This SIMPLE (and proven) hack helped 10,000 ADHD Women | The ADHD Expert

0:00Women who have ADHD and don't know it, very often that turns into self-esteem issues, anxiety, depression. We don't have a lens to what's happening. We beat ourselves up or we're being told these negative messages before the age of 10. We are at a point as adults with a later diagnosis where there's a lot more work to do, a lot more time to be spent, a lot more negative self-esteem. Brooke Schnittman is a world-leading, award-winning ADHD coach and expert. having coached thousands of women with ADHD. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, paralyzed by thought, confused or just broken, then Brooke will help explain why you're often misunderstood.

0:39Women are expected to be the CEO of the household. I think it's just kind of is. We put that expectation on ourselves as well. If we're at 5 % battery, we're not going to put that on ourselves. We're going to give it back to our kids, our husband, our work, the household things. We continue to outdo ourselves. We're people pleasers. by nature or perfectionists. There's chronic burnout that I see, especially in women as adults. And then of course you have all the hormones on top of that.

1:09Brooke Schnittman:Quick one before I get distracted. I just wanted to say a very brief thank you to all of my listeners. Thank you for tuning in and thank you for subscribing and following the podcast. It really, really helps. At ADHD Chatter, my mission is to ask the world leading experts the hard questions to give you access to the most pioneering advice the world has to offer. And with an aim to help you feel seen. Following and subscribing helps me on my mission to book these incredibly insightful guests and to give you these incredibly insightful interviews. Remember, you're not broken, just different, and you have always been enough.

1:46Brooke Schnittman:Brooke, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Alex, again. I was going to say this is surreal because we have interviewed each other before, right? But not in 3D. Not in 3D? No. Not in person? No. I wanted to ask, because your career, your journey is fascinating to me. You've helped so many people with ADHD understand their brains. And as part of that journey, you've set up this huge coaching empire. And I suppose to sort of set the foundation for the interview, how many people with ADHD do you think you have coached? As a company, around 10 ,000. through one-on-one and group coaching.

2:26Brooke Schnittman:Right, okay. So 10 ,000. And if there was one bit of advice from those sessions that you think somebody listening to this might take away, that might help them, what would be that standout bit of advice? No two ADHD brains are alike. So we're going to work with your unique brain wiring and you're not alone in this journey. We're going to focus on your strengths and your values and your purpose. And we're going to do it slow and we're going to do it together. And there's a community supporting you along the way. And there might be ups, there might be downs. That's likely to happen, especially when you get out of your comfort zone and challenge your executive functions.

3:12There's going to be a lot of emotional dysregulation, but we're here to support you.

3:16Brooke Schnittman:And where did you start? What was your initial motivation to start this? What's your mission? within the world of ADHD? So we want to help 1 billion people with ADHD in the next five years activate their ADHD potential through tools and accountability. And where I started was one-on-one coaching. But even before that, you and I were talking earlier, and it's a unique journey. I was an elementary education major, and I took one special education class. And I was going to go into a classroom with neurodiverse students taking one class. And something lit an interest in me, and I jumped into getting my master's right after that and got it in students with disabilities from NYU, graduated the next day, started becoming a special education teacher teaching and loved it.

4:22I did that for 14 years. I was a special education teacher, an assistant director of special education in the number one school district in the US. And what I realized going into administration was there was so much red tape. I felt like I was kind of moving away from what I really wanted to do. So fast forward, I moved, got life coached, and then a friend of mine recommended ADHD coaching, got certified, became an ADHD coach, and six months later realized I had ADHD this whole time.

4:56Brooke Schnittman:I mean, it's an incredible story and an incredible mission. And to have that goal of reaching a billion people? Yeah. Like that's unbelievable. I mean, the amount of good that's going to happen. From your experience up to this point, like coaching the amount of people that you have done, what do you think are the main problems that are affecting the lives of people with ADHD?

5:26Managing not only themselves, but especially in adulthood. now you're expected to manage being an adult, manage a career, manage a household, manage children when you're barely managing yourself because you've never learned the tools. So I'd say that that's usually the number one thing that I find in the clients I work with.

5:51Brooke Schnittman:It's exhausting just hearing you sort of go through that list. Yeah. You work so hard. No one teaches you how to adult. And if you don't know, you have ADHD as a child. You're not learning those tools then. And then you become an adult. You have to learn how to become an adult. You have to be independent. And then you have to be interdependent with your spouse. And then you have to teach your children how to be independent as well. There's a lot there. I mean, there's so much shame, I think, associated with going through so much of your life as a child, as a teenager, as an early adult, and not understanding why you struggle to do so many things that society has made you think should be totally doable.

6:39Brooke Schnittman:Yeah. And you see other people sort of gliding through life, achieving things with apparent ease, and you can't understand why simple tasks are so challenging for you. I think that creates so much shame. And I suppose, therefore, the question is, what do you think are the repercussions of not getting a diagnosis or not becoming aware that you have ADHD? I definitely want to answer that. And I just also, if it's okay, want to share that thing exactly happened to me. So I was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder when I was a child and received speech for that, was declassified. Then my mom was an educator and she saw that my reading was slower.

7:23I don't know if I had a reading disability, learning disability, but she got me extended time because there was a discrepancy in my reading. Then I had anxiety. I saw a therapist on and off my whole life. So to answer your question, we spend so much time trying and resources and money trying to figure out our brain and first we're living in the neurotypical world being told to use a planner do the neurotypical things and it's not working and sometimes we're being misdiagnosed with these other disorders and we're trying to treat them but our anxiety is still there right even with all the medication and all the talk therapy the anxiety is still there so a lot of clients and myself too feel like we've wasted time, resources, efforts.

8:20And then of course, that leads to the shame that you're mentioning, the intrusive thoughts. But on the flip side, there is hope with that because you can reprogram your brain, neuroplasticity, and it takes time and it takes hope and a diagnosis can give you all of that too.

8:45Brooke Schnittman:It's so interesting. And I think you explained that perfectly. It's the biggest, we spend so much time pre-diagnosis, pre-awareness, trying to turn us into a neurotypical. And you said the notebook there is one of the biggest lies people with ADHD tell ourselves sometimes is that a new notebook is going to solve all our problems. But it doesn't. Yeah, exactly. If someone's listening and they're not quite there yet, if they're thinking, do I have ADHD? Do I not? What do you think are some common signs of someone having ADHD? Maybe some common ones and maybe not so common ones. Hypersensitivity, extreme sensitivity to things, not being able to do the neurotypical tools and recommendations that are out there, being slower to process things having anxiety and going to talk therapy taking medication but still having anxiety and walking out of an office feeling more anxious than when you came in hyper focusing on the thing that's interesting and having such disdain for the things that aren't interesting not being able to start those uninteresting things not being able to end those on interesting things, maybe doing well in school because ADHD has nothing to do with intelligence, but just getting to the answer quickly and not showing your work as a student.

10:12I see that in my stepsons, and I also have seen it in all the students that I've worked with. So getting to the answer, but not being able to explain the process.

10:22Brooke Schnittman:Yes. I think people with ADHD are very good at solving problems, but please don't ask me to show my workings. Please don't. I have no idea how I worked that out, but I did it. But I promise you it's right. I didn't cheat. I swear. Yeah, well, that's our justice sensitivity piece. I don't think we would cheat. I think it's an allergy to boredom a lot of the time. Or it's like a propensity to overwork, to just always strive for perfection because you're so worried about reinforcing that inner critic that I think so many people with ADHD have that tells ourselves that we're not good enough, we're not worthy.

10:59Brooke Schnittman:um so some people can can do really well but it's often at a cost of perfectionism and burnout you you feel like you can't rest you can't sit down and watch netflix because you're you need to prove someone wrong you don't want to let someone down sure sure especially when you're on the couch at night trying to watch netflix and you think of all of the daunting tasks that you didn't attend to all the text messages that you haven't responded to, right? Oh, there's that one thing and I need to get out of the couch and your partner's waiting on the couch for you. And you just never get through the show.

11:34You barely got through the first five minutes after an hour or two, or maybe you didn't even pick the show because you're so busy trying to make a decision on what episode is going to be interesting to you.

11:46Brooke Schnittman:I mean, it's exhausting. It's like ADHD is like having, again, those highly caffeinated squirrels inside your head, constantly each one pulling you in a different direction and the overwhelm that that can create. You could be sat on the sofa watching a film with your partner and you can't focus on the film because those squirrels are pulling you to reply to that email. Don't let that person down. Don't be late tomorrow. Because all of those things, if you do them, they're going to validate that internal monologue, critic, that so many of us have. Exactly. And the noise gets louder when you don't have systems and processes and that emotional regulation tools and your nervous system is very nervous and you're burned out already, it's really hard to get out of burnout and get to that place where your battery is charged again and you could start focusing and hyper-focusing and getting back into your routine.

12:44Brooke Schnittman:From your experience, do you think there's a difference in how ADHD men and ADHD women experience the experience of living with adult ADHD? So adult ADHD, women are expected to be the CEO of the household. I think it's just kind of is. And we put that expectation on ourselves as well. And if we're at 5 % battery, we're not going to put that on ourselves. We're going to give it back to our kids, our husband, our work, all of the laundry, the household things. So yes, I think for a woman, we continue to outdo ourselves, have difficulty letting it be. We're people pleasers by nature, we're perfectionists.

13:37So there's chronic burnout that I see, especially in women as adults.

13:44Brooke Schnittman:and then of course you have all the hormones on top of that and that cycle of burnout which I think you really explained perfectly then it's like that overworking whether that's at work or in the household and then you don't realize that you're giving so much of your mental capacity to just day-to-day tasks and masking absolutely I think so many women don't realize how much their masking, like pretending to be someone that they're not in order to fit in and to be liked or to not offend anyone. And then you get home after a long day of doing that and it's no surprise that you're absolutely exhausted.

14:21Brooke Schnittman:And then a big row happens with your partner because you don't have the... You don't have the bandwidth. The capacity to speak. Yeah. How do you see ADHD presenting problems in women specifically as they sort of go through life without the awareness that they have ADHD? Yeah. So, of course, we mask. We want to fit in. We want to look like from the outside, everything is okay. We are put together. We want to run the household. We want to be successful in our relationships. and with women who have ADHD and don't know it very often that turns into self-esteem issues anxiety depression and it's because we don't have a lens to what's happening so we beat ourselves up or we're being told these negative messages before 20 ,000 more negative messages before the age of 10, and this is boys and girls at that age, but we are at a point as adults with a later diagnosis where there's a lot more work to do, a lot more time to be spent, a lot more negative self-esteem.

15:45Brooke Schnittman:It's heartbreaking that 20 ,000 negative messages, extra negative messages that people with ADHD are exposed to in their early years. Comments like, stop fidgeting, stop being lazy, you're so sensitive, why can't you just start the task? I've gotten, you're so sensitive from my family members. Why are you so sensitive? I don't know. Maybe I should stop being so sensitive. Okay. Now I talk to my family members and I'm like, yeah, I know I'm sensitive and I want to tell you how I feel about this. I mean it's incredible to hear that so many women now are getting answers and finally becoming aware that they're not broken they're just different and that they have always been enough 85 % of the viewers listeners of this podcast are women I think they come to the podcast to hear people like yourself add color and context to a lifetime of being misunderstood but do you think there's a valid resentment amongst women who are getting a diagnosis or becoming aware slightly later in life that they have been let down?

16:52Definitely. I mean, we've thought we were broken for a long time. We were never good enough. And of course, we felt alone. And then getting that diagnosis was a lens way more than a label, right? And gave us the understanding that it was the ADHD the whole time. And we have a thing, right? That we can work through and understand and a community and hope.

17:27Brooke Schnittman:Why do you think it takes or took women and still takes women longer to get diagnosis? Why is the average age of a woman significantly higher, do you think, than a man still? It's a masking still. And as a former special education teacher, most of the diagnoses were in school. And the typical boy in the classroom is a hyperactive boy who calls out, can't sit still, you know, interrupts. But the girls do their best to hold it in, right? So then we have racing thoughts. Then we have all of this overwhelm inside our body. It's a psychosomatic feeling that we let out when we get home and that turns into anxiety and depression.

18:15So I think that's part of the reason why girls are not diagnosed as quickly as boys. And then once adulting happens and hormones change and we realize it's even more difficult to manage. There wasn't even an adult diagnosis of ADHD in the UK until 2008. And then in America, it wasn't until 1994. And then people didn't even know about ADHD, a lot of people, until 2020, right? Or they just categorized it as the boy who was hyperactive. I remember my mom, when I realized I had ADHD, she goes, you always look, and this is a teacher, a former teacher, you always look like you're paying attention and you're shaking your head and you're giving me eye contact and saying yes.

19:06I'm like, yeah, but I'm not processing what you're saying.

19:10Brooke Schnittman:So interesting. I got my diagnosis at 34 and I realized that eye contact was masking. Like I say, you can either have my perfect eye contact or my undivided attention, but you can't have both. Yes, and that's why it's so important for adults who have children to not force them to make eye contact. Because if they're making eye contact, first of all, it can give them a lot of anxiety, and they might have a more difficult time paying attention to what you're actually saying. Because they're reading your face, they're reading the emotions, and they can shut down. So never make someone make eye contact.

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20:59Brooke Schnittman:Moving on from then, what do you think are the main stumbling blocks in later life for someone who has ADHD? Managing a household, having a healthy relationship, being able to create your own structure in your life without having the external structure from work, being able to pay your bills on time, not because you don't have the money, but because you forget about them, right? or you didn't put them on auto pay or you'll say you'll get to that later and it's you know the bill is right in front of you and you look at it every day and then you stop looking at it right or you forget to take out the trash or you're just consistently inconsistent.

21:46Brooke Schnittman:Brooke you mentioned earlier your company has coached 10 ,000 people with ADHD. How do you see masking showing up in the lives of those people? Very often in work and social situations a lot of introverted extroverts or just introverts or social anxiety with ADHD, but being in a social situation and almost imitating the social cues that they get from other people to then figure out how they're going to respond to an interaction. So very often in social situations, in work, They don't want to be seen as different. So they go along even in ways where it might not work for their unique learning style or their unique brain.

22:37So spending lots of hours after work, trying to process everything and do the work because they couldn't focus during work or reteach it to themselves, getting there early, spending out way more hours than when the custodians show up. and just to function, right? And then pretending like everything is okay. So I see that a lot in work.

23:04Brooke Schnittman:So interesting. I feel like people with ADHD are the world's best actors. We're really good at playing a character called Normal. Absolutely. Like chameleons. We shapeshift. We can mirror people's body language, tone of voice, posture, almost to kind of fit in and not get their disapproval. I was so aware that we have to be liked at all times and we're almost an autopilot to avoid criticism or a rejection. So we just find ourselves constantly becoming the person that we're talking to. People, when I was single, I always said, I am an amazing first date. People always want to go on a second date with me because I was able to mask so well.

23:48And then on my second date, Yeah, not so much. Same thing with interviews.

23:55Brooke Schnittman:I've heard you in the past talk about advanced masking. What's that? When someone can be so hyper-focused, here's just an example, in one area of their life, like let's say they're the best CEO of their company. Everyone loves them. They're performing. But then their home life is falling apart. Their relationship is falling apart. They can't manage any organization. They're not working out. They're not filling the other cups and areas of their life because they're so burnt out from putting all of their eggs in this one basket. That's a very common example that I see in my clients. And do you think there's a positive side of masking?

24:40Absolutely. It's a survival mechanism. You have to mask. You're, depending on the work environment, most likely not going to act the same way at a bar as you are at work or at a work interview or on a date or on the train. So different environments call for different ways of being. And yes, I think that would be the helpful area of masking.

25:09Brooke Schnittman:How important do you think it is? Like you mentioned environment there. How important do you think it is for someone with ADHD to be operating in an environment that is catered, suitable for their brain? Extremely important. If you're not in the right environment for you, that's where the burnout happens. That's where the negative self-talk happens. That's where the negative self-esteem happens. That's where you feel like you're the problem and you have to do everything you can to catch up. That's where your nervous system is dysregulated. That's Almost like focusing on your weaknesses and then becoming anxious, stressed, and depressed.