Ep.42 Let's Talk About ADHD: The TikTok Stars That Changed The Conversation

0:00There can be a bit of a conversation on life. oh my god everything's ADHD. Hopefully conversations like this it's going to kind of feed through. I want to talk about general kind of living with ADHD. 5 % of children and 3 % of adults, that's a lot of people. What would you say the biggest ways that affects your kind of day-to-day life? The struggle is really real. I will almost reach kind of panic attack level. Yeah. Part of ADHD there's an executive function problem but there's ways to really reinvigorate jobs and make them exciting like for anyone that is in that place really struggling it's never as bad as you seem but it's absolutely part of the experience we don't hear that narrative very often what you've said is absolutely so beautiful we should celebrate it's something that we are a bit embarrassed to talk about

0:57What is up guys and welcome back to Working Hard, Hurdly Working. Today's episode is a special one that I've wanted to do for a while now. I obviously talk about productivity tips a lot and we talk about work and how we can get our shit together and everything on this podcast a lot and in general across my socials and one of the things that I always try to caveat is the difference in experience between productivity tips you might see online and general kind of what might work best for people in terms of what makes them more productive, what makes them more effective in their work, what makes progression easier, all of these things.

1:31But actually the difference between what that will be like between someone who has some sort of neurodivergence and someone who doesn't, someone neurotypical. And so I really wanted to do this episode to highlight the experience of ADHD, talk about living, learning, being productive, loving, dating, all of those things with ADHD from the standpoint of an adult's diagnosis just because I know that I mean I assume that everyone listens to this podcast as an adult I don't know if I've hit up with the 16 year olds yet but hopefully they think I'm cool but I hope you really enjoy this episode I absolutely loved recording it it's a very open heart to heart about the experience of living with ADHD and kind of attempting to take away a lot of the taboos around it and surrounding not just like productivity but things like financial budgeting, things like getting into debt, things like alcohol addiction, a number of these different things.

2:26So we hit on a lot of these topics in this episode. If you are triggered by any of them, please read the description first to be able to see if the topics might be too triggering for you. But I personally found this a really, really interesting and heartwarming episode. And I hope that especially if you have a neurodivergence or have an ADHD diagnosis you'll be able to find this really helpful I hope you enjoyed this episode please rate the podcast share it with your friends and let me know how you found it and as always have a wonderful day thanks so much for joining me guys thank you thanks for having us first things first it would be great if you guys could introduce yourself in terms of what you do and kind of a little bit of backstory in terms of how you got to where you are now.

3:16My name's Rox. I am a singer songwriter, have been for 15 years, about 13 years, lots of failing, let's put it that way. In the last couple of years, things have started to go great. As part of that journey was finding out that I also have ADHD. I found out when I was 36 and it was a bit of a bombshell moment. And alongside Rich, as a bit of a joke we started this social media channel called adhd love um and over the last year it just kind of took off and went quite viral and we've got this wonderful community of people online really resonating with these weird wonky things that i do in my life and uh yeah i'll let you tell the story of how that started because i'm a bit embarrassed yeah oh now i'm interested my background is less creative so i've worked for a bank for 20 years uh so never really in the creative space or content i didn't even know i think i had instagram one instagram account with like one post on it when we had six posts and they were like really like dad posts right yeah so i was like really into the social media world through music because i have a sort of music project and i remember talking to you about tiktok and what's that that's for kids it's so funny to And I see him every day checking the data, logging on, editing.

4:39It's amazing what a couple of years can do. And then, yeah, so the start of our social media account, it's written in the book, actually, the first chapter, is she, like, this is quite graphic for a straightaway. Hi, lovely to meet you. Please give me all of the graphic secrets. You know, one of the things about having an ADHD female partner is that they don't always remember when their periods are due. Before the flow app. now I'm on the flow app okay everything's fine whilst you're using the flow app yeah and one night she said I'm on my period and I said have you got a tampon in because she hasn't always got the right products available and she said yeah I've got a tampon in and a bit of a running joke like sometimes in the past hasn't used tampax certified products they've been kind kind of DIY, which we've referred to as trampon.

5:31And so I asked her if it was a real one. She said, yes. She said, yeah, that would be a funny social media video. And I went, yeah, let's give it a go. Let's start it tomorrow. No chance. So we were up at one o 'clock in the morning creating that. And that was our first video. And that was the birth of ADHD. It seems like years ago now, but it was only about a year and a half, I think. Yeah. Amazing. What a starting story. I feel like when you must have like sat and talked to a publisher about that they must have been like okay you know when they're sitting like there and they're like well it's not glass offices and they're like that's really nice it's not the origin story you expect yeah but I think it's absolutely perfect for my personality yeah it does say a lot actually so like setting the scene very well tell me about what's happened since then it just went mad didn't it like I think our second video went viral and I suppose that the big thing was not only the followers coming in but actually how much that they were they were connecting with the content a lot of people kind of felt understood I think that's probably the theme around oh my god this is me this is me that's the comment that we see all the time oh my god that's my brain yeah and it's really funny because it's often our whole take on it was kind of sharing the things I think about me like really odd and weird yeah and that other people wouldn't relate to for example this pair of socks I'm wearing I've bought 20 pairs of this sock so that I can just wear them every day because I love them because they bring a lot of dopamine and so I don't have to worry about matching them and we put that on the internet the other day and then there's thousands of people saying I've done that too like where are these wonderful people you forgot to mention you threw away all of your other stuff because it's like it's all about these now because that obsession when you want to do something yeah you go all in and then yeah as the kind of community started growing and it really wasn't meant to happen as he said he was working in the bank and I was doing my artist career and as we started to hear people kind of say it was really helping especially with shame removal and talking about taboos as well like that's uh like the tampon story yeah like the tampon story in terms of like that is uh it's a taboo within a taboo because you're speaking about like your you know your something that's already a taboo like talking about something personal and like talking about you know periods and all of that like there's already people feel a bit like oh they can only talk about it in certain ways and only in certain environments and then you add on to that like the fact that you're talking about your personal response with it when you know that there are some people who might not understand at all and might you know say whatever they want to say whatever people say on the internet and actually being able to kind of normalize both of those things and just be open about it I can imagine creates a really safe space for some people who have felt like probably like you have felt like no one else would do that and actually you're one of many I mean I've got some got my stats here but like the fact that it is the most common behavioral well it says disorder we've discussed briefly before the episode how it's referred to as a disorder but it feels much nicer to be calling it a neurodivergence the most common one in the UK that's you know that's very very significant when you look at also other common neurodivergence like dyslexia like a lot of these kind of other things for five percent of children and three percent of adults like there are going to be lots of people that's a lot of people um I think that's like 1.5 million people so that's a lot like that's a lot of people to be sitting there with their diy tampons and that's only that's only in the uk so to be able to create that safe space is like i can understand would be hugely important and hugely like it's you know we like to call these things a niche that's not a niche and 1.5 million people is a whole lot of people it's actually amazing kind of hearing you say those stats because the content we create is so much about just the reality of my real life with it and we don't tend to read much of the stats do we so hearing that back it's it's really quite eye-opening because at the moment sometimes there can be a bit of a conversation online which is a bit of an eye roll oh my god everything's adhd sure more people with adhd and actually hearing you say that um that's that's received diagnoses as well like that's medical data so if you're looking at like the issues there are with i believe like the nhs diagnosis time is a good few years or even not diagnosis time even to get the testing is a good few years and if you go private it's 700 pounds to a thousand pounds which if you're you know who not a lot of people are able to kind of set aside that much money to be able to find out something that ultimately we also don't have a lot of cures for so you're likely to be able to if you're making it that difficult to diagnose then you've got to understand the presence of self-diagnosis as well in order to be able to like find coping strategies that work for you a hundred percent i think that's such an important thing to talk about and that can come with a lot of shame and kind of semi-political opinions as well on either side but whether or not you have the official diagnosis the struggle is really real if you're struggling to not get overwhelmed or stay on top of financial organization or for me it was at my lowest moments not opening letters and then ending up with ccjs and having all these weird and wonderful business ideas and then constantly failing with them overspending on shopping and the only answer I had was well I'm terrible I'm awful something's wrong with me so if there's people out there who are really resonating with the content with the research that they might be doing that's absolutely the okay yeah and in fact what we want to see is lower times for people to get diagnosis not shutting people off from resources that might actually help them feel a bit less ashamed yeah no I mean I really love that and I think that's very important I'd like to talk about your story of diagnosis and how it came about and any earlier signs you felt you kind of had of ADHD could you tell a little bit of background about that kind of set the scene for us absolutely so mine was really about clearing through a lot of mess that was there until I could see the ADHD sign.

11:59So just to set a bit of the story, I was living a pretty difficult life a few years ago. And I had an alcohol and drug addiction, a lot of relationship problems and struggles, chronically low self-esteem was self-harming up until my early 30s it's just very dark a lot of problems the first thing that I did to really start to change the direction of my life was get sober in 2018 and the removal of alcohol really allowed me to face up to a lot of the problems that I was going through of course alcohol was also the coping mechanism so when that was taken away all of the anxiety all of the the issues were suddenly very much at the forefront of my life yeah and that led me to go and get some rather incredible therapy um in 2020 throughout that therapeutic process I was dealing with anxiety and depression self-esteem issues really going back to childhood as often you do in therapy to go through some some difficult things I'd gone through as a kid.

13:11And over this kind of year of therapy, I really just started to blossom and get better. It was incredible. And towards the end of my time when I was really doing okay, was when I said, look, doc, things are going pretty well, but there's a few things I'd like to raise. This week, I've got on the tube the wrong way five times. I've lost three pairs of iPhone headphones, because suddenly with everything else cleared, I could see this thing, whereas it had been buried in just an entire life of chaos. When I was actually okay and had some support in other areas, there were these glaring things. And that was the first time she said, wow, that really sounds like it could be ADHD.

13:59And funnily enough, my first real knowledge of it was actually through TikTok. It's probably why we ended up going and making TikTok because I went and searched it and became obsessed with it on on TikTok and watching TikTokers and I don't know do you remember I do yeah you come to me and was like this is me and it was I think it was a creator called Connor DeWolf and you just burst into tears didn't you with how much you resonated with his content and I think it was through then we were we were fortunate enough through me and the bank that um Rox was able to get done privately um which is obviously a privilege that that many people don't have with long waiting lists and stuff like that but actually looking at it Rox doesn't use it as an excuse or anything but it just helps her make sense of her life because there was a lot of real negative um sort of self-narrative towards herself and I think that really changed with the diagnosis and then we started really simply like I taught you how to make a bed like and simple stuff like that and damage limitation when it comes to 13 wallets is fine but let's let's make sure there's not 13 lots of driving licenses when that goes so just it's a bit of limitation yeah um but yeah and then and then I suppose you just started getting better and better didn't you yeah that was the first moment in my life when there was a language that didn't involve there's something wrong with me and the chaos in my own head started to make a bit more sense and I think that's why that language can be so important when you can suddenly start to understand maybe you're a person that needs a bit more support yeah in order to have a happy life yeah and I think that like our understanding generally is like there's a kind of norm within what might be like an upper bound or a lower bound about general things it might be organization it might be performance it might be like literally literally everything I feel like there's a kind of upper and lower bound of what you kind of expect within something and what I guess a neurodivergence diagnosis allows you to do is see where you might be outside of that in order to be able to like cope with that and make sense of it rather than it you know I think there's this really negative connotation of like saying that a diagnosis is going to give someone an excuse for what someone might be saying is you know oh just you know you should know how to do this or you should whatever it might be surely that's unhelpful to everyone because for like as in like we're not back in the 19 whatever like we're not using like like kind of essentially being like how dare you you need to act like this instead anything that makes everyone perform better and act better and feel better surely is a good thing even if it might not be for you so for you sure like sure it might be that you don't need any help on organization and actually if someone were to give you more help you'd think you were being patronized but actually if that's not your strong suit in the same way as you might not have a talent in I don't know like music or art or whatever we all have things we're good at and things we're not good at it's just those like core parts of life that we see as like organization and productivity and those various different things that I can imagine is like some people look at that in quite a derogatory sense and they're like you know able to see it as an excuse or whatever it might be where actually surely anything that helps you to perform better and make sense of something is better to be putting like to help people definitely but I think when when you were first diagnosed um there were occasions because you're human as well right humans definitely aren't perfect and there were probably some occasions where you were like I've ADHD I can't I can't make the bed and I'm definitely going to be late to everything all the time so I don't even need to try that that sort of obviously not all the time but and and you know with all of us can be lazy like that's whether you've got ADHD or not and rocks definitely can be lazy as can I but there's a very there's a very big difference between looking at a room a messy room and going I'm overwhelmed I don't know where to start with this versus you know sitting on the bed I suppose and saying I can't yeah what you've said is absolutely so beautiful which is if something helps somebody to be more productive to achieve more perhaps even more importantly to be happy in their personal life yeah sure then that's absolutely something that we should celebrate definitely online one of our main we don't get many actually to be honest but one of the main hate comments is this is just laziness and you're glorifying um not trying or not being very good or not taking accountability and as you said i never want to be the person that says no no i could never be lazy absolutely i can and as any human can so it's really about understanding it's nuanced and it's all messy because it's all human but what you said I think really sums it up there's a really big difference between someone saying and I can talk about me personally if I'm looking at a really messy room I'm not even going to try because I have ADHD so I'm going to leave all of that to you and actually I need this to be perfect and I have no idea where to start and I'm going to end up spending six hours and then overwhelming myself and not doing anything could you maybe help talk me through it or sit with me as I do it and actually I've I'm way better a lot of things in all areas of life because of acceptance and understanding yeah it goes a long way no I can completely understand that and I think that you're looking from an outside perspective at something that's helping someone else and determining it to be wrong like that to me seems like misplaced like just say if someone agreed that it was kind of like glorifying being lazy in that specific video whatever it might be it also like doesn't have that much of an effect on that person's life like they're not in your life so you could probably just scroll past it's fascinating as well what people expect people to be able to do whether it's cleanliness or tidiness or being on time yeah you know rock struggles with those things but she can go and write platinum selling songs right she came up with a creative idea for our but like you know and it's just it baffles me sometimes as to what just society expects everyone to be really good at all the time yeah for sure I want to talk about general kind of living with ADHD first of all what would you say the biggest ways that affects your kind of day-to-day life would be I'd say the biggest thing is overwhelm and energy so I find I'm kind of constantly in energy saving mode for small little things and so as an example buying 20 pairs of the same sock so I don't have to spend time matching them yeah it sounds like such a tiny weenie thing but my energy gets so drained just by trying to not miss trains or be on time or even come across as a normal human in a conversation or at work life is really quite incredibly tiring so those mini moments when I can like snatch back a bit of energy for myself is amazing and actually probably maybe a little bit deeper is emotional dysregulation okay um which is a little bit vulnerable and I'm still really learning to to ask for help and go and have a cuddle when this happens to me it's not my strongest suit but let's say I'm getting ready to leave the house I'm going somewhere really important and I can't find something which is a classic it happens most mornings I will almost reach kind of panic attack level yeah heartbeat going fast I'm sweating I can actually present as quite angry yeah I'm not a very nice human being to be around because I get incredibly dysregulated and actually emotional dysregulation is kind of part of the ADHD spectrum and that can come with a lot of shame and especially if it's him you know early on in the days of dating kind of him seeing me like a headless chicken running around sweating where's this crying it's it's not very nice it's not how I almost want to be seen as a human being but it's absolutely part of the experience and I think what I'm learning still is that that's okay it's okay if I get stressed it's okay if I get angry it's okay to let somebody in to ask for help to do my funny breathing exercise to calm down yeah so I think that's that's a big one what would you say someone that lives with me you know at the start I'll probably speak into that a little bit more because it was it was really it's really difficult at times you know there was obviously some wonderful amazing things like the humor and the energy and and and you know there's always laughter in the in the four walls where we live but but actually talking about some of the things that made me as the partner of someone with ADHD feel inconsiderate so you know late all the time or the room just trashed with some um hyper-focused thing just after all the washing had been done and tidying and stuff like that and you know agreeing times that dinner would be um or you say in five minutes and being an hour and a half like when you don't even from from you know a neurotypical point of view when you don't understand it and you're with someone with adhd it can feel very different to the reality and that and that took a lot of learning on my part you know for each other I guess um to to to cope and get through it yeah no I can imagine I think that like the way you speak about that is so beautiful in the way that like I think when we talk about neurodivergence or any kind of divergent from what we see as like the quote-unquote norm we see it as all the things that like are absent or take away or probably more negative we're also even like highlighting like all of the for example there are so many incredible creatives that I've worked with who are neurodivergent in some way so whether it's dyslexia whether it's ADHD etc like etc etc a number of different ways there is no way I believe they could be that insanely creative and like genius in that extent to that extent and like I've learned this really early on she won't mind me talking about this but our creative leader at Tala she has dyslexia I remember when we were first working together and she was kind of doing the creative and socials and I remember we would kind of go over things and there'd be like we implemented putting like Grammarly in place and a few of these other things because it was like it was for the social captions and they'd often have a number of different spelling or grammar mistakes or whatever and it was a public facing thing and we kind of worked together on like how to get that right because obviously it was kind of part of her role and I remember just essentially like having this conversation and being like I can't ask you to be like this amazingly creative and be able to like think this far outside of the box and then be annoyed when you can't think this like like in in the box in this way of like getting that spelling and grammar spot on and we've had conversations where like someone's like really rudely comment and I get you you expect to see brand communications are going to be absolutely perfect but sometimes you know when there's like a spelling mistake it might be in a socials post and we've kind of been open about i've i've said like reply at any point you want being like hey like dyslexic social media manager checking in here so sorry you're completely right like downloads grammally or whatever it might be but i think like a long anecdote to kind of say that like fact of like there are so many amazing things about diverging from the norm in that way that we cannot expect to happen whilst also expecting you to kind of be in this like box of what that's to be seen as and for you to be like when you're talking about like your music or talking about like the pitch for the book or whatever it might be like it astounds me how we expect for us to be able to have like both sides and not to be like the way your brain thinks will probably allow you maybe yeah to be like late but also at the same time to be able to be unconstrained by time when thinking about something creative and unconstrained by all of those things and like why do we expect to be able to like tick both of those things and be able to get the benefits from both of that when realistically like to me that doesn't sound like what we should be expecting i think you've just said something so beautiful it's like made my spine tingle because we don't hear that narrative very often we're very often it's like they're late and they're messy and then yeah sure we are but there's some other stuff that's just so wonderful and it's kind of society or a lot of society values always being on time showers every morning getting everything right um and people that struggle with that can feel they're somehow deficient or somehow failing and miss this absolute like superpower that other people might not have and together um it's why I just feel so grateful that I have rich because we kind of complete the circle with the yin and yang yeah so for instance with the book it was my idea to write it and I've made the cover in Canva written all the chapters on day one right sure but the person that did all the admin and researched and got it uploaded to amazon and that was him because i would struggle with the more admin heavy sides it might have been a two chapter book mightn't it might have been a picture book it might have been a kid's book yes so i get to see the absolute like beauty and value in both sides it's not about kind of one being better than the other yeah but i do truly believe that a lot of neurodivergent people have got other gifts very often creative and I see it it's really interesting you mentioned that I see it a lot in music I work with some great artists songwriters producers some diagnosed some maybe yeah don't realize but I just see it in in the behavior and there's definitely a thread I'd love to see some more research on neurodivergence and and creativity um but one thing you know for anybody listening this is the thing I would have really liked to have heard something my therapist said to me that was really quite life-changing I was talking about struggles with keeping on top of the cleaning every day and I want to do everything perfectly so I want to have a Mrs Hinch style yeah I'll do it for a week and it'll be amazing and then it's absolute chaos yeah and I just couldn't get a handle on it and she said you know it doesn't need to be perfect and please remember that your your purpose in life isn't a perfectly tidy house and it just that bit of me that that was constantly seeking perfection and then failing just kind of loosened a little it's okay if it isn't perfect yeah because my life purpose is over here and in books and music and something totally different yeah no I can completely see that and I think that like throughout life we often get this kind of paralysis about taking action when we're looking at perfection and like talking about perfectionism across like all people I think a lot of the time done is better than perfect and I think a hundred percent in like I say it all the time I have high standards and I want great work submitted but it can't be perfect work if it's going to take seven times the amount of time and actually we need it next week and I think that understanding that um in all walks of life is incredibly important but especially if it like stops you taking that first step in order you know as you say like seeing an unsurmountable you know thing of laundry or whatever it might be rather than seeing that in a way where it's like a step-by-step one you know one thing at a time it's this kind of mountain that how like would you ever climb that what would you say are the biggest like coping strategies that you have in order to be able to I can understand that you just know that like done is better than perfect but then I can imagine and that doesn't always like make itself apparent in that moment.

30:11Should you do step one perfectly most of the time? When you say done is better than perfect, the thing I think about is me cleaning the bathroom. Yeah. So my way of cleaning a bathroom historically was to never clean it at all and kind of ignore it. And then one day this like fire inside would ignite. I'm like, right, I'm really cleaning this thing. and I'd be like on my knees with a toothbrush in the corner looking at YouTube videos how to get the perfect mirror literally like so it's this like very odd all or nothing and it's finding that gray area in between that I try to do every day like if there's just one load of laundry that's fine I don't need to go through my entire closet and like organize it in sleeve length and like throw things just one load of laundry is fine if i'm cleaning the bathroom a quick tidy is fine i don't need to be in the corner however deeper than that i'd say although i'm always trying to find the gray i fail all the time yeah like the other night when we had a new little water feature delivered from amazon that i wanted for the bedroom i unpacked it at 11 p.m 11 30 11.30.

31:30Thank you very much. Our bedtime is like nine. Our bedtime is like nine. Probably like two hours past our bedtime by this point. And the grey would have been, let's deal with this tomorrow and that's okay. It doesn't all need to be set up now. The grey didn't win that day. The all or nothing one. So not only were we unpacking it, sorry, was he unpacking it and setting it up. I then decided it didn't look right unless I had could feng shui all of the bedside tables and move all the books around. And it was another hour of kind of hour and a half. Thank you very much. I have the time sheet. I love how you know that.

32:10So like finding the great amazing go for it. but deeper than that it's just like sometimes okay to be who you are and to not feel incredible shame yeah to be different because also thinking about like the superpower angle again sure that's probably not what you wanted at 11 30 the room does look great well exactly but i also think like who else would be able to have that energy to suddenly get so excited by something to be able to re-feng shui a whole room not me which well exactly not you which crucially is the problem probably was maybe some sleep to be had but I also think that like in that moment like do you know how like exciting that is the fact that you would get so excited about this delivery that you want to be able to like make everything look great like I understand that yeah sure it's not the most practical thing and like there are going to be times where it's like maybe like not now but also like to be able to just be like do you know what we don't have enough of that excitement in our lives like we don't have enough of those like oh my god this is going to transform the whole thing i for example had a like was up at three last night and i was so i had this idea and i actually came in and pitched it to the whole team this morning it's not even about work it's literally my personal life but i got so excited about this idea that i bullet pointed all the questions we needed to ask to all the people then did a summary of the entire thing of work and mood boarded it as well at like three and my um boyfriend was driving me in this morning and I was like I'm gonna pitch it to you tomorrow and he was like when did this start like three you were fast asleep you're like spooning the dog and I'm here like mood boarding on Instagram and like I understand sure inconvenient for all like including yourself like that's probably not what you probably were over exhausted the next day and all of this but like talk about like being able to actually get like this like proper excitement and kind of like real boost of like energy to be able to make something amazing happen a lot of people would look at that in the opposite and have like no excitement to do with it or whatever like at least you you really got your joy out of that i agree i agree and i you know i can i can jokingly moan about it but it's it's fun it's funny and i'll know that there are some things just by looking at her face that to to put a boundary around and say no we're not we can't do that this just was wasn't one of those and also like i think that neurodivergence or not there are always going to be that like as in i think sometimes when we're able to label something especially in a relationship and especially when it's like the similar issues that come up it's able to really be kind of like put in this specific adhd box but it's also like there are always going to be frustrations with partners as well and being like oh my god why are you doing this again like whether it is because of that or whether it's because of an annoying thing they do like there's always going to be kind of that side and that normalizing also being able to be annoyed at it and seeing that it can be a great thing but being like it's a great thing but like currently I would like to be asleep and actually being able to have that like I love the open line of communication in that way I think it's kind of the only way that I mean I think in relationships in general that's kind of one of the most important things um when you're like trying to find that gray area and you're like in the task is there anything that you're able to do that kind of like brings you back to that when you see yourself going for that like real all I mean it depends what it is if it's like a water feature and it's got a spinning resin orb and it like I can't like I'm sorry I just have to go for it if it's buying 20 pairs of socks I have to go for it the areas where I've really learned to slow down is when there's a big cost involved or a lot of time yeah and funnily enough that is often in business so just you talking about it being 3am and you're but i just hear that so much like that is me to a t whether it's writing a song or some random business idea it happens at the weirdest of times sometimes those things can be genius i can't wait to see what goes and happens in the personal life but for for so much of my life i was really dragged by those impulses so But I've just like started so many businesses, maybe in the years as well before I got sober and before I'd had therapy.

36:30So actually mentally I wasn't healthy enough to see it through. But I'd be dragged always. And like the minute an idea would drop in my head, it drops fully formed. So I'm on Insta, I'm getting the handles, I'm registering the trademark, I'm designing the logo. And it was five minutes ago I had the idea. and it's actually quite a funny story if you don't mind me telling the the resin story um because this experience with rich has really helped me learn to not jump in and go and find a new life purpose every time i have a new business idea yeah it was quite early on in our dating and i had seen i don't know if you've seen them they're like resin tables it's like a wooden table like a resin river through the middle oh yes i have oh they're just amazing so i saw that became obsessed with the idea that I wanted to learn how to make resin and we were very early on so he had no idea that this was quite a regular occurrence like random business ideas like so yeah I thought we were on the cusp of being millionaires this is genius oh my god what's happened this is a one in a lifetime thing not not not a one in a month thing so I tell him like baby we have to start a resin company we we get the name what was it resonate it was resonate but then that was taken so then it was family house of resin house of resin yeah so i'm on one two three reg i'm buying the domain i'm looking at how to do it i'm watching the youtube videos we buy all the gear we start making resin it is a mate like holding that first like glittery ashtray in your hand is unreal he's looking into how to make the tables start an etsy shop we start an etsy shop and then it kind of starts to wane for me and i'm like i am technically a songwriter yeah i need to go back to the studio i don't know how to do this like middle part of the business of like the output the outfits my heart is this really the passion so my passion wanes and this has happened to me yeah so many times I buy all the equipment the one two three reg domain I probably own 20 and then it wanes and this was your first experience and actually the fact that we'd spent like 400 quid on like the resin gear the face mask we then had a convo about the next time when the next idea came to me which was the gender neutral clothing line which was it's a wonderful idea let's brainstorm it plan it do the logo but let's not start it yeah and weirdly enough it's so it's so strange but I got as much happiness from the planning as I did from actually doing it maybe even more so that's where I've really learned to find the gray because actually feng shui in your room at 11 30 it's not that harmful spending loads of money spending loads of time perhaps our most valuable asset on another business venture when actually we're wanting to do ADHD love and write the next book and I'm I'm going on tour in May it's about knowing when the right time to strike is with those 3am ideas yeah no I can completely understand that and I think that like the dopamine hit that you get often from pursuing something brand new rather than working through the tough parts of something existing so like say if you had like the don't worry I relate I have a whole spreadsheet of domain names do you yes I do and anyone in my team can probably you know probably thinks they're talking to me right now um but I think like in terms of the actual like understanding what you're getting out of something because I think like sometimes I just like need the dopamine hit of doing that but I completely agree you can get it from doing far less and I think that what's particularly important is as an adult when you actually do have the sometimes you don't even have the kind of like resources to be able to do it but like if you have the kind of freedom that no one's going to sit there and tell you like no actually you need to go to school you actually genuinely could spend the next week working on this thing understanding what you're needing from it and what the really exciting part of it is sometimes getting the dopamine hit anyway but always creating a buffer so like if there's like this kind of you know if it's a good idea it will still be a good idea in a week's time protecting yourself I think you refer to it as like not playing against yourself taking away from your job and your songwriting and the stuff that we need to do then maybe it's not worth pursuing and that is it a good idea in a week it's just so wonderful it's just like sense checking do we need to go all in now we staying up all night to get this launch tomorrow yeah or is it a little bit of patience and let's think about it and again that's the beauty I find of teamwork because I'm coming at him all the time with random crazy ideas some of which probably are genius most of which are probably rubbish and never going to happen but I have someone who can logically just sense check where would the time come from and also who you trust has your best interests at heart because I think there's a difference between shutting down continuous ideas because for someone who's maybe doesn't think the same that's gonna get to a point where you're like stop enough of the new ideas but actually being able to be like still be able to see that there's like some of them are going to be great and some of them are going to be not so great just the fact that there are so many does not negate the fact that some of them are going to be great absolutely but i also think it's not always about shutting them down it's quite often and we'll talk about it when she comes up she just wants me to get in the fantasy with her to experience that day so she still gets all of the day for me and then us going actually let's not remortgage to start you you will often say it will often start with this is not the right time there's no time and i'll i'll kind of look a bit sad and he'll go but do you want me just to to play along with it get in the fantasy yes and he'll come in we'll be brainstorming the name and where the office is going to be and nine times out of ten the next day i've forgotten it and it's over but then that one time well that was when we let's do the tiktok account and that's why we're here yeah sure i'm writing a book and that's why all these things are happening so you know what you said the difference between someone that you trust it's actually allowing that creativity to just be wild and free and sometimes catching that one idea that could actually change your life and maybe other people's as you know with your life and your businesses yeah no i mean i completely i can completely understand that and completely see you you know where the difference between that is and i think a lot of the time like the whole point of talking about something as a neurodivergence is understanding that it's divergent from the norm so like there's always going to be like a difference in the way things are thought about and that can i i i can see how in some situations there would just be like a blanket like just stop doing this whereas actually it's not about stopping doing that it's about like harnessing the good parts and being able to dull the effects of the bad parts and I think rather than kind of just being like never have an idea again and let's not spend half a day doing this again like that you could spend a half day doing whatever you want to do but there are going to be some times where it's like actually do you know what what you really need to do right now is you need to meet that other deadline and then on Saturday we can talk about the one two three bridge I want to talk about work a little bit and kind of productivity in general I know that's one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to ADHD first of all before your diagnosis what were the biggest issues if any you had in terms of productivity biggest issues were actually finding a job to stick with okay because I didn't understand like what we've just spoken about this sometimes you have an idea and you don't follow it I was just following every impulse so I have when I left uni I trained to be an accountant and then I left that and then I went and worked for a beauty magazine then I was an investment banker for a couple of years then I went into songwriting and then I went into music management I just tried all these different things and I'd get bored quite quickly and then want to go and change so that's the first thing which is understanding that I might get bored at some point but there's ways to really reinvigorate jobs and make them exciting a change of environment or a change of collaborator because you really do need to find that sticking power um since being diagnosed I think it it's just meant I get to really be okay with the fact I find things hard I think a really great example is us writing the book because it's 35 ,000 words which was a lot of hours yeah sat at a laptop so I I couldn't just sit there every day and write for the same amount to time it i wouldn't access the the magic because the magic is a little bit wonky like i have to protect it and have to call it into being um so the first thing we did this is gonna sound so crazy was i would pretend that i was giving a ted talk and i'd be typing and he would type and i mean like i would have a ring light on myself and i'd stand up and i'd say welcome to my ted talk on adhd because pretending like I was on a stage allowed me to access the magic and I could talk about it and add personality and then you were there just like rapidly typing trying to get it all down and we were able to get the sort of skeleton of most of the chapters done in that way so is there a sort of creative way that can really make you a bit more excited to do the thing you're doing and then secondly when we got onto the sort of editing when I was really having to go into it and it was environmental stuff things that would really help my brain to focus so i would always have spotify focus music on so my spotify wrapped was like zen four hour four hertz like yes have you used brown noise no i've seen it go viral so oh yeah we've seen it you were listening to something i saw it oh you are in for some real excitement with brown noise tell me about brown noise so well I don't know the effect what effect it's meant to have on everyone but essentially a teacher actually suggesting why don't you listen to music while doing stuff at the same time and I was like oh well I get distracted by that but basically they'd explained it by like if you say like have to tick five boxes to be able to concentrate some people's brains are able to do five boxes at once through like reading something but some people who get more distracted more easily are able to do two boxes at once and you need the rest those other three to be filled by something else otherwise they're going to be filled by like listening to all the like thinking about all these other things like I realize when I'm like even doing a podcast I'm literally not to be rude but I'm literally thinking about like what I'm gonna have for dinner and like all of these like so much so that I'll then like be back in the room and be like hello now like shepherd's pie like as in like it's just you know that's the way that's the way it kind of like works for me Whereas like understanding that like every time I need to do deep work, I have to have something that fills in those other three boxes.

47:37For me, it was like quite an important recognition. This is really niche, but there is a difference between the way you'll listen to music versus the way that other people will listen to music. If you have a like understanding of like musical analysis. So you'll be able to listen to it in a like slightly different way. So it's a difference between like hearing and listening. and so you might also get distracted by listening to specific music where you get essentially like too taken by that like analytical side of the music so like the brown noise which is literally just like i would sing it if i could it's like yeah exactly that and it literally you will i mean personally it had an insane effect on me there's a spotify playlist on it okay brown noise but coming to my spotify yeah have a little listen but to me that made like a huge difference sorry that was no I love that and I'm gonna I'm gonna go and check it out and totally agree anything with lyrics I'm just in that world or I'm thinking about that but what you said about the five things I've never heard that but actually that was what I was doing intuitively because it was a focus playlist and it was which is obviously kind of your hearing it was low lighting yeah candle light or like led blue lights couldn't have bright lights on so that was obviously the eyes and then there was also having aromatherapy going okay or a candle for the smell so I was trying to fill in those other senses and then I could get that laser focus on on word so two things I want to say I think first of all I think part of that as well creating cues for yourself that put yourself in an environment so like in the same way as we have like sleep hygiene where you might put on the same playlist spray some lavender spray like whatever it might be to put you in that like sleep zone having like work hygiene around like you work in a specific place you work it and for some some people they'll need to work in a different place every time personally not the case I like to give myself cues so it might be the same playlist it might be the same positioning it might be the same routine before I get into it whatever it might be like giving yourself these cues so your brain kind of subconsciously knows what you're about to do I think is also personally I found very important the second thing I wanted to say is the five points thing and the fact that I had that explained to me at school as someone who went to private school and was in private education is also probably a big point of like the major large majority of people obviously were not privately educated like the you know the stats are ridiculous in the UK and the discrepancy is ridiculous but even the fact that a teacher could explain that to me to be like this might be why you're not concentrating rather than being like literally get out of my class you are causing a ruckus and you're stupid actually able to like I it really it's really upsetting to think of like the amount of people who would have been through the education system and like I ended up going to you know a fantastic uni and understanding that my like I was you know learned a bit differently and like all of these different things whereas actually the large majority of people who had a like you know a different way of working would have been seen in that like completely different way and just being like oh sounds like classrooms not right for you whereas I'm you know definitely was great at writing essays but wasn't great at sitting still I think we we learned recently um from a psychologist that neurodivergent people I think it was specifically ADHD um they receive something like 50 000 pieces of criticizing feedback um more than a neurotypical person by the time they're early teens yeah probably for that very reason yeah for that reason again i think it's a beautiful thing to talk about and hopefully conversations like this and just the fact that more people are talking about it it's going to kind of feed through yeah and into schools but certainly my experience at school which was a comprehensive school yours was as well wasn't it um I was seen as disruptive and naughty and often kind of labeled very bright because I could memorize the test like the night before and then going do well but actually it wasn't it wasn't real work and that way when somebody sees you and labels you a troublemaker or disruptive it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so when I went to uni I went as yeah I'm not going to lessons I'm going out drinking I had no self-esteem in terms of that I could achieve and that actually led to quite rock bottom self-esteem which is really sad because then all those 3am creative ideas just went to a sort of wasteland because you don't understand that you can succeed whilst being different and my case shows like getting help in my mid-30s and since sobriety therapy and then diagnosis my life has turned on its head getting out of debt finding a beautiful relationship and then at work yeah writing hit records and having a best-selling book things that felt so far away for so many years because I yeah I just believed I was a troublemaker a loser yeah all those things yeah I think that's incredibly important to talk about and I'd like to talk about within that the kind of financial aspect in terms of um the implications that you found ADHD has had on your kind of finances or the way you budget or you know it's it's a very I think budgeting is actually quite a weirdly quite controversial topic anyway there's like a lot of people who think that budgeting is like dieting and therefore if you restrict it you're going to want to like planner it up the rest of the time or like you know if you're like when you get to payday and you're kind of completely splurging or there's going to be some people who like swear by all of these different things but I can understand that that would be completely different when it comes to ADHD as well yeah I think it's a it's a wonderful thing to talk about and my stories how you mentioned earlier there's everyone you know has different parts of this spectrum finances was one of the areas I struggled with most and it's something that we are a bit embarrassed to talk about we don't talk about money whether you're earning money or whether you're in debt and especially if you're in debt it can be so bad for mental health and so stressful so much shame attached to it and I think for neurodivergent people especially so what that meant for me was part of ADHD there's an executive function problem which is very simply finding admin quite difficult very much oversimplifying there but for this story that's what I'll say so opening letters from a credit card company for example would be something I found really difficult pair that with another symptom of ADHD impulsivity so shopping overspending money I didn't have going to the local bar buying shots for everybody putting it on a credit card I ran up an incredible amount of debt on different credit cards I wasn't opening the letters I was ignoring everything and I was just kind of drinking every day to push that stress away and obviously it it catches up with you you cannot run from that kind of thing forever and I remember one night um I was living in London in a basement flat in Marlebone and these people turned up at my door.

55:04I also didn't answer my door because that's just not something I like doing. It gives me a lot of anxiety. Some people banging down my door and it ended up being kind of workmen there to take out my access to electricity and put in a pay-as-you-go meter because I hadn't paid my bill, so I'd lost access. And that then meant I had to go to the shop to top it up, something I found really difficult to do. so I was often sat at home like just in the dark uh without wi-fi just like you know very very sad and very very low and wondering why can't I just go to the shop to put 10 pounds on this and I couldn't do it thankfully now that that doesn't happen because I've had a lot of support and there's there's kind of so much hope in that story like for anyone that is in that place really struggling it's never as bad as you seem when you open that first letter just isn't and there's often an email address and you can email someone and and make a payment plan even if you can't afford the whole thing a big part of my recovery was getting out of debt and really learning to budget and also really learning to for example I don't have credit cards now because even very in my wallet oh sorry they're in your wallet because even when i'd worked myself out of 40 grand's worth of debt and done it for really really hard work in in music and also having your wonderful help i have a bank manager fiance so come on like he is a bank so like it you were you were a lifesaver to me but even when i'd come out through all of that and i've had these darkest days I still went and ran up my credit card yeah right and it's like oh it doesn't make any sense what are you doing haven't you learned this lesson no I haven't because that impulsivity that that dopamine need can sometimes overpower logic and learning so my choice was I'm just not going to have credit cards and that's been really really helpful and I have my little budget I have my kind of monthly salary and I've actually found joy now in having money left over yeah and like not being in the overdraft and that dopamine hit instead like if you're gonna need a dopamine hit like understanding where you can like you can have this one but not that one absolutely absolutely what would you say because you're you are the bank well I think how it affects you know it was one of the first things that you mentioned because you obviously carried a huge amount of shame with it um and I remember her saying to me like I've got to be honest with you it's a mess I'm in debt if we want to buy a house together I'm not sure we're going to be able to um but obviously of course what what felt huge for rocks didn't so much for me as a bank for 20 years that's going to stick now that's going to be a thing um so we just worked through it step by step I would say you know rocks is much better um with with managing our finances and made some you know really good decisions about not having credit cards i still think there's probably one area that probably does need an eye keeping on like because but maybe always like she's fine maybe always will like in a kind of like there are coming back to that point where it's like there are always going to be things that are going to be like you might just never be good at and you create cues and barriers and like hurdles that you need to jump over to be able to make like the 48 hour buffer or like the week buffer or like the not having credit cards like you can mother yourself in a way that it kind of like the chances of things going wrong are much lower but that still doesn't mean that it's going to suddenly be your best aptitude certainly with adhd because quite often obviously not not all but money can have access to dopamine right like you can buy nice things and have received the packages and stuff that's all kind of what it's what it stems from so yeah it is but I I love that just want to hammer home that point a bit more as well that sense of you might always be like that and it's okay um as long as you're able to yeah like as that sounded like I was saying it wasn't okay but like as in as long as you're safe so for me not opening letters from energy bills that's not okay because that can cause damage to your mental health and then your credit rating um and all that kind of stuff but if it's little things like you know buying 20 pairs of socks or sometimes if we go and stay in a hotel I do want the one that looks a bit more kind of dopamine inducing like it's okay it's okay to be like that and just putting those kind of protective barriers in and actually that's one thing I do want to say about the credit rating there is joy in watching that improve because when I met him mine was the lowest I think that's very poor and again a massive amount of shame I've always been terrible I'll never be able to get a mortgage that's just me and through really sensible and shame-free conversations he kind of spoke me through you know register to vote at this address have your name on a utility bill and have them come out by direct debit so you never forget these little markers that were actually really easy to do and over two years i went from very poor to excellent yeah and and the feeling of pride that i have is like looking at my credit rating there's dopamine there so yeah yeah kind of encouraging good dopamine chasing the good dopamine i love that phrase the good dopamine we love because it's every but i like i think it is really true like as in I hate the idea that it's kind of like oh well you have a neurodivergence and therefore you can't chase the dopamine like that's such like a horrible sentence like as in like it's just been like oh well you're never going to be able to have that like impulsive amazing hit of like whatever it might be which you know everyone has to an extent but I can imagine with an like an addictive personality or with like ADHD or like a number of these different things it's always there's going to be like even further kind of need for that but it's actually being like it's not saying like you can never have a dopamine hit it's being like you know that dopamine hit of like writing out the whole business plan and not doing it or like you know whatever it might be like for for example I remember seeing this thing where it's about someone who um in terms of like that impulsive kind of shopping aspect and would just be like sometimes it then happens and like you know that it's going to like you have the dopamine of like unwrapping it and then it's like and two days later I will decide which I am keeping because that dopamine has kind of like subsided and it's like allowing yourself to kind of have these buffers and obviously different things will help for everyone but then being like and these go back and I got the dopamine like I was there and I was doing the unwrapping it's just sending them back though right exactly that sounds like the admin sometimes filling a cart doing all the research or these 10 items of clothing and then not buying it it's amazing you can still like get that high it's a funny thing no I can completely understand that and um for anyone who might be in the position that you were in where they've avoided perhaps opening letters and are in a bit of debt or kind of getting into that position what would you what advice would you give to someone at that time to ask for help from a safe and trusted person whether that's a friend a partner hopefully family member and to say without shame I've got myself in a real mess I can't face it could you just sit with me while while I while I open this and it's such a such a small thing but for me I was burying my head in the sand and it was getting worse and worse and worse and worse and it was actually quite a dangerous position to be in for mental health so to ask for help because somebody that loves you will sit next to you and it just it takes the weight off to have someone going that's okay okay so that's two thousand I know that that's okay and to just encourage you to send that first email and and to make a plan also um just in case there's no access to something like that there are charities like step change and stuff like that if it if it's too bad they'll kind of negotiate all your creditors for you and stuff like that to take a lot of that yeah yeah that's really really helpful because i can imagine that i mean it is so stigmatized and like i think that actually just even knowing that there are places out there that of course there are that are designed to like help that it really i can imagine it is very much like the first step that's probably going to be the yeah and then kind of creating those barriers that allow you to avoid getting to that position as hard as that is of course um I'd like to talk a bit about dating with ADHD and relationships with ADHD and kind of the effect you found of that kind of before and after your diagnosis and kind of the experiences that you had this is a juicy one yeah this is a juicy one so earlier you said something which was about business and um you know we always want to chase the new idea same thing applies to love and to relationships and obviously every human being goes through the honeymoon phase and and in the book i call it adhd people have like a treacle sun honeymoon treacle sun because it's sweeter and it's hotter and it's so much more intense it's just the way it's the dopamine receptors in the brain it just lands a little heavier so for me I was constantly chasing the new person I have had um 10 relationships last about a year I don't want to say it's all ADHD related I also had um some issues with intimacy from some things went through in childhood that have had therapy for but ADHD definitely played a role which was massively intense commit my life let's move in early we're gonna make it six months oh wait that I've crashed down oh my god I'm not sure meet somebody else that that dopamine high has ignited again off I go caused a lot of carnage I'm ashamed to say that I cheated on people I hurt a lot of people and yeah it was it was it was pretty brutal a lot of behavior that I'm not proud of as part of the recovery journey getting sober from alcohol which was 2018 I also put myself on the bench I'm not dating I'm gonna just not do any of that almost getting sober from love in a way and it was that time when I even though I didn't have the ADHD language I could really see this pattern this roller coaster up down I didn't want that to be the rest of my life I really wanted to find a life partner and then met you and when we met it was and then had the ADHD language to describe we were so honest with each other I told the truth about how my brain works and I hope it's okay for me to kind of tell the story I don't know what you're gonna say but it's fine anyway so I knew I knew this relationship was different because I had all this like armor, this sobriety, this therapy, this diagnosis.

1:06:41But that doesn't mean I'm not human and I'm not who I am. So after about a year, I had a wonky wobble where I felt this high decreasing. And I'm like, oh my God, not again. I've done everything. I've done everything right to maintain love. What's happening? and I was so scared that I was losing the most wonderful thing in my life and I didn't know what to do um but rather than do what I'd done before which is cut and run and I think that's where the therapy can can really help you to make a more sensible decision I actually chose to speak to Rich really incredibly hard combo and he can share what that was like for him in a minute but I said I'm really scared because this massive high is gone my feelings are changing I love you but I do not know what to do right now and I remember him we were in an Indian restaurant and I I was like this little ball of shame admitting this you know my feelings are changing what do I do and he he just reached across and held my hand and went that sounds so scary down there I hope you're okay and I just started crying because how is this person accepting that I'm saying I'm scared of my feelings changing um and actually that was the beginning of this other level of love this like really vulnerable you know the beginning falling in love great we can all do that can you dig down and show someone that the real root cause of your vulnerabilities and and we did obviously you can speak well i'm still here a year we lasted more than a year so i'm obviously number 11 at nearly four years lucky number 11 that is what they say the well-known saying the well-known saying lucky number 11 um i think yeah it was a couple of things um one just very briefly my backstory i've got two long-term relationships or exes two ex-wives actually both married both seven years lucky number three that is the same so lucky number three years actually I think um and of course it was really hard to hear um when you know the the brutal honesty of Roxanne um that feelings have changed and she don't know what I think she went into a bit of a kind of dissociation was I don't even know what love is and stuff like that it was quite it was quite challenging um however just kind of chose to i had a choice right i could either just it could be looking for the lucky number four in or or or stick with it and we just kind of knew you know we both both sober from alcohol like um there's just something was different so chose to to lean in and i suppose that is you know you say um you refer to it as like a deeper thing of love that's where stuff that matters is shared like the real vulnerability like i struggle to make a bed or i struggle with it like some of the real vulnerabilities and getting to know each other and we just work through it and and um yeah it's a bit of a bit of a running joke now i actually said the other day that we're we're not life partners we're death partners like i'm lucky number 11 she's the third you know death partners because you're gonna hopefully die together that sounds so morbid no i but you know i mean it's giving scary vibes it's giving scary but it's got vibes i'm so here for that no but i also think that like understand like again one of those points where it's like in relationships like and i this is where i think therapy is so so so important but even just an understanding of like where your downfalls are and understanding like where your triggers are and like all of these things like whether you have abandonment issues and therefore you're going to self-sabotage when you feel like someone's pulling away or like whatever it might be and I think that like understanding those things and being able to be vocal about those things it's like the it's terrifying like it's so terrifying but even like two obviously amazing things happen there like you were able to sit down and be like this is how I feel at the risk of you being like well that sounds shit bye but also you were able to say that's like let's see how it works out or whatever it might be and I just think that like relation I don't personally think that relationships can ever work without us knowing our biggest downfalls like I think you have to be so self-aware if we're talking about like life partners and we're talking about like that's talking about like 50 years like if not more of like you know that's a lot like you really you can't fake that like you can be unhappy in it but you can't fake that but actually being able to really get to grips with like where are your biggest downfalls what do you like i know mine for example like i know that i'll kind of like when i feel like something's slightly wrong i'll just switch off entirely and i'll just be like i'm just completely like numb all of you know whatever it might be and actually understanding those so that you can be like by the way explaining to you now that it's not that i don't care this is currently how i feel and it's a defense mechanism but like i work through it i know it's not my actual feelings whatever it might be i think is like you cannot have love and like relationships and be able to work through things without that i also think that we all have a slight and this is not to take down the importance of like the adhd aspect of it but i also think we all have this you know the kind of reason why people go for emotionally avoidant people and that kind of whole idea of like butterflies and all of these things where it's actually just hits of dopamine where you aren't getting that attention the rest of the time like we all have this slight relate like it's in our nature to be drawn to things that kind of pull away or give us little hits of something it's very boring to have a constant stable love like of course it's going to be boring when you look at that like it's how you know it's why toxic relationships often last so long and are so so difficult to get out of because it feels like there's more dopamine than like someone running to get the newspaper in the morning like it's that's not exciting and actually understand like I've had some conversations with my friends recently of being like huh I thought I loved that person so much and actually they were just giving me attention half the time so I felt that much more love when they did whereas actually that other person was stable and committed and vulnerable and all of these things which sounds pretty boring like it's really important and it's the only thing I personally think that's going to like create like long-lasting love and relationships but actually it's it is also in its essence going to be quite boring some of the time and maybe boring is what we want to aim for maybe boring is happiness and stability and it gets such a bad rap and as someone that was an absolute wild child in my 20s chasing all the hedonism the girls the guys the drink the drugs living the craziest life I was miserable because I was constantly running after those desires and I never get got to make a choice and actually boring bed at nine eating breakfast together in the morning knowing if they need a bath because they've had a bad day it's where the magic is and I've noticed I get these moments of joy and never used to get them before joy and it will be a really random thing we might be in Tesco and we have our stepchild there and they've wandered off to do something and I'll get this rush of just happiness and it'll bring tears to my eyes it doesn't happen all the time it's like every few weeks but you have to have this boring wonderful loving stability should then access this absolute joy and it's so worth it yeah and but it's not glamorized as much as the toxic love in society so maybe we'll start here I think is what as well you started by saying how important therapy is and obviously not everybody has access to it but the stuff that we're talking about is so it's so useful to have that language because I can probably safely say that without us both being in therapy we we just wouldn't have been together because we wouldn't have had the tools and the skills to kind of get through it and I think understanding each other but more importantly ourselves a huge amount more and what what stuff in the past is affecting this and abandonment issues and rejection and all of that that that's it's amazing when you go through that but it's also quite a privilege to be able to yeah I suppose in a lot of a lot of occasions yeah oh well I think that's an amazing place to end we were actually originally going to do an Instagram Q &A but we've actually had such a lovely conversation and I think actually has just it's been such a great experience to be able to kind of hear from your perspective but also just like to see how beautiful your relationship is together I think is just I mean it's so special and it's amazing to watch and thank you for coming and talking to me but I think this will help a huge amount of people so thank you so much thank you for having us it's been really really wonderful really appreciate it