it as I can see it in from a sort of social construct perspective as well but um you know I I often see people who have a lot of disorder in their lives um but when you see it as a an issue of Regulation and I've like highlighted 10 separate domains that get disregulated and one of them interestingly the last one is energy expenditure and arousal and again it's an area that

we don't really talk about a lot in ADHD but many people with ADHD have a sort of boom and bust pattern they're like really push it hard and that the brakes aren't on again and then exhaust themselves and then crash I'm always amazed actually at the staying power of people with ADHD it's unbelievable um but without a doubt the way energy is managed um partly because of the excitability and the impulsivity and the hyperactivity and the disregulation it all feeds into disregulated energy the way the body deals with energy the boom and bus cycle there

you mentioned very relatable I think lots of people listening will have you know a graveyard of domains they've got very excited about an idea a business project whatever it might be a new hobby perhaps spent a fortune but the energy has fizzled out they've gone all in but they they've been unable to sustain that momentum and there is humor there occasionally but I think what we see is a lot of Shame and a lot of guilt when that pattern repeats especially as you enter into adulthood and you sort of can see this trend this boom

and bus cycle and you lose confidence in your ability to to see anything through because you've got all this evidence behind you have you seen undiagnosed ADHD impact a person's mental health and then their consequently their physical health have I seen it I think ADHD that don't forget the D of ADHD automatically implies that the person has significant impairment and that impairment functional disturbance that impairment can be in a whole wide range of domains and it it's you know it's of often expresses itself in the form of other mental health problems there's a characteristic cluster

depression and anxiety disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders but without a doubt and particularly untreated ADHD I think that people use up a huge amount of energy to stay on par with their peers their colleagues they um will stay up much later at night to get work done and there's a huge amount of energy used in masking and I I I don't know anyone with ADHD that doesn't really relate to that concept of masking now in your teens and your 20s and even in your 30s that energy expenditure that sort of extra compensatory you know um

energy usage uh you know is absorbed is like you can cope with it but I think as you get towards the end of your 30s and into your 40s I think the strain starts showing in lots of people when you were talking about masking I was reflecting on my own journey of what I now know to be masking and I look back and I can see infinite occasions where I completely change who I was shapeshift completely mirror someone's personality their interests their tone of voice sometimes there was no awareness of self really and I think

the consequence of that is you don't have any self-confidence because how can you have self-confidence if you don't know who you are I'm I think I'm getting better at unmasking do you have any advice for someone who's at that stage in their Journey they they they might just becoming aware that they've spent years and years and years pretending to be someone that they're not they're exhausted they want to peel back some of the layers where does someone start when they're at that stage first of all I think it's better to think of rather like anal

an orange is the analogy rather than layers like taking the orange peel off and revealing the true self I'm much more excited the concept of segments that you have different parts of yourself and in different situations you express those parts um in different ways you know the feeling and when you with certain friends you're really funny and you can you know and other friends you're really serious and depressed um so uh I think very very often this this uh these manyi traumas that people collect along the way um in a life with ADHD unrecognized ADHD

many of those traumas are underpinned by an Exquisite sensitivity to rejection and I think um this is only just emerging now now as a thing and it's not actually a thing yet either because it's not been studied or proven in any shape but it's a concept rejection sensitive dysphoria and I think one of the the reason I'm bringing it up now is because when you are super sensitive to rejection I've I've noticed I've seen I've experienced that there are personality shifts that take place and they fit into three main categories as far as I can

see one is people pleasing and get into the habit of taking the least of the root of least resistance you don't want to ruffle feathers you don't want to because you don't want to get rejected so you make it really easy for the people that you're around and you neglect your own um needs the other one is avoidance if I don't do it I won't be judged on it if I stay away if I don't go to the party no one will reject me the third one is perfectionism and so many adults so many everyone

with ADHD um will understand this this idea of needing to get it really perfect and I think that is to to protect yourself from being judged negatively and I think over time these cause problems like in the short term it feels like um the right thing to do you know you protect yourself but what I've learned is that any time there's a fear or phobia of something and you avoid it in whatever way the phobia grows the thing gets worse and I think um I think I think the simply understanding that sensitivity to rejection issue

goes a huge way to sort of make ah this is RSD and then suddenly you can avert it you can pick up the early signs of it you can um you can actually share that you have this funny thing with people because otherwise you go you spiral into this either this sort of dissociated freaked out state that can last for hours full of anxiety or cut off or get really angry with yourself for letting yourself down or with other people for shaming you or showing you up it's a really big problem and I think so

many of the um so much of the emotional baggage that gets collected along the way is linked to that and it's amazing the emotional symptoms the emotional disregulation symptoms of ADHD they're not even the criteria for diagnosing ADHD that's how unfit for purpose they are I know for a fact that there there's going to be lots of people listening um nodding their head at what you just said and thinking that's me and this is probably a very oversimplified question but what's the solution one of the solutions is knowledge understanding that this is what happens um

and look I think it's about surrounding yourself with people who get you um um and establishing a really solid mindset and I refer it's the first of Seven Pillars it's um basically uh nurture a growth oriented mindset so you need to know that you're going to trip up regularly with ADHD there's no doubt about it you're going to have mishaps and mistakes and and I think how you de with that is so important if you pick yourself up and go oh well there you go my that's my ADHD again and dust yourself off and then

stride on confidently Having learned a lesson that I'll do it differently next time and most importantly I will not beat myself up I'm not going to give myself a hard time and I'm also not going to tolerate anyone else giving me a hard time and I'm definitely not going to use it as an ADHD as an excuse if people really need to understand why I messed up then I'll explain it I'll explain it but not excuse it so um having a really uh having a mindset that that never ever ever self- deprecates there's no self-deprecation

um in my life anymore ever and it's one of the first things I'll teach people I work with is it's just not acceptable to just those little you know those um what's it end of end of little sense oh I'm such an idiot or what a fool or oh there I go again it's none of it it's not it's just not good for you and when you stop beating yourself up you start carrying yourself with more pride and not feeling guilty all the time and shameful all the time there's nothing to feel shameful about you

know this different brain has pros and cons and um you just need to learn to work with it like any instrument the rejection sensitivity dysphoria for me it's been at various stages of my life completely debilitating and I like just don't like the word disorder but there are sometimes in my life relationships Jobs family encounters that in those situations because of RSD it has been very disorderly and very debilitating if someone's relates to that and they really struggle in their relationship with rejection or perceived criticism to the point where it really causes explosive arguments real

big problems if someone's in the in the moment they've just been triggered the partners they've taken something a comment the wrong way do you have any advice for someone in that very specific moment just as they're feeling that intense internal visceral reaction so I think it's important that the individual with ADHD and their partner have discussed this issue and learned about it first and then the moment it's activated even to have have like a code word just to sort of flag up I've been I've been triggered I I often will like a switch I've been

triggered I'm going to I'm going to take some time out Changing State like changing room going outside getting fresh air not say not like closing down the issue saying very clearly you know we need to talk about this but I'm you're not going to get the best of me right now go and have a state change glass of water's sometimes quite good I really like tapping um a technique that I introduced in the book um for regulating emotions is without doubt without doubt all my years of learning so many different approaches it's the it's the

most quick and effective tool for changing your state I will go off I will go off somewhere quiet I'll do some tapping I'll breathe um and I'll come back but what's really also very interesting about the scenario you describe and it I mean relationships uh are complicated anyway but a relationship where one individual has um ADHD or other forms of neurodiversity can be super challenging and very characteristic patterns develop um but the um the one of the most important things to recognize is that when uh when people with ADHD get aroused in a sort of

angry way and stressed way that adrenaline that's being released is actually treating their ADHD in a in a slightly unhealthy and um inefficient way but that burst of adrenaline that comes with the anger and the shouting it might not feel very nice in that moment but the calm after the storm is what they're after and they have no idea that it's not about the Dust bins it's about recognizing unconsciously that by getting aroused or angry or into an argument that in about 15 minutes later I'm going to feel focused regulated and calm and again once

you know that then you can stop yourself from using up all that energy and you don't really want to be activating your stress system continually in order to treat your ADHD which unfortunately is what a lot a lot of people do and the people pleasing piece um you mentioned people pleasing before again I know it's a um a big topic within the community I think many people would probably want to get better at saying no and putting boundaries in place to to build some kind of fence of of of self-love around themselves do you have

any advice for someone who wants to get better at at saying no putting boundaries in place being less of a people pleaser sure well I think it develops because people fall into the Trap of thinking that if I say yes if I take on this project you know I'll somehow make up for all of my previous inadequacies they won't see me in a bad light and I'll prove but what actually happens is a very clear message gets sent to the other person that you're you're allowing yourself to get sort of walked over you're not standing

your ground you're not putting up boundaries and not everyone but some people will take advantage of that and I think right from the very beginning and this is also a mindset thing you've got to you got to respect yourself and respect your views and respect your ability to say no maybe but or to take time out sleep on it that's my little line take time take a moment to sleep on it to reflect on it try not to get into that impulsive yeah I'll do that I always pause and I say okay let me have

a think about it make sure I've got all the right information come home discuss it with my my wife and very often it will be no it's not a good idea it's not a good idea definitely not a good idea at the moment so yeah and it's a mixture between getting the mindset right loving yourself but also not falling into the belief that you're in some way repairing your your previous mistakes it just doesn't work in your practice um do you notice a theme in terms of the time of life some someone comes to you

um suspecting they might have ADHD do you notice a theme in what sort of age range do you see a concentration of people coming to you in I do actually end of the first year of University and I know not everyone goes to University but just the concept's important and it's very much because someone who has just lived at home and gone to school and then perhaps you know finished their their a levels and then is perhaps going off to University is leaving a very scaffolded environment schools often you know a lot of structure and

you told what to do and when to eat and meals are provided and at home the same thing happens Mom or Dad washes your clothes and makes your meals and then suddenly you're off to a random room with a shared kitchen and and uh gradually over the first year things just deteriorate uh sleep goes off use of substances and alcohol goes up work doesn't get done um and then when it comes to those final exams there's massive decompensation often the individual say I'm just not going to do the exams and then it becomes so what

are we going to do now are you going to repeat the year are you going to try and catch up so often people will present at that time and it really really reinforces how important the environment is how important the structures around you you know if you have ADHD and your internal world is quite chaotic your job is to create the structure and and the stability around you because internally it's lacking the regulations off so you got to Prov you got to have external regulation in some way systems structures you got to have you got

to have a you got to have a day that's that's balanced and that's got order and it's got routine in it as well habits are very important in ADHD now when you when you try and make change behavior and bring in a new habit new something to change it it very often fails you know you do it for the week or especially in ADHD do it for a week or two and motivation goes um but when you do manage to bring in that habit and I think the concept of habit stacking is really really useful

the idea of taking an existing habit that's in place and latching onto it a new habit which is really really effective by the way um when you start building more and more routine in like your morning routine and your evening routine and one thing's linked to the other thing linked to the other thing suddenly you've actually only got you set up your morning and your evening you've only got a limited period in between to order and manage in in a different way and that's like blocking time and how do you deal with tasks so I

think um bringing in more structure but it's got to be structure with variation if it's just too structured and routined and boring you'd get bored of it as well so I used to change the way I went went to work when I got a bit bored I work one day in an office in a like a clinic and one day at home I just you need to have variation but you also need to have structure and I think the more rooted in you can have certain healthy habits including meal times and downtime and exercise time

the more routined it is the more likely it is to hold and um so yeah that's a big piece that's a really important piece the whole university piece I find fascinating because I went to University when I moved to University it was almost like the scaffolding my support structure around me had fallen apart I no longer lived with my parents I no longer went to school where I was told where to be I had to go to class and when I went to University I I fell into social media and I became obsessed with that

but I could not focus on my University work and I got kicked out within the first year but I've spoken to a lot of people with ADHD and including yourself who have a degree have qualifications that many people would look at and think they're super impressive so what what is just has someone like you done differently in that environment of University that someone like myself didn't do well in um I worked bloody hard I I I worked so hard and I worked so much more than other people I didn't know I didn't know I had

ADHD then I just couldn't really understand I actually didn't think I was bright enough and I just had had to work much harder but I didn't realize that my mind was just drifting off and it was taking me longer and any reading was just really hard work needed to have multiple highlighters and annotating as I went along with arrows coming out everywhere I recorded it sang it I made pneumonics I I found every possible strategy for trying to reduce or minimize my symptoms I also took a significant amount of pro plus I don't think Red

Bull was here at that stage I could only get it in Thailand at that time I think but I took a lot of Pro Plus um I had no idea why I needed so much Pro Plus and I needed to work through the night before all of my medical school exams and it really really hit you when I had two exams a day for the whole week CU you just couldn't do that all night I think so I think it's a combination of working really hard really struggling at times um balancing um really putting a

lot of emphasis on Sports so I played a lot of rugby and for me I didn't even know at the time but that was my way of just releasing energy um but it wasn't straightforward it wasn't straightforward I knew what I was good at and what I wasn't good at and I did a bit of masking I tried to excel in the things that I was good at and I really just scraped the Barrel in the other areas and uh yeah I think a lot of I did that throughout school as well impairment shows in

all sorts of different ways for for me I mean I don't don't need to go into all the finer details of of where the struggle's been but it was there was social Social Challenges at various stages um I uh you know i' I'd get I'd get completely absorbed in things and then move on to the next thing but over time I started even though I didn't have a name for it I was just permanently working on it and just not being able to yeah hiding it really working on it really really hard and I don't

think it it became that much easier the struggle was there and that energy use as I said was fine then I could deal with that but later on I started feeling it was taking its toll and that was the main reason why I thought well when I worked out what it was I thought is absolutely appropriate for me to treat this I think you know it's one of the biggest myths I think that's great to debunk is that people with ADH d uh just need to work harder and I think like you've just perfectly explained

with your experience of University we work bloody hard often harder than a lot of people to achieve the same results even if that's just masking the amount of energy and and hard work that requires just to just to stay at base level um but that hyperfocus I just I mean I never I could literally just Zone in for hours it's just not good for you to do it that long I wouldn't recommend medical SCH to many people with ADHD why is ADHD do you think so objectively hard to prove to a cynic who might not

think it's a legitimate diagnosis well I think everyone knows what the experience is to be a bit inattentive everyone has been at times impulsive or distracted it's not like psychosis um you know delusions and hallucinations are clearly abnormal features when you see something like that you see that there's an issue it's about degree it's about how problematic um these these features of in attention you know I think I think people think just because it's not an abnormal type symptom in itself it must not be true but it's about the degree Verity the persistence the recurrence

how intense how disabling it is and it's very interesting to see how this cluster of features comes together when mean you look at the criteria and you think how do these things all link together and I didn't really understand how they link together for a long time it's all about regulation it's all about that every symptom in ADHD or every feature of ADHD can be explained through a disre a model of disregulation whether it's sleep you know the Circadian rhythm is disregulated in ADHD biologically disregulated the immune system in ADHD there's increasing evidence that there's

immune disregulation um higher levels of allergies and autoimmunity and sensitivities and food intolerances the the S sensory processing systems disregulated the reward systems disregulated every single symptom in ADHD can be understood in those terms um and it makes it much easier to communicate about what this thing is because rather than saying attention deficit what about the people who can hyperfocus for 6 hours it's not just attention deficit and so it shouldn't be in the name but if you see it as a disregulation of attention you can explain both the attention deficit and the hyper Focus

it's just too much regulation or too little breaks on too much or breaks off you know the problem with Hyper focus is not that you can't latch on it's that you can't detach and it's a really I mean as well as being an amazing tool if you know how to use it it's a highly impairing symptom and if someone distracts you when you're in the middle of a hyper Focus very angry very angry the rage yes so might not be able to get back in no exactly PS you away from it you must get frustrated

then if if you hear someone say ADHD doesn't exist what would you say to someone who says that well as a discrete entity I don't think it does exist I think it's a constellation it's on a spectrum it's a bit like blood pressure this is a great answer to your previous question as well you know we all have a pressure in our blood system um at some point when it reaches a certain point it becomes problematic um and then you have hypertension or high blood pressure the cluster of features that presents as ADHD you know

features of disregulation at some point it becomes problematic and uh the fact that this very characteristic cluster forms that you see it you see the same sorts of difficulties in a particular group tell tells me that it's a thing but is it a discrete entity which has one cause and one uh you know one model to explain it now I think it's the final common pathway of potentially lots of different things um things that involve the physical body much more than we think that it does I mean we understand it's very centered on the brain

there's a lot of evidence to show it's a it's a it's a brain disorder but it's also a very iic problem and I and I know that because I've spent the last 15 years looking at the physical health comorbidity the physical health problems that clustered together with ADHD I've discovered some crazy stuff so out of everything you've learned about ADHD and all of the new research you've done what are the three biggest myths around ADHD you would like to debunk today well there's the obvious ones aren't there that it's like an invented condition for pharmaceutical

companies um that it is a childhood disorder the childhood childhood bad behavior there poor parenting these things are just ridiculous you know ADHD is actually the second most genetic mental health condition it's far more genetic than depression it's literally it's how genetic something is you know is measured it's measured with a sort of statistical it's it's a heritability it's a it's a percent percentage or it's and ADHD is like way up there in the 70s um so it it's very genetic which means that but that those genes might be coding for all sorts of different

things they're not just the neuros psychiatric expression but same genes might be causing 50% of people with ADHD to be hypermobile to have LAX joints to have abnormal connective tissue that might explain the whole lot with with your patients do you do you notice or do you diagnose a change in their mental health after you've given them a reason for certain behaviors in their life enormous like that that well that normally what happens is they have a light bulb moment way before they come to see you in the clinic they either watch something or read

something or put the pieces together I had that moment in my own story it was quite a profound moment and then it was months before I actually got into by that point people have done their research and they've leared about they've understood it and they um so there's different stages actually getting the DI realizing that it's probably what it is is one stage that's an amazing thing wow it all makes sense getting the diagnosis you know it's often been quite a battle to get there you might been on a waiting list for three years and

um and it's it's it's a validation that you it's not your fault it's not your fault and that this is to do with genetics and body and brain um and then often if people decide to go down the medication route that moment where their brain is regulated for the first time because that's what the meds do they boost up dopamine and noradrenaline across the brain or or in the frontal part of the brain which is B basally pumping energy into the regulatory centers of the brain and they go it's like putting glasses on for the

first time that's a profound moment and then often people are in this honeymoon phase where they think I'm going to be fine now it's going to be perfect I I've got you know I've got my diagnosis I've got my meds and uh you know it's all going to be fine I've sorted it but it's not fine because it's you know meds are effective but there's a whole load of extra work to do and actually that discrepancy between where the meds can take you if you take meds and actually what it takes to live really well

and to thrive with this thing is a big jump and within a Health Service a health system where there's limited resource it's absolutely appropriate that the focus should be F at first on diagnosis and at least offering medic because we got good evidence to show that it works very well but to think that's the job done is like Madness that's why I started the group program because it's resource um light but very impactful and you have an opportunity to look at all these different areas that are really important to work on in a social setting

so um and and I recognize that some people don't want to and don't can't tolerate meds and don't want to take them and so there has to be an approach that um is is very nuanced and comprehensive and very targeted towards you as an individual and your needs your sensory needs and your sleep issues and your nutritional issues and it's very tailored but uh it takes a lot of work to get there I want to talk about executive dysfunction um what it is how people can understand it and how people can thrive with it um

but first I want to draw attention back on the owl and ask you the nightl yes that that memory um nightow why is a nightow your ADHD item because so many people with ADHD go to bed late one there's a few things they go to bed late and they might do that because they're distracted and can't turn the series off or they you know appreciate the quiet of the late of night but one of the main reasons they do it is because their Cadian Rhythm their sleep wake cycle is literally shifted imagine you could take

the Sleep point and the Wake point and you just pick it up and move it across an hour or two an an hour about an hour that's literally the case so um people with with ADHD will naturally usually want to go to bed later and though it's interesting those late night hours um people sort of get lost in all sorts of different places there um and it has a real KnockOn effect because the rest of the world lives on neurotypical time and work starts at 9: now if you're going to bed at 2 and you're

having to get to work at 9:00 you will be AC crewing a big sleep deficit and that has a huge impact some people even believe that that might be Primary in some people as the primary cause you know these Pathways leading to ADHD that sleep the sleep disturbance might be the main Central issue everything builds off it the other reason that I think the nightow is a good analogy is because of this wide-eyed you know alert scanning the environment you know the owl that's looking and this wideeye thing we don't really uh discuss it enough

but individuals with ADHD often have autonomic nervous systems that are imbalanced people who don't know what the autonomic nervous system it's the one of the main one of the top I think one of top three stress systems in the in the body but it's this Balancing Act between on one side the stress system the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system and they're literally in an opposing Force One is adrenaline stress vital flight and the other one is the relaxation regeneration recovery relaxation and individuals with ADHD have higher rates of disautonomia which is dysfunction

of the autonomic nervous system in its most profound form disautonomia is linked to something called pots postural orthostatic tachicardia syndrome but for many people disautonomia presents with uh dizziness and light headedness on standing particularly when it's hot or coming out of a bath fainting more often it's assign the autonomic nervous systems not functioning optimally now when you are when your autonomic nervous system is imbalance towards the stress side you're going to be hypervigilant you're going to be wide eyed you're going to be scanning your environment for threats and I think that sort of image of

the owl scanning can actually go quite a long way to explain again in a different way the um it's not sensory now it's it's stress it's threat it's protection scanning the environment and this is where trauma and ADHD overlap because when you're traumatized you're also left in this Perpetual H hypervigilant thre Focus State and I think there's more over that between these two things than we give credit to we know that trauma is integrally linked to ADHD in many people there's evidence to show that early deprivation and and um like well various forms of adversity

in childhood uh can can drive an ADHD picture and the third reason I think the owl like I like the idea of it sort of flighty you know jumping off and moving on to the next tree so I just s captures it really nice and you bought a beautiful shiny blue and red gold owl very happy well I wanted to to to put the effort in to encapsulating the the item for you that's a brilliant description I'm just trying to work out where it will go in the in the on the shelves overlooking the studio

does it have a light inside it it does actually I've taken it out but I I can put it back on I'll put it there for now oh nice next to the bath and the beer lovely excellent I want to do the a drunk owl drunk owl yeah have a bath afterwards sitting in the bath weird visual isn't it yeah I want to do the ADHD Agony AR section um which is called The Washing Machine of woses because my item is the washing machine because I always forget my laundry in the machine do you forget

your laundry um I uh I I used to when I did the laundry my wife has realized that we don't like smelly clothes because I used to leave it always in on in the washing machine and I just can't bear it I should say I also used to before I started using the T app which is our sponsor every week I asked my Instagram Community to send send in their biggest wos their biggest ADHD wos it goes in the washing machine of w um and I read it out that's quite a good description of like

the ceaseless mental activity of of ADHD yeah yeah good visual I thought um so this week someone's asked my partner has ADHD and it's apparent in the way he is so emotional which can come out in arguments as aggression he however is a creative and would refer to this as passion but it's really in in but it's really interfering because I find it intimidating how can I explain this to him in a way that isn't demeaning I think this touched back to where we went earlier when we talked about the emotional disregulation and rejection sensitivity

because the chances are first of all I think it's uh I I think the the last bit of the question is interesting how can I explain this to him in a way that isn't demeaning I think he's got to be doing a lot of work to try and make sense of it as well but it's very likely that he is getting passionate as it's described um when he's getting triggered and um it's very likely that it's a perception of being sidelined teased ejected told off told you're not doing something right and he's reacting now some

people shut down and zone out and numb out and can't talk and other people get really really anxious visibly and some people get angry and I think that anger um is very often linked to this rejection Sensitivity I think also the regulation um disturbance uh I think often leads people including myself actually if I'm being honest not realizing how loud I'm speaking or how excited I'm getting um and I think to have that sort of quiet discussion like before it gets into the argument phase there's a little little sign that the non-adhd partner can give

to say you know like maybe we're getting a little bit over excited here and they've had the discussion that this is the pattern that happen then this is what it makes me feel like and I know you don't mean it but this is how it how it manifests and to try and stop it happening in the first place or nip it in the bud or detach but I think the IND the person with ADHD needs to shift um to to try and work out themselves if if they're not doing the work then I think the

partner has a right to a bit upset it's it's got to be able to take feedback and work with it you know when you get told something you know you get told something that's difficult to hear it's very easy to get defensive to take on the victim role and to start you know before the person's even finish telling them why they're wrong and you're right you know and it's like okay I've learn more and more to listen this is like I've got a section of a book about communication and some really top tips about to

really listen uh to not try and win CU compromise is the only way um not wait to speak but really listen and when you hear that you've overstep the mark and you you one knows when they've made a mistake or gone too far and I think when you um you know when you screw up you I think it's really important to own it say you're right I'm really sorry I didn't mean too and it just immediately diffuses it's immediately diffuses so I I think owning apologizing now what happens if the other person doesn't accept the

apology or carries on the argument at that point you can say okay I've done my bit I've really I've made my effort I'm not going to hold any of that I'm not going to take any of that now because I've I've really I've reflected and not I'm not it's not just sort of doing it for words sake I've you know you've got to really mean it and you got to reflect and think okay I'm going to try to do it differently strategies it's all about strategies and planning and preempting um but also owning and not

not hiding and not walking away from those situations with any resentment you clear it you discharge it as much as of course you're going to have situations where you take resentment forward and you can't help it but as much as possible deal with it Own It apologize and discharge because you you go through life holding on to these charges these mini traumatic things that aren't cleared they produce illness they will coales and cause mental and physical illness and addiction and they'll wear you down and and it's it's like you can think of big traumas but

you can also think of these many microtas so I think as I don't like to carry anything forward that's got a negative charge attached to it ever truly fascinating thank you so much for answering that so well okay good as if by Hollywood magic your book has appeared on the table um a big theme in the book is is executive dysfunction um very briefly what is executive dysfunction and how do I know if I've got executive dysfunction or if I'm just lazy and how can I explain this to my partner who might just think I'm

making excuses H it's a good question so it confuses a lot of people executive function and executive dysfunction so um I like to describe executive function as all the different cognitive or brain capacities that are needed to achieve a goal to make something happen that's not immediate it needs various facets of um of uh brain function to do that you need to be able to hold information in mind need to be able to stay connected and you need to have this sort of future perspective and pace something put you know organize it and manage it

and put these pieces together with this end point that's down the line problem is that the main issue in the main executive dysfunction in ADHD is affecting the ability to to achieve goals down the line it's to do with the future so that's why people with ADHD are often very in the moment um and that can be great in some ways I think it's quite interesting the in the moment thing because you also sort of forget stuff from the past and uh I think that um can be quite interesting I think that's one of the

reasons why addiction is quite problematic in ADHD because you forget the reason why you've stopped something just forget you're to in the moment so um what saying is that this idea of delaying gratification and seeing something that needs these various steps is interrupted and really the overarching problem that describes all the executive function issues is called inhibition or disinhibition that is the breaks if you don't have breaks you can't stay with things you get distracted Ed you can't hold off something that's rewarding now to have a later benefit you can't you're impulsive so you know

you're working on this thing that you for next week but something shiny comes up over there and you're off so all of the symptoms of ADHD that the hyperactivity is usually the breakes are on it's usually inhibited but when the brakes are off when there's dis inhibition it explains all of the symptoms of ADHD so a very simplistic way of understanding executive function is it that it's characterized by disinhibition a problem with inhibition that results in difficulties in achieving goals over time it pretty much explains all ADHD in one go very relatable if if someone's

listening and they relate like I heavily do to what you just said and they come to your practice and they say I don't just want to manage and survive with my ADHD I want to thrive a bit read my book exactly yeah what tools could you give that person um that's that asks you that question how can you thrive with ADHD well I think it goes back to what I said before it's about mindset it's about lifelong it's about a commitment to a commitment to growth personal growth um I think it's about clearing trauma because

it's really hard to thrive when you're carrying baggage so clearing trauma and there's very powerful and effective ways to clear trauma and interestingly they in my experience the best ways of processing trauma involve the body some sort of body stimulation whether it's tapping or eye movements or shaking even walking is very good actually so um I I think that uh having the right mindset commitment to lifelong change and looking after like treating yourself with respect is the foundation and then there's an incremental build from there and that's exactly what the Seven Pillars are the first

pillar is nurture a growth oriented mindset the second pillar go you guess what do you think is the next most important thing to get right in ADHD once you've got your mindset sorted what would you go to First gosh self-awareness all the self stuff is inside the mindsets there so it's uh it's it's sleep Anor your sleep because if you're not sleeping enough or if you have disrupted sleep or if you have sleep apnea where you stop breathing at night or you have restless leg syndrome or you have broism or you have nightmares which are

higher in ADHD then you are potentially going to just be like fighting a tide so getting good sleep practices that work well for people with ADHD and deal with that particular stuff is really important and so in the book the second pillar I collaborated with the top sleep specialist in the country an amazing psychiatrist called Dr Hugh celik and um we've collaborated for years now but we um you know I wrote the chapter with his guidance and and then it moves on to other steps and stages I mve to time and task management you know

get control of your time after that and then later stages and this is not necessarily in order but there's a nourish and move your body so nutrition and again although I am actually a nutrition I trained as a nutritionist many years ago not to be work as a nutritionist but to really understand this a bit better but I collaborated with an amazing nutritionist on that chapter so where where expertise is really required I've pulled it in and where I feel like I've got enough expertise myself I've just done and and it builds it builds like

that and I think it's about bringing in good practices so organizational practices so after your time and task management the focus needs to move to your environment you know from clutter and decluttering to how do you set up your your your Zone to work best for you things need to be visible you know things need to be there in front of you in ADHD yeah the when I adopted a massive whiteboard in my office was a game changer for my organization another big Topic in the book is emotional disregulation yeah could you explain exactly what

emotional disregulation is and how it might differ from sex to sex okay um so emotional disregulation so it's where the emotions are hotter and they move more so um someone with ADHD will shift their emotion State multiple times in an hour like and often excited and anxious and angry and scared and sad and it just changes much more the emotions are the same they just cycle a lot more there is a tendency to have a short fuse to have a low tolerance to frustration to you know erupt into anger more easily um and so emotional

regulation can actually come in so many different forms I actually um have been so interested in this for a long time and not just within ADHD but thinking about the multitude of ways you can regulate emotions through cognitive strategies like thinking strategies to body-based approaches even through nutrition how can you eat in and create a more regulated blood sugar and and more energy expenditure so regulation from many different angles but being able to regulate emotions well I think is the absolute Crux of living well with ADHD because you have to be you have to be

able to to to limit these fluctuations a bit and there's two strategies one is how do you bring yourself down when you've been activated that's one important thing to do what do you do in the moment where you know you're you're fuming and then there is what can you do like on a day-to-day basis to keep the system tuned up to keep to to to not trigger so easily to increase the Threshold at which you you get stressed and so the book's the largest pillar of the book it's the seventh pillar is regulate your emotions

and I introduce sort of six I think six different approaches and one of them yeah there's there's all sorts of different things tapping is is one of them and I really teach people at a granular level how to do this amazing technique um working with the sensory systems and other how do you modify your environment that works well for your sensory system um and that regulates you through that and my the most exciting one the one that I think I've brought to the table that I think is possibly will be one of the best things

I've ever created is something called solo Soma and um it actually started as something for myself and I only uh in the last few years have been sharing it wide more broadly but basically I could never do mindfulness practice in the in the traditional way of staying really still and listening or focusing on one thing I just got restless I couldn't do it and I know for a fact that many people with ADHD have the same Challenge and I also what love iFit being efficient not wasting time one of the massive things in ADHD is

not wasting time to half the reason I'm late is because I just want to know get as much done as possible in a short space of time so um and I also had had exposure to some of the most amazing trauma processing and emotional regulation techniques I've trained in EMDR the IM movement one to an advanced level and eft the tapping approach emotional Freedom techniques to an advanced level and various other I'm getting into the very interesting area of energy psychology which is a whole different discussion not for today but I have all these different

tools and I thought wouldn't it be nice to extract out what I judge to be the most potent elements of each of maybe I think there's 12 or 13 different established approaches Kundalini Yoga and acupressure or twea um EMDR the eye movement tapping uh even things like intention and gratitude and awe like um repetitive movement hypnotic stuff inversion like physiological stuff the Val Salva maneuver I've pulled like the most powerful bits of all these approaches and weaved it into like a flowing movement touchbased um movement meditation which I do every day in the morning when

I'm on good form I know when I'm not on good form because I just say I can't be bothered to stay that's when I definitely need to do it and um it's i' it's too much to put the whole thing in the book but I've done a like six taster excises of it and actually if people do like it they can go to uh a website called the grov practice.com which is I'm I'm the co-director of this really amazing educational mental health educational Hub that's been going for many years now and does this Cutting Edge

work and that's where my regulate program is um for professionals that's six day course for professionals but on there in the next few days because it's literally been videoed I'm quite used to these microphones and cameras and lights and everything because I've been with a production team videoing it and doing the voiceover of it because um so many people wanted it and it takes a lot of time just to show it so I'm created a video of it and it's going to be available for people who love it but that sorts me out it's like

if anything has built up if I've had a bad dream if I've carrying stress over from the yesterday if I've got something important today and I'm a bit anxious about it this 20 minute really efficient thing just sorts me right out and I just hop into my day very happy and realize that this is the preventative this is the proactive the preemptive bit it's not the reactive bit the reactive bit is important but I'd rather not react in the first place I'd rather be able to keep my call and without a doubt this has allowed

me to do that and I had no vision of ever sharing it Beyond myself but I just realized how good it was so I did to my colleagues first and then now to my patients and to groups and here in the book so that's that's just one example of um how I I approach emotional regulation but there's many more in there as well can a person hack their ADHD to become more productive H well everything we've talked about today is essentially doing that so for example putting items that you need or reminders at the point

of action or the point you know when where they're going to be used that's the Post-it note thing or that's the the sports bag by the door so you don't forget it on your way out putting it in you know you need things at the point of action in your direct Vision can't miss it that's a hack um setting your alarm if you're on medication setting your alarm half an hour early taking your meds going back to sleep for half an hour waking up with a sort of little bit more energy in you and focus

and ability to get moving better that's a hack there's so many different hacks the book is just big book of hacks basically all practical things there it's not this is not really a theoretical but this is how to actually do it and but I start from creating a platform so we've lit got these SE seven pillars on this big platform and the platform really is understanding ADHD and different aspects of it but in a much more sophisticated way than I think that we've currently got understanding of it and that's the 10 domains of disregulation stuff

and and building building up from the bottom and then it moves into the pillars and importantly um after in part three is only when I move to the more traditional the medication and the more traditional approaches because my view is that even before you get a diagnosis you should should work on this stuff because there's a number of people who are a bit borderline in terms of whether or not they' meet criteria and when they start and clean up their life and and make some changes and clear some stuff they judge that they don't need

to go and get a diagnosis and so why jump in with medication immediately when actually you're getting drunk five nights a week and you're smoking cannabis in the morning and you're you know you're sleeping 5 hours a night and you've got loads of traumas that you haven't processed then you are eating rubbish food and you know what happens when you AR rain in some of that stuff now I understand fully that good going ADHD you just can't do it you just can't do it but you know it's you can make a bit of an effort

and sometimes sometimes you avert the need for medication if your ADHD is not particularly impairing or particularly severe but what I do find is if you are going to go down the medication route you reduce your dose needs because you've dealt with 30% of it through through lifestyle management but really good lifestyle management it's all great advice um a hack I've recently started adopting which I found really been beneficial is I I really take advantage of my nighttime brain for my my brain is Super Active efficient productive in the evening in the morning it's the

opposite very slow takes me a while to get out of morning mode so I really take advantage of the nighttime brain and I plan my day the night before and I decide upon five tasks that need to be done that day and I create bracelets for each task so I wake up put five bracelets on of uh it could be small things like take the dog to the vet buy a shirt clean the Hoover the flat whatever where they are and as I accomplish each task I take off the bracelet put it in a bowl

and if I fill up the bowl by the end of the day I reward myself with something like a I buy something on my Amazon Wish List whatever so I gamify it as well um it's not always you know perfect but it makes a fun a fun little thing I think making like creating a game out of things making it fun like with my kids one of whom has ADHD um you know the okay let's see if you can tie your room in 4 minutes what amazing stuff anything that has a game attached clean the

kitchen before your favorite song finishes little things like that which you know add dopamine to a mundane task so and funny enough you know your strategy I before I had any clue about even what ADHD was let alone knowing I had it in my like teenage years and 20s I used to wrap a little pieces of string around my finger when I needed to remember something because you know my mom didn't like me writing my hand but um yeah I think that's exactly it's this the at the point of action like you can't miss it

and if you take that hack and you can then apply it in so many different ways so much so much so much value and yeah I'm excited to dive into your book I'm sure there's a ton more in there I've read an audio version of it and I actually read it because I know that I can't I mean I find it really hard to read books so it was really important to me that the audio version worked as well so if some of your viewers are really like anxious about the reading side of things um

they can listen to my voice for few hour as well yeah it's a good idea I should have said I I I will dive into the audio version I've got a bookshelf at home full of books I've never read I know it's fun to buy them to be shame and juicy yeah but now I don't do that anymore because it's not allowed absolutely James we've got a closing tradition on the podcast now where I deliver a letter to you that was written by the previous guest and the letter is three life rules to live by

so I'll deliver the letter to you James and if you you could kindly open up the letter and read the previous guest's three life rules three life rules e three rules to live by the most important love affair you ever have will be the one you have with yourself nice profound lovely two when someone questions why you remember why not why you kind of makes sense does it yeah why you sounds nice why do you have ADHD or not sure it's nice nice yeah mean lots of things nice one a poster yeah uh three be

your brilliant complex vulnerable beautiful unique self no apologies everyone else is taken beautiful three little hopeful nuggets of uh of um advice to end the episode and so much so much that you know we've touched on today as well it's really interesting these are sort of important James this has been fascinating thank you so much pleasure great to be here thank you for inviting [Music] me we had an idea to ask you what famous TV character cartoon character could be anyone you think has ADHD oh I got a couple of good ones I mean Robin

Williams not only in real life but in his in in all of his performances he's just the Hallmark of ADHD and my favorite one that most people don't know is Maria from The Sound of Music the character yeah singing and dancing and creative making clothes out of out of uh curtains and breaking rules and being quite disregulated and singing when she shouldn't and getting in trouble with the nuns and is that the hills are alive she singing through the countryside exactly yeah I know it well they can't settle her yeah she goes into this really

strict strict family and then it's like it's a perfect example of ADHD and structure it's mad she brilliant we should rewatch it for that in fact most of some of the most brilliant films the main character has ADHD it's definitely more interesting so many so many about the Hulk about Bruce what's his name the The Hulk could be his representation of RSD maybe it turns into I'm shocked by the number of characters in in films but also probably in in cartoons it's that's so often the case that they're presenting someone who's a little bit disre

because it's more fun isn't it more interesting how many domains do you own so I actually don't do any social media I just don't like it it makes me stressed and I actually can't handle it I can't handle the the inputs so I I made a decision early on and it's amazing I'm seeing all my addicted friends now saying oh I wish we' done what you did and trying to get off it lasting like a few days and then getting back it's so addictive it's so unbelievably addictive I think I'm really very annoyed that uh

that we have allowed our children to get properly addicted to these things and particularly ADHD children and you can't do anything about it because everyone's doing it well I think I've mentioned before there never been a point in history when humans have had such accessible free dopamine you can just reach into your pocket and within a second can be hysterically laughing off an Instagram real that it can't be natural right that sort of like accessibility to that that feeling so I've I've um always been a bit wary of shorts like you know short film short

YouTub things because I do watch some YouTube but I don't really consider that in in social media in fact I learn loads from watching videos and interviews and podcasts and stuff um while I was away on holiday this summer for the first time ever I decided to see what this short thing was all about and honestly I lost eight hours over two days just looking at shorts and having not ever done it before I was like Natalie look at this look how funny this animal is like she was loving it she was hysterical but I

properly got absorbed into it like hooked in yeah you lose your perception of time just hours can go past I mean phone I'm I the phone is really problematic do you remember your reusable shopping bags when you go to the supermarket do I remember them no not a chance I really resent having to buy them as well I'm normally carrying like 20 items and dropping them everywhere Pockets full that ADHD ADHD tax you have to buy another one for 30 forting it how many unread emails do you have or are you quite good at emails

oh I'd love to show you on my phone because I if you got my phone I'll tell you because I literally I think I might have the record it just says 99 plus I think it's got too many yeah I last when I see on the computer I think it was something around 10,000 500 something yeah what about WhatsApp messages how many unread WhatsApp messages oh unread WhatsApp messages you don't have to read them obviously just just uh actually I'm pretty good on WhatsApp you know I look at most things um only probably about 20

do you have like in your house or flat do you have is it clean 31 31 30 that's okay do is your flat clean generally uh is my you have shame rooms shame piles um I I sort of go I like a pendulum I let it get to a certain point so I have a funny story about my clothes so I don't don't know if your listeners will relate to this but uh I have what has been called the clothes Mountain which builds up on the chair I mean it gets really really big and at

some point I feel like I build up the energy and uh and I I'll Attack the closed mountain and there's two steps to this there's the laying out all the same items on top of each other emptying the pockets and straightening out and putting the dirty washing away that's stage one now normally I get as far as stage one and then something distracts me and takes me off so I've got these like rather than a big mountain on the chair I've got these mole Hills all over the bed and um and then then I will

go and end up doing something else because it's really boring to do stage two and then what typically stage two is putting it in the cupboard and putting it away and it's like hangers and stuff so stage two often doesn't get done and then my wife comes to bed earlier than me cuz I'm a bit of a nightow sometimes and uh we'll take all of the clothes Mills and put them back onto the mountain and we start the Shad the next day it's great I've done that like three days in a row it's amazing go

yeah very Ms and mole Hills what's the most impulsive thing you've ever done I can tell you a really big like careless error I made that had the biggest impact so I missed the deadline for like an important like medical Psychiatry exams which meant that just one mistake meant six months extra on a job on the job just because I'd like yet again managed to get the date wrong things like that that people don't realize has a real impact so I did six months extra training from a little little mistake that taught me a lesson

I used to I used to be very quick to go I'll do that like put my hand up and there was often out of excitement because I get just get excited about new projects and stuff so I have like agreed and started writing my own books I wrote a book once because I thought I had this great idea before this book to write another book and I it was a very impulsive decision I got hyperfocused for six months I literally didn't work I did nothing else but procrastinated and wrote a bit and then realized that

I just lost interest when I'd written half a book and had to Shel it I not only written it I had paired up with my amazing cousin who's a designer and designed it like who bites and Designs a bit without without some commission to do it I just literally dived in and um I could never finish it because I just you know sometimes something just something finishes boom and bust you mentioned earlier I mean six months of daily work is just never been used and I have a few things like that and that was an

Impulse to decision and now I know I should connect with a publisher before I start