Why Adult ADHD in Women Often Goes Undiagnosed | Shanna Pearson - EP 718

26:21There just isn't. And so you need to know that deeply, regardless of whether you're taking medication for whatever you need or not. At the end of the day, we're all in the same boat. So I want to change this scenario to the parents who are listening. So maybe they have a child who's got, maybe they haven't been diagnosed yet, or maybe they know, but they're still struggling with it. So I'm sure they're asking their kids questions like you got asked. Why can't you just pay attention? Why can't you just finish? Why can't you stop interrupting? Why can't you get better grades? What do you recommend for those parents?

26:59And what is the damage that's done when those types of questions are continually asked? The first part of my book, as I think, was Why Can't You Just? I grew up with Why Can't You Just in my head forever, probably until I left for university. and the fact is your child does not know why they can't just. They don't know and they would like to know, but they don't. So it doesn't make sense to ask them. We need to know as adults that they can't just, period. And when you have, if you're raising a kid and it's in your mind, because you're able to remember certain things and you can put stuff away and you can remember your work or homework or whatever, why can't your kid just?

27:49If you suspect your child has ADHD or any kind of learning difference, they just can't just. And there's methods and tools and systems that will help them to be able to do these things for sure. But until they've got those locked down, now you know why, or you might know why now, they can't just. And so now it's up for you as a parent to be able to help them and possibly turn it around and ask yourself, why can't I just help my kid be able to do this in a different way than I do it? Because their brain is wired differently. They need to do things in a different way. So I feel like it's really helpful for parents who tend to say, why can't you just a lot to just start being like, well, why can't I just?

28:36And no, but it's really important because a child raised underneath, and I was, and probably a lot, maybe you were too, raised inside of why can't you just, it knocks your self-esteem so severely and you can't recover from that. You can't. You can go to therapy for decades and you can do all the personal development you want, but your self-esteem is going to be hurt for the rest of your life. So we have to do everything as parents to really help our kids see what they can do and what they can do extremely well so that they want to do even better. Yeah. So for that same parent, or maybe someone who suspects someone that they're working with at their job has ADHD for that person who has it, how does it affect their confidence in their relationships?

29:32And you just talked a little bit about this, about how it ends up shaping you if those questions are asked, but what does it really do for your self-confidence and your ability to connect with other people? I feel like the number one thing that affects us in terms of our relationships is growing up and spending your entire childhood and possibly young adulthood feeling misunderstood by everyone. Because like I was saying at the beginning, we literally do exist on a different frequency. And I think anyone with ADHD is going to attest to this. We're in a different place. Whether we're up here or down here, we're never like this with people.

30:09And so when you always feel misunderstood, you become, number one, obviously it hurts your self-esteem, but you become quite reactive. And I don't know if your son is like this, but we're always like this trigger constantly and you over-explain and you over-react. And because Because you're just being missed. If anybody doesn't understand one thing, you feel like they're just not understanding all of it and they're not understanding you and you're not now they don't like you anymore. And just it goes so deep. And so we tend to people with ADHD have a tougher time in relationships because of I just because of this underlying belief that no one's going to really understand me.

30:56No one understands me. Sometimes I don't understand me. And so it's really hard to be completely connected to another person when you feel like they're never going to understand you. And so fights become bigger, arguments become more frequent, and it's hard. It's hard. That's why it bothers me when people refer to ADHD as a superpower. It really does because there's nothing about ADHD that makes life easier. And it's difficult to manage ADHD on so many levels, like in your relationships, career, personal health, name it. And so when people are like, oh, this is superpower, you should be able to do like all of these things so much.

31:38You've got this and you don't. And you know that life is really hard and you know that you're struggling and you know you're working a hundred times harder than every single human and longer than anyone. There's no superpower. And so then you just feel like there's something else that's wrong with you because you can't even use your superpower. You don't even know where it is. Like, where's the superpower part of this? So one of the things that you explore in chapter six, you write that ADHD brains often unconsciously create drama. And I had this interview a couple of years ago with my friend, Dr.

32:10Scott Lyons. He wrote this book, Addicted to Drama. Yeah. Why do ADHD brains create this drama and how does it show up? So it's really interesting because not a lot of people talk about this, the need for drama and the love for drama and ADHD. And it is definitely one of the symptoms, especially for women, but also for men. the reason is very simple if you think about how you know how newspapers work right like the if it bleeds it leads right and so anything that's like high intensity and interesting and engaging is going to grab our attention it's going to grab your attention whether you have adc or not and drama is engaging drama is exciting even when it's negative drama even when it's like constantly bad and like travesties happening in my love life and in my job and I got fired again.

33:07And can you believe it? And all of this stuff that people are like walking around, it's like every single time you see them, you're like, okay, what happened this time? Drama kind of follows them around because they're somewhat unconsciously not attracted in a good way, but it's almost like a magnet. Like they're just drawn to it because of the stimulus. It's engaging. It's exciting. It keeps us engaged. It turns on our brain and it helps us feel balanced on some level, even though it can be, and it usually is negative. So it's really important to, if you, if this is like something that, that you tend to fall into, it's just really good to know.

33:50And then you can start to realize, okay, we love stimulus. We love the quote unquote dopamine hits and always being like on. Because when you know people who are in like this drama state, they're on. They're not like half asleep when they're telling you about it. They're usually like angry or excited. There's like a high emotion that goes along with it. And so if it's you and you do this or someone who does, there are ways to, I would say, to replace the negative drama and the negative stimulus for things that are more positive. and you have to do that intentionally. But if you intentionally replace it, and we do this with our clients every single week, this is like one of the big things we do because we can't just have an empty space because if you have an empty space in your life, you're gonna fill it with something.

34:42And usually it's not a great thing that you'll fill it with. So we intentionally create it with something positive. So you have that positive mental and emotional engagement instead of the typical drama that you tend to follow or that tends to follow you. And so slowly, it's not that slowly actually, it usually only takes a few months, not a few years, a few months. You'll start to see that as you're intentionally putting positive stimulus into your life, it starts to take over the negative. I've always pondered this question. You hear a lot of people say that modern life and digital evolution is just making us more ADHD.

35:23This is just a natural coping skill that we have. Do you think it's that or do you think it's just spotlighting patterns that have been there that we weren't recognizing before? Yes. And yes. Yes. The amount of nonstop information and content and engagement that we have access to is mind blowing. The fact that you can't even watch the final credits on a movie at home, you can't watch them. You just watch this whole movie. And as the credits are going down in the beginning, it's showing you the next movie. You can't even come down off the one movie you were watching before you're like going into the next movie and then click now to watch now.

36:11And then it's just nonstop. And so it is creating, it's not creating ADHD. So I need to say that very clearly. It is not because we're born with ADHD. Our brains naturally have lower levels of dopamine, whether it's because we have less or whether it's because less is absorbed, we don't know, but we have less dopamine, period. Now, that's ADHD, but the fact is that a lot of people have ADHD symptoms just because we are habitually wiring ourselves right now to need constant engagement and stimulus. And so when there's like a moment of quiet, we don't know what to do. Something's missing. Something's missing.

36:57And so like we look for something and it's usually, again, not a good thing. It's another movie or another game or another relationship or another drug or whatever you want to fill it with. We're looking for something because we are now being wired to constantly, there's this constant noise. And when the volume is down, it's not comfortable for a lot of us. So it's not ADHD, but it is definitely that need for more stimulus. I want to go back to talking about Adderall and other medications, because in chapter four, you go into this and you say pills don't teach skills, but I want to just do a personal story on this.

37:37A while back, I dated a woman who had been taking Adderall since she was probably in middle school. And she had reached a point where her doses kept going up and up and up. But when I was dating her, she told me that she couldn't function without being on the drugs. And that really always scared me because to me, a drug is exactly that. It's almost like you're taking a depression drug, but to really treat the depression, you have to develop skills to master it. I would think the same thing is true with ADHD. So why do skills matter so much? And what's your recommendation? What do you coach people on?

38:22Okay. This is a huge topic and skills are everything because number one, if, okay. So number one, medication, let's talk about that. The medication that tends to be prescribed for people with ADHD are stimulants, which is great because it allows your brain to have more dopamine, which is what it needs. Okay. So that's a good thing. However, the stimulus will help you focus. So the ADHD medications, they help you focus and they do help you stay focused. However, and this is so important, they do not help you focus or stay focused on the right things. So we have thousands of adults who have ADHD that are taking their ADHD medication and come to us for coaching because you can very easily be taking your meds and be on your social media feed for seven hours straight without even getting up to grab a snack because you're just so hyper-focused in whatever you're doing.

39:26And you go to bed the next night and you've done absolutely nothing. So it doesn't mean that you're going to be productive and like great at your job or great in school. It just helps you stay focused. It's like putting blinders on, which can be very helpful if you know what to focus on and if you know how to design your track to getting from point A to point B. And so the skills are a totally different category. And I believe you need skills more than anything. And if you're taking medication, that's awesome. However, you also need the skills to go with it because just staying focused for some people might be all they need.

40:03But for most people, you need to know what you're focusing on. You need to know about your priorities. And in order to know about your priorities, you need to know what you ultimately want. You need to know how to follow through and go from point A to point B without stopping and getting derailed and going on to something else, which a lot of us do. You need to learn how to communicate in ways that you're matching people rather than always being off and always being misunderstood or getting into arguments. You need to be able to manage your moods because people who have ADHD tend to have a difficult time regulating their emotions.

40:39These are all things you need to learn how to do that the medications don't teach you. It doesn't come with this like little lingo thing. And this is how you manage your ADHD. Although one day it does, all they do is they help you focus. That's it. They don't help you focus on what you need to be focused on. And they don't tell you how to do what you need to be doing. So it's two completely separate categories. I think the medications can be very helpful. I'm not against medication at all, but they are definitely not all you need. Especially like we had a couple of years ago or no, not a couple, probably three or four years ago, we started getting a deluge of people coming to us because there was a shortage of Adderall or like a lot of the ADHD medications.

41:23And so they just couldn't even get them. That's going to happen. And in terms of what happened to your girlfriend, where she had to keep going, she had to keep increasing her dosage. She probably wasn't learning any skills. I'm guessing she wasn't learning. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing she wasn't actually learning how to manage her ADHD in other ways. So she just had to keep relying. She had to stay reliant on the medication and up and up. And that's not good. You don't want super high levels of amphetamines. Well, and also when you do try to break free from it, there's withdrawal just like anything else, especially if you've been on it for decades.

42:00Yeah. If you've been on it for decades and you've been on a high dose, yes. However, if you've never been on ADHD medication and you're wondering about it, I think it's never a bad idea to try because you can go off it without any problem if you start on a small dose. And it It might be exactly what you need to just help you get started in terms of focus. And then obviously there's ways that there's our coaching program and there's a lot of other things out there that can help you do what you need to do. But the smaller doses might be all you need and they are very easy to get off of. So I wouldn't want people to be dissuaded from trying something that can help them.

42:40As long as it's done in moderation. Yes. So at the beginning of the interview, you mentioned that you were pursued by your publisher and it wasn't necessarily something you wanted to write, but if you were going to write it, you wanted to pour your soul into it. So one of the things I thought was most helpful about the book, and we've spent some time right now giving the audience an understanding of ADHD, but you have over a hundred different strategies that are rooted in your decades of coaching. And some of these are emotional regulation tools. Some of these are reducing overwhelmed skills. Some of them are dealing with reframing negative self-talk.

43:23But I wanted to go through a couple of these that caught my eye. So what was the importance of managing your time to manage your life? So why is it so important for people with ADHD to learn how to align tasks with their circadian rhythms? Oh, wow. Because it's such a big deal because we are mood based. Period. End of story. So a neurotypical person could feel horrible and have an easier time still doing whatever needs to be done. All right. I don't feel like it. I don't want to do this. I whatever. But I have this thing on my to do list and I have to get it done. So I was drug through it. A person with 80, she will basically not be able to do that.

44:08Most of us will not be able to. And so it's that much harder to get things done when we're not, quote unquote, in the mood to do it. And so we all have a natural circadian rhythm. Like we really do. And it could be opposite of you and I could have completely opposite rhythms, but we all have our own. And I think that everyone's exhausted by 3 p.m. That's what I think. But it turns out that some people like that's their second wind. It's exactly like between 2.30 and 3, they're just like ready to go again, back to work. And so you have to go with how you feel in terms of managing your time because you're going to have things that you have to do regardless of what kind of job you have or even if you have a job, there's things you have to do.

44:59And so it's important to, I would really say, it's important to work with your brain and know when are you more, like when is your brain more energized? and when you normally feel good, naturally, do your harder tasks at that time. Just do them. And then when you're normally turned off and it's almost impossible to get anything done, you'll notice that that's usually at a certain time of day or there's like a few hour window, whatever it is. That's when you schedule your easier tasks. And this one switch, because it's a big switch, John, because a lot of people, let's say if you're a morning person, A lot of people tend to spend those like that time doing the most meaning, meaningless things.

45:42And they're just like scrolling through their phone, reading the news, or they're just like drinking their coffee. But it's like, that's their most engaged. Their brain is at its most engaged peak time. And so they could be doing something a lot more productive that would save them about three hours later on in the day when they really don't want to. And matching your tasks with your circadian rhythm. I think in my experience with all of our clients, it's a game changer. Like it really is. And it's very simple. I think it's good for anyone. And that's exactly what I do. Like all my writing, my deep thinking, if I'm writing a book, try to start as early as I can in the morning.

46:19So if I'm really in book writing mode, I'm in front of the computer at six o 'clock in the morning, and then I'll take a break like two, three hours into the day. And I put a lot of my answering emails, administrative stuff in the back half of the day. See, you're living proof. How many books have you written? Like, you've got like the 10 more you were talking about before, like a 10 series and of the kids of the children's books when those are going to be coming out. That's exactly what you need to do. Most people think they need to do things at a certain time or based on how other people do them.

46:51But you don't. You if you have a brain that's wired in any way differently or just your however you are wired, that's where you that's where you're going to be most effective. That's where you're going to be more productive. Yeah. And since I brought up that gentleman I worked with at Lowe's, I was talking about like people thought he was on a roller coaster ride, which really to me is one of the things you focus on is how do you stay on track and follow through? What are some of the best hacks for people with ADHD for consistency? For consistency or for following through? Well, I think it's a little bit of both because to me, following through, if you're not doing it consistently, people pick it up.

47:35Right. People notice. People do notice. And more importantly is you notice. When, as soon as you notice that you're off track, especially if you're used to being off track a lot, you'll tend to fall down the track. Like you'll just tend to just jump off of it. And there's the physical management strategies and then there's the mental management strategies. I think a lot of us forget to ask why we do what we do. I think so many of us, especially today when the volume is so high and there's so much coming at us from every possible direction. We tend to, even when we don't, if we don't have ADHD, we tend to be in reaction mode a lot.

48:19And we're just like falling into things and following what's pulling us down here or down this track or down that track. And we don't actually intend to be on that track. And so I think it's extremely important for us to remember just to ask why we're doing what we're doing and why it's a priority for us. So when you're talking about consistency and following through, what do I need to follow through on and why? and lock yourself into that. Because when we live 24 seven in a reaction mode, which I believe is like most of the human race at this point, it's really easy to forget. And I think a lot of us do.

49:03And we have these moments of this like minute where we're on, we see a meme and it reminds us to be grateful and to remember and to count our blessings. And it's just like in our brain and then out of our brain in one second. So write down, if you actually have something that you want to follow through on, write down why and write it down and make it so that it's visible and that you have it in front of you somewhere. And I don't mean create a vision board or anything like that. Just write down your why and go a little bit deeper and try to find out like really why, because it's usually not about looking better or making more money.

49:37It really isn't, even though that tends to be a lot of people's immediate wise, it always goes deeper. And when you're more emotionally, like I was saying before, we're very emotion and mood based when you're emotionally attached to what you want to follow through on and it's pulling you, you will stay engaged. You won't jump off that track nearly as easily as if it's just something that you're reacting to for no reason. So you have to go, why. You have to remind yourself and your brain why, what's important. And that's going to get you to be much more emotionally attached. And that's everything when it comes to ADHD.

50:15And then there's practical things you can do. If you're working on something and it's been two hours and you're losing track or you just went down a rabbit hole on the internet, get off your butt and do a physical state change, which I'm a huge believer in physical state changes because Because as when you, we have like our physical, our mental and emotional, it's like everything is a state and the easiest, if you're feeling bad, you can't just tell yourself to feel better. Right. But if you're doing something with your right hand, you can tell yourself to do it with your left hand. Okay. So the easiest state for us to change is our physical state, not our mental state, but our physical state affects our mental state.

50:56Like they're all, it's all, it's all attached. So the best way to get back on track, if you're getting off track, honestly, is just to change your physical state, whether that means like getting up and like putting on some music and just like going for a walk or whether it means this is so bad. But some of our clients have fallen in love with this, which is a physical state change doesn't mean exercise necessarily. It just means doing something physically to wake up your brain. And so that sucking on a breath mint, like a really strong one, and then drinking an ice cold glass of water, I don't know why.

51:34But this really, it is invigorating times 10. There's different ways that people can like wake themselves up and get more into their body. And that helps them get back on track very quickly. Like sitting at your computer and going on another website is not going to help. But a physical state change will. Being much more emotionally attached to the why behind what you're doing that well. I'm just curious, how have you managed to stay off social media while building the world's largest ADHD coaching practice? Isn't that crazy? People don't understand. I don't really understand it either. I don't like social media just because I like it.

52:18I like it for some reasons. I love that you can get back in touch with people that you haven't spoken to in 40 years, that kind of thing. But what it does to my brain is not fun. And so for me, I feel like social media would has to be something in like teeny little microdoses, right? And 10 minutes at a time here or there. But that's very hard for people. So I think ADHD and social, it's like social media is like kryptonite for an ADHD-er. And you have to be very careful. so I have managed to stay off of it the way a child manages to not eat chopped liver

53:00it's just not fun it's not fun for me I like I just I'm very self-aware and I think you probably are too so like I noticed that when social media was like a thing at the beginning like way back now I'm totally dating myself but I was on it a lot and I never felt good after an hour on it or two hours on it, I would just feel tired. I felt tired and I never felt good about myself. So I think it's really good for things like, I think podcasts are amazing. If you're learning something that's not to me, that's awesome. Cause you can listen to that in your car. You can listen to that while you're doing something in it and you're actually growing, but most social media doesn't help us grow.

53:40And that's the social media. I don't really involve myself in. And one of the things I try to get people to do on this podcast is to implement what you listen on the show. And I think a lot of people listen to podcasts and they don't do anything. So we actually started a sub stack and we're like going overboard. We're writing like accompanying sub stack posts for these episodes. But in them, we're putting complete workbooks so they can. Oh, my gosh. So we go through and we highlight the different strategies we talk about. Since I've read the book, we also put some of the information from the book into the workbooks as well to get people to take that step.

54:22Because what's the point of wasting your time if you're not going to implement what you're hearing? I love that so much. I love that so much. You've read my book. You probably know how many times I say in my book, don't just read about this, do it. And I say that in different ways, at least 10 or 15 different times throughout this book. Don't just read about a strategy, implement it, try it, do it. This might sound easy. This might sound obvious. Please try it in your life. Like right now, I will wait for you. I actually say that in my book because we already have information. Nobody is lacking information.

55:03it's doing it that makes a difference. It's the only thing that we need to be doing differently is actually implementing any of the information that we're given. So I love that you do that, John. That's so cool. That's amazing. Yeah. To start a movement. Every podcast should do that. You know who told me to start doing it was my friend, Terry Cole. I'm not sure if you know who Terry is. If you don't, man, you got to get on her podcast. She's great. But she does it on her show too. So listener, if you like my show, her big thing is boundaries, but she talks a lot about a lot more than that. Wow.

55:41That's huge. Especially for people with ADHD. Terry, if you're listening, I'm giving you some free promo today. But so, Shauna, if a listener is dealing with ADHD and they just wanted to implement one starting point from the book today, what would you recommend? Do less. Do less, not more. Do less at a time. By doing less at a time. And this is like a rule that you would have to live by, not just like an idea. by doing less all at once, you will end up doing more. That is a fact. I feel like we've proven that since I started my coaching program. We have this part of our program called One Focus and every single week a client gets one focus.

56:34It's like a one thing that they need to do and it's usually something that's like two or three minutes a day. Everyone fights us about this. You like, these are high level people. We have doctors who are clients. We have like CEOs of gigantic companies. They're like, you're not giving me one thing to do. Are you joking? What am I paying for? But at the end of the session, they get one action that they have to implement. It is remarkable how this compounds because every week they're getting one every week. So after two months, we've already gotten eight and they're doing it every single day. And after three months is 12.

57:07And so you don't realize it, but thinking about only doing that one thing at a time allows your brain to totally absorb whatever it is that you need to be doing. And rather than trying to do 13 things all at one time and your brain absorbs none of it, and then you have to keep repeating it and doing it again and correcting it and doing it again and again, and it takes forever. This is just like the one thing that I would love for people to start thinking about and then start doing is doing less at a time and believing and trusting that it will allow you to do a lot more. And it'll alleviate tons of overwhelm, which tends to paralyze people and make us not able to do anything.

57:49That's one of the biggest secrets I try to tell people about, not only on this podcast, but in my book as well, is that it's the micro actions. It's the micro consistency of doing small things in a repeated fashion that's going to get you to change quicker than anything else in your life. That's exactly it. Micro choices that you make. That's exactly right. So the micro choice, what you're saying, that's what we call the one focus. That's it. And that's what we do. This book is chock full of all of that. And not only are we telling you to do one small thing, we're telling you what to do. Here's a small thing that you're going to do this.

58:29And every single, you just do it. Just do one. If there's like a hundred things in this book or in any other books that you might be reading, just do one. Don't think that you need to do all of it because that won't work. Just do one. And then you'll see how quickly things actually change for you in your real life. I feel like a lot of us don't trust that. We think that we have to do everything all at the same time. And it has to be more and more. And that's why there's people are struggling so much because they're not living up to their potential. They're doing less. They feel like they're always behind and it's extremely stressful.

59:05Absolutely. And I love how you end the book because I think this is something that's true, whether we're talking about ADHD or anything you want to improve in your life. You're limitless when you learn to work with your brain, not against it. That's such an important message. It is. We really are. I'm learning that every single client that comes into our program teaches me what's possible. And we have so many people who swear on their life that nothing will ever help them. And then something does help them. And then this helps them or we help and we help them. And it's not that difficult. So I promise that when you know what to do for the way that your brain is wired, your life will start to fall into place and things will start to get easier.

59:51but you have to learn. You have to figure out like, what do I need to do to work with my brain? And that's it. I think we're all designed a little bit differently and just own that. Absolutely. Well, Shauna, it was such a joy to have you today. Congratulations on your book. And thank you again for giving us the honor of coming on PassionStruck. Thanks, Sean. It was really fun to be here. I'm really glad we got to have this conversation. Thank you. That brings us to a close of today's conversation with Shauna Pearson. What stayed with me the most is how powerfully understanding reshapes identity.

1:00:23When patterns finally have a name, effort softens. When systems adapt to the person rather than the person conforming to the system, meaning becomes livable again. Shana shows that alignment restores trust, that self-worth grows when we stop asking ourselves to perform correctly and start allowing ourselves to function honestly. As we continue The Meaning Makers, this conversation carries us forward in an important way. Alex Ema showed us how success under certainty creates hidden costs. Shana Pearson helped us see how those costs surface internally when people override themselves for years. And on Thursday, we moved to where many of those patterns first take shape, the family system.

1:01:06I'll be joined by Dr. Robin Kozlowicz, clinical psychologist and parenting expert. Our conversation centers on post-traumatic parenting, and we discuss how boundaries, self-worth, and mattering are formed early and how families can build cultures of emotional safety regardless of the past. Not only will your damage not damage your kids, but your damage can be the catalyst for you to break the cycle, right? Your damage can actually make you into a better parent. You're not flawed. In some ways, you're uniquely qualified to parent because you know what your values are. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend or a family member.

1:01:47Also, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and let us know what stood out most. Want to go deeper? Visit theignitedlife.net for workbooks and curated insights from this episode. Check out our YouTube channels at John R. Miles and Passion Struck Clips for the full video and highlights. And remember to explore startmattering.com for intention-driven apparel that reminds you daily, you matter, live like it. As we continue the meaning makers. Remember, significance grows where understanding replaces strain. I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck.