A LOT with Audra

Ep18
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Audra Dinell: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome to a lot with Audra. I'm so glad you're here, and I'm also so grateful for those listeners of you who have reached out to me to share that you enjoy listening, that you're even listening at all, that you are resonating with some of the things I'm saying. I just really appreciate the effort you have taken to share with me that.

The work I'm doing on this podcast matters, so thank you to those of you who have, if you are a listener and you have not yet subscribed, I would love for you to subscribe. You [00:01:00] can listen to episodes every week. Make sure you get them. If there's an episode that doesn't look interesting to you, swipe, you can delete it.

But if you're subscribed, you'll at least get served all of my episodes. Also, I would be so grateful if you could leave a review coming out of the gate. In the top 100 of entrepreneurship was such a delight and surprise, and that was like largely because of the reviews. So thank you so much for leaving a review if you haven't already.

And lastly, if I say something that resonates here, please share this with your friends. Share it with someone who you think might want to listen either on social or via text. I just love to share podcasts that way as well, and would appreciate if you would take the time to do that for me. Okay, so right now I am recording this during Mental Health Month, the month of May.

And if you are listening to this when this first comes out, you're also [00:02:00] listening to this during Mental Health Month, which is May. Today I'm gonna talk about something I've referenced multiple times, but haven't done a deep dive into yet, and that is the topic of ADHD. So mental health. Has begun to look differently for me in the last several years.

It has gone from sort of like a fluffy, high level thing to a real, in my face, in my life thing that I deal with. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Never did I ever think that that is something that would go hand in hand with me. I just didn't really see this coming. Okay. And I wanna say, I'm gonna share this from my perspective.

I'm gonna talk about my journey so far with ADHD. There is so [00:03:00] much research out there right now. There are so many books and podcasts and Instagram accounts by doctors who specialize in ADHD. Don't expect. That from this episode, I'm gonna share my personal story, ~and I don't know if you know this, but I'm not a doctor yet.~

~Am I gonna be one day? I don't know. Just kidding. I was just growth mindset, y'all. Anyways. ~A DH, D. So I'll start out first and foremost by saying. That ADHD is hereditary and my journey to learning that I have ADHD started with one of my children being diagnosed, and I actually didn't know it was hereditary.

And to be honest, growing up, I mean I was so uninformed. I thought ADHD was for little boys and I thought little boys got medicated if their parents needed them to be more under control. I mean, it was just totally wrong and so judgmental. But I definitely think there's a stigma or there was a stigma at least when I was growing up [00:04:00] about ADHD.

Then it hits my household, and it is something that feels kind of like a buzzword these days. It feels more common. I think that might be because there's so much more awareness and sharing of information widely and publicly. But here's also what I do know. Like this is a thing that when it hits, it's not a simple thing.

It's a thing that can affect so many different areas of life. It is a challenge to live with, and it is, it's also such a gift if it can be under control. So I don't like to share. You know, too much of the stories that aren't just mine to share. But I want you to know [00:05:00] that that's how I really came into learning about my own ADHD.

It was working with my child's therapist, who is a very cool woman, and she gently asked me if I knew that ADHD was hereditary. And did so in a way that suggested to me that she thought I might also have it. And you see, this wasn't the only sign. I had been talking to girlfriends for years, and I would say, you know, maybe like three to five of my girlfriends.

Have ADHD were diagnosed. They were also entrepreneurs and mothers and I had a lot in common with them. But you know, when they would talk about ADHD, I just thought, oh yeah. I mean, I could convince myself I have that, but I, I probably don't like, I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac. I'm sure I could convince myself I have ADHD, but I [00:06:00] don't, I never had any signs growing up or so I thought.

So I walk into my doctor's office, my primary care provider, and I made a mental health appointment with her, and that's where I decided to start. My understanding is there's multiple places that one can start when looking into their mental health. I also have a therapist that I, I love, but I really started with my primary care physician and said.

I have a kiddo that is neurodivergent and I am constantly overwhelmed and I'm wondering if I'm also neurodivergent. And the reason I share that I'm constantly overwhelmed is because I feel like that was really my biggest sign is that y'all life was good and is good, but. I guess I should say I did this at 38 years old, so it [00:07:00] has been a year of being diagnosed, and so I'll share the journey that I've been on over the past year in just discovering I.

I did come to find that 38 is the average age a woman is diagnosed with ADHD, which I think is just very interesting. I have also come to understand that life circumstances can sort of like exacerbate symptoms, things like, I don't know, motherhood moving to a brand new state. Like selling all of your belongings essentially and moving to a brand new state could have been something.

I don't know, starting a business, definitely three huge things that happened in my life, you know, over the course of four years that just put me in a different spot mentally. That left me pretty constantly overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, even though I [00:08:00] had a life that I loved. I say that as imp past tense, because.

That's where I was when I walked into my doctor's office. Like this doesn't make sense to me, but I am constantly overwhelmed. Okay, so then she sent me to a psychologist who did various tests and came back with a confirmation. Yes, you definitely have ADHD. Now, throughout the course of my life, I had always been a person who was prone to burnout.

I'm really passionate about what I do now, even more so because I do something that feels purposeful and that I love. And still, I will go through these cycles where I will be hot and heavy and then I'll burn out, and then I'll be hot and heavy and just all in and going, going, going, and then I can't answer email for a week.

So burnout and overwhelm, those were my biggest symptoms that led me to my [00:09:00] diagnosis after my sons after. Hearing from girlfriends in similar situations as me and really relating. So then I started to look back on my life and think about, okay, what signs might I have missed? The biggest one from my childhood, which I think is a little bit funny, is.

When my mom asked me to clean my room, and I think it's funny because my husband still over the course of our, we've been married 15 years this summer, and he jokes about my cleaning style all the time. Just how slow and distracted I get when I'm cleaning. So my mom, when I was a kid, she would ask me to clean my room.

And I would be cleaning. However, I have just come to [00:10:00] realize that there's a difference between decluttering, organizing, cleaning, and then like deep cleaning and decorating and like construction. Those are all six different things, right. But in my brain it was like, okay. If I'm gonna clean, I mean, I could spend 12 hours cleaning my house because I just get down these rabbit holes of, well, If I'm gonna be cleaning, I really want my books to be organized in alphabetical order so it's not just tidying up my office and maybe picking up stacks of papers. And it's not just, you know, like wiping my desk off. It's also. You know, organizing the books from A to Z, and that's something that happened habitually when I was a kid.

I would get in trouble for it. And what that pointed to, to me is the attention deficit, not being able to keep my [00:11:00] attention on the priority, the task, the task of tidying and cleaning without getting sucked into organizing or reminiscing. And then when I was in college, another thing that I had remembered was I took Adderall one time, a friend's Adderall, when we were in the library studying for an exam.

And I remember it was like a light came on. It was like. I could focus on a subject that was boring to me for hours at a time. Now I'm not talking about 12 hours, but I sat in the library and studied for like two to four hours, and I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm already high achieving. I'm already like a go-getter.

I'm already someone who like pursues. Success through achievement. Good grades like I was the intramural chair in my [00:12:00] sorority. Just things like that, right? I remember thinking, I cannot take this medication ever again. I can never touch it because I will get addicted to this because I would be so good, so good if I took this.

And it's just so funny to think about this because so much of my life I. I do feel like I arm wrestle. I like white knuckle. I think I'm using that right, where it's just like, I'm like, no, I can get through it. I don't need help. And that is a perfect example of that. But the Adderall really showed me, in retrospect, it scared me.

Then in retrospect, I see, oh my gosh, my focus can be so inconsistent. Okay. And then I'm thinking of when I worked in Colorado in my twenties and I worked at an ad agency before I worked at an ad agency. I worked for a, I worked in corporate marketing. And when I got the job at the ad agency, my [00:13:00] boss had told me, my boss from a corporate marketing said, that's a really good fit for you.

You know, just ad agency work that's more creative, right? And I was like, oh, that's so cool. Myself and my coworker, we went to an event in Denver and there was an idea, like an ideation competition, and the goal of the workshop was just like creativity is good ideas, bad ideas. You have to do a lot of idea generation in order to.

Create. It's not always waiting for like the best idea, it's being in the practice of creating ideas. So her and I, you know, start this idea generation competition and we're just going and it's feeling good and time's up and they're like, okay, who came up with. 15 ideas 2025 like we smoked the competition.

I mean, [00:14:00] ideas just come to my brain like no one's business. This is true. If you listen to the last couple episodes of the podcast, this is an actual aptitude of my brain, high ideation. This can also show up in ADHD as hyperactivity, so. Typically in little boys, you think of hyperactive as like can't sit still.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Well in girls and now women, hyperactivity often shows up in our brains. I think that is the biggest thing where it's like, oh my gosh. I remember taking a yoga class in my twenties, and a friend asked me, oh, how was that class for you? And I was like, oh, it was so good. I thought about this idea and this idea and this idea.

And she said, the point of yoga is to quiet your mind. And I just thought. Who can do that? Another part of ADHD is impulsivity and I have made so many impulsive decisions in my life. [00:15:00] They're not all good. They're not all bad. It has been, a thing that I think is fun and great. I mean, gosh, we have made some pretty big and risky moves in our life and I'm not really scared of them. And also you can't.

Impulsively spend constantly or eat or X, Y, Z. So I mean, it can show up in both ways. I think really the thought about this podcast is I'm hoping not to paint ADHD for me in a negative light or like a super positive light. I guess I'm just trying to share my experience without the intention of like shedding light on.

You know it being a good thing or a bad thing. 'cause it's, it can be both and it can be neither. It's just the way my brain is wired.

Other ways ADHD has shown up in my life [00:16:00] has been executive function struggles. And I am really just learning more and more about this. But a funny thing about. Me is that, you know, I moved back to the Midwest five years ago and in that time I have been able to cook a, a business that I love that has served hundreds of women generated, revenue supported team members, and I still haven't been able to do basic things like get my Kansas driver's license.

And it's something that my team totally jokes with me about. Like, oh my gosh. ADHD to me feels like when the GPS says turn left, but my brain takes a scenic detour through my childhood memories, a new business idea, a book I haven't read yet.

And then I forget where I'm going.

My [00:17:00] team had been women who I'd talked to about my thought of I might have ADHD for a while before I actually went and got tested. And they were like, it is so obvious. And I will say my team, as you've heard in the last couple of episodes, like they're very different from me in many ways. But when I told them, Hey, I'm gonna go to my doctor, I think I'm actually gonna pursue like really finding out if I have ADHD or not.

They were like, okay, that's great. That's cute. And of course when I came back with the diagnosis, they were like, yep, we could have given you that. It is just interesting because some people in my life who have known me from when I was young would never guess that I had ADHD. And then people who meet me now and know me now would know that.

Yes, yes, I obviously do.

Okay, so [00:18:00] some fun things I have found out about ADHD that that resonate with me. Since having a diagnosis are like the hyper focus element, man, if I am interested in something, I can rabbit hole down that and just live there and get so excited and so passionate and learn so much about that topic. I am a person who tends to be an open book and share, and that can be a thing with ADHD that you really have to watch,

but I like. Talking about my life, sharing my story, I think it matters. I think your story matters. I think vulnerability matters. I think being a human and just [00:19:00] living very real and authentic matters, ADHD has helped me realize that like, yeah, I get to help normalize this thing that I once thought it was one way and is many, many, many different ways.

I am a big talker. Blame it on ADHD. There are several other people in my family who are big talkers. I don't know that you're gonna find an ADHD or who is not a big talker in looking into it. I found so many celebrities. Well, I don't know if you would say celebrities, authors, creatives, athletes have ADHD, so it can be a real superpower if you go all in on it.

Some that come to the top of my head are like Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Simone Biles, and obviously my research on that is Google. So do they really have it or not? I don't know. Google said they did. When you [00:20:00] have ADHD, you can be a natural barrier breaker. Our brains don't necessarily like rules, and that can be a gift.

Our brains don't think linearly. We connect dots that sometimes other people don't see. I think when your brain has a way of thinking non-traditionally, it helps you innovate and disrupt, helps you come up with. Out of the box solutions challenged the status quo. I was talking to a family member the other day and they were mentioning just how I'm doing my life differently than they have seen it done.

Because I'm not just pursuing

work

and not deeply considering my family and what that work looks like, and I'm also not. Staying home 100% of the time with my kids and not working. I'm finding a mix that works really beautifully for me, and [00:21:00] I think that that is something I have always been passionate about and just something that like I have not ever thought was another option.

I just thought, okay, this box of work doesn't. Fit for me. I'm not a butt in a seat type of person, a nine to fiver. I thrive on doing things my own way, my own speed, my own time, and I love to be productive and I love my work. And also like I can't imagine a world where I would have to ask permission to.

Go to my kids' donuts with grownups, right? Like I did this morning. So I think ADHD has been a gift for me in that way because I've always tried to create my own world [00:22:00] and not worried so much about the rules that come with society, it seems sometimes. I also think a ADHDers have a radical drive. I feel at times in my life that I have been greatly misunderstood, criticized had systems that weren't built for me to work in, and I've overcome those things.

I've come up with workarounds. So I do think ADHDers are driven. We're creative. We have grit and empathy because we have had to develop those skills. I see a lot of people with ADHD becoming great advocates, entrepreneurs, creators, leaders, because these skills that we have [00:23:00] had have built up in us. I also love the energy that comes with having ADHD There are four things that I have learned drive people with ADHD and that is interest, urgency, passion. Okay, I said four. Now I can't remember the fourth thing, but the point I'm trying to make here is that when I care about something, I don't stop. I. Am happy to be the first one to raise my hand to push for change, and I really don't care if it's messy.

Okay, so that is the gist of what I'm gonna share. Now, I will say. After I met with my psychologist, got the diagnosis, I jumped on medication right away. I have seen ADHD done without [00:24:00] medication and I've seen it done with medication and I wanted to see how it would work for me doing medication. I did not have a hard time finding something that worked for me, but I know many other women with ADHD in my life have had a hard time finding a medication that worked for them.

I don't take my medication every day. In fact, I didn't take it today before I did this podcast. I've learned I have to be careful with caffeine and my medication because it's a stimulant. I've had my heart checked. I am just really so much more aware of the things going on in my body because of this diagnosis and because of using medication sometimes.

I will say when I take my ADHD meds, it does help me focus and get things [00:25:00] done. It also helps me be a little bit more chill and emotionally regulated. So, gosh, I mean, there's no way one ADHD podcast is gonna cover. 5% of what I wanna talk about or my experience over the last year, but. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to do a talk for my community on ADHD, and it was a short talk and I talked about most of the things that I brought up here and it was so fun.

It was funny. I made lots of jokes. I mean, I hope it was funny. I thought it was funny. I got some laughs. But I just thought, you know, I'm gonna bring this to the podcast because people have been asking. I would love to share my experience if for nothing else, but to normalize it. I am so grateful for the girlfriends in [00:26:00] my life who I've been able to talk with about their ADHD diagnosis and how they're managing it and what their challenges are.

And again, like I said, I kind of took you on a backwards loop of like, I got diagnosed, here's how I got diagnosed, because people are, are often curious about that. And then here's. All the things that I can mine from my past that I can look at differently with the ADHD lens that I never put together before.

Dots I can connect only in retrospect. I've talked about some things I see in myself and others with ADHD that are totally beneficial. I haven't talked a ton about the challenges in my current life that ADHD brings, but we'll save that one for another episode. So I hope this was interesting or helpful to you.

If you're a person who is just [00:27:00] curious about ADHD and or has it, or just kind of wants to hear a story about a 38 year old's journey to discovering that she does. I do love having a diagnosis because it just helps me dig in and learn more about myself. And like I've said many times, gosh, I feel like I am just at the beginning of looking at who I am and my systems and my habits, or lack thereof through the ADHD lens.

And you know, I do foresee doing more episodes on this as I dive in more and more, but thank you very much for listening today. I am wishing you a beautiful May Mental health month. I'll give you a quick preview of some of the things coming up in the following weeks. We are gonna continue a little bit with the mental health theme, although this is the only ADHD podcast we're planning for this month.

We're also gonna talk about summer because if you're a parent, you [00:28:00] know, we're hot in the middle of December. And it comes with all the things. And then summer is here and my team does summer a little bit differently than most businesses do. So I cannot wait to have that conversation with them and talk about all things summer with work and life and parenting.

And talk a little bit more about mental health this month, because y'all, all of it is a lot. Which is the point of the podcast. Thanks for listening.