Women, ADHD and Emotional Regulation

Artwork for podcast ADHD-ish (formerly The Driven Woman Entrepreneur)

Episode 218 • 9th July 2024 • ADHD-ish (formerly The Driven Woman Entrepreneur) • Diann Wingert

H: Kate, one of the subjects that you and I are both really passionate about and have a lot of personal experience with is how women with ADHD are affected by one of the aspects that most people don't really realize is part of the condition. And that is how easily our emotions are affected by what's going on in our life, whether it's around us or in our head. So that's what we are going to unpack and unravel and do deep dives on today. Because most people who are just learning about their ADHD are well aware of the difficulties they have with distractibility and impulsivity and difficulty staying focused and getting things done. But oftentimes, they don't really realize that the challenges they have with their emotions are not a separate disorder. They're part of this condition.

And, I would say as a business owner myself with ADHD, who is perimenopausal, with a busy family house, I have to work every single day on my emotional regulation. It's a daily practice. I never take it for granted, and it's something that I'm constantly, you know, aware of hour by hour. You know? Have I walked? Have I stretched? Have I got fresh air? Am I hydrated? Do I need do I need to eat? Do I need to have a break? Do I need to kind of close my eyes and do some breath work? Like, I know it sounds exhausting, but it is something that has to has to be considered because we are so prone to burnout.

So I often talk about and I do a lot of alliteration because I think that makes things more memorable and also helps me remember them better. And I'm often thinking about bandwidth, boundaries, and burnout because our bandwidth changes, as you say, based on our cycle, based on our age and stage of life, based on our obligations and responsibilities, how many plates we have spending in the air. So what we expect of ourself and how much we can act our actual capacity is always changing. And I think you and I are pretty, typical of many women with ADHD is that we have a lot of goals. We have a lot of expectations. We put high standards on ourselves. So I tend to shoot overshoot all the time and think, oh, I should be able I should be able to get this done. I can do this much today.

I can do this much this month. I can do this much in a lifetime. And oftentimes, it's considerably less than that. So managing my capacity absolutely demands that I am in charge of my emotions. And sometimes it feels like anything but that. When you and I first connected several years ago, I think you were fairly recently diagnosed at that time. And one of the first tools that you started using for yourself and then eventually teaching other people was EFT or tapping. And while that's been around for a while, I don't think there's a lot of people who realize how well it works for ADHD. Can you help us talk about that a little bit? Like, how you discovered it, why you decided to start using it, and where you think it's most effective for women like us who are also business owners?

G: Yeah. So I started learning about EFT before I was, diagnosed, but I also always knew that I had this propensity to feel overwhelmed, anxious, and this there was just something within me that was just needing to feel settled and to feel calmer. And so I thought, well, if I enjoy it and it works for me, I'm gonna learn it. I'm gonna help other people with it. And then while I was in sort of in between my different trainings, I basically, just thought if there's something else going on here, and I knew it was you know, eventually I knew it was ADHD. And I thought the 2 together combined is gonna be amazing because we're prone to emotional dysregulation. We're prone to feeling all these intense emotions and sensitivities and all these different things. And so I started using it for myself with my ADHD symptoms, how I really felt in the morning right.

I felt even in the morning, you know, when I woke up, and sometimes I felt like my heart was racing. And I checked my diary, and I looked. And back then, I didn't learn about kind of, like, overcommitting and filling my diary up and saying yes to everyone and making sure that everyone was happy around me. And I'd look at my diary, and I'd feel like, what have I done? Like, how have I done this to myself? Now I'm so careful with my diary planning. So I used it just, you know, a couple of minutes in the morning, just tapping, calming, breathing, but it can be used for so many different things. And it even I mean, I use it for making decisions, overcoming self doubt, deciding on, does that feel right in my body? You know? You know? I'm gonna refer back to kind of, like, on entrepreneurship here.

But, you know, we're gonna make a decision and we're gonna pivot or we're gonna do something new. Really out of this sort of, logical brain thinking of maybe fear based and going into my body and feeling like, does that feel good? Does that feel aligned? Does it feel authentic to me? Does it feel like it's something feels effortless and fun? Like and the tapping just really helps kind of clear the dirt and just gives us a bit of clarity. And I know for myself with ADHD, getting clarity, removing self doubt was always a big hurdle for me. It was really, really difficult because I had so much chatter going on in my brain.

The shoulds and the needs and this and the comparisons, and this one's doing it like that, and I should do it like that, but it doesn't feel right, and all of that. An EFT can really help just calm everything down, just kind of calm your nervous system, calm your amygdala, helps you just see with a bit of clarity, but also a new perspective. And so 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 20 minutes of Coaching, honestly, can make a make a really big difference. You can do it on your own, but if you're not really that kind of experience, it's probably better with a practitioner.

H: Yeah. I think it's I learned this technique a number of years ago, and I found it confusing and complicated and I was self conscious doing it. I mean, I would go into this, like, why am I doing this? This feels weird. This looks silly. Like, I wouldn't want anyone to see me doing this. And then I thought, how could this possibly be helping me when I'm engaging in all of this, you know, mental nonsense with myself? So I actually did work with an experienced practitioner for a while to really help me get out of my head and into my body.

And I think it was at that point that I really realized I'm really not in my body very much. I'm really sort of detached from it. And no wonder I have difficulty making decisions. I would either default to Coaching a decision impulsively, how often that is the case. We're either making a decision impulsively, how often that is the case. We're either making a decision impulsively or we're overthinking it and analyzing having an opportunity to connect with your body in a way that feels safe, I think is an essential part of our ADHD toolkit. And especially if you have any kind of trauma history, I imagine.

G: Yeah. Absolutely. Because, you know, there's a lot of fear around making decisions in business, especially if you're you know, like, for me, I'm a solopreneur. I have a team around me, but not a business partner. And so a lot of decisions that I'm making are my decisions, and I have to, you know, make that call, you know, spend the money, do the thing, and launch this. I have to always come back to what feels good in my body even if it may or may not make sense. A lot of that time is going backwards and forwards. And when you said that about the overthinking or making a decision impulsively, very relatable.

But on the flip side, to reframe that, sometimes that's a really good idea. You know, some of my best decisions I've made impulsively in the business, like, when I've just kind of gone, hell, yeah, just do it. Let's do it. Sounds good. And then actually symptoms, I'm really glad when I've taken a bit of a pause, slept on it for a few nights, done a bit of research, and actually thought, you know what? It's not the right time. And so I think we can beat ourselves up for sort of doing all of this.

But, actually, sometimes we just have to kind of do the hell yes or the actually, you know what? It sounds like a great opportunity, but it's just not the right time. My kids have got exams. My husband's away. You know, someone's child mind is going on holiday. Like, all these different things that we've got to take into consideration, especially as a woman in business, that we have lots of other things going on.

H: You're speaking to something that I think is probably I wanna make sure we're connecting the dots here because it's a very astute awareness and super, super important. We have to make tons of decisions. And because most of the people I work with are solopreneurs like you and I or small business owners or independent professionals, there are countless professionals. There are countless decisions that we have to make. Even if we're working with a coach, ultimately, we are where the buck starts and stops, and we are responsible for all of it. The number of decisions that we make on a daily basis is phenomenal.

And while a lot of people say, oh, I really love the I really wanna have my own business because I really want that freedom. I wouldn't say freedom is what we really get because I think freedom means a kind of an absence of responsibility in a way you get to do whatever you want. Actually, what we get is flexibility. What we get is autonomy, but it doesn't really come with freedom because of all those decisions. So I think one of the best ways we can lighten our load as entrepreneurs, one of the best ways that we can make our business feel like there's less heaviness, less emotional labor, less fatigue, less decision fatigue is to have a better way of making decisions that is in alignment with our body, mind and brain. And we can only do that when we have reliable ways to calm our nervous system right? Just making decisions for many of us is fraught with anxiety because and I'd love to hear your opinion on this because we grew up in different countries, but we're both women.

And in the Western part of the world, especially women are socially conditioned in certain ways. And one of the ways we're socially conditioned is to be good, which includes not making mistakes and not drawing negative attention to ourselves. So when you're conditioned to be good and to not stand out and to not make mistakes, every decision we make in our business can feel daunting and create anxiety and doubt and imposter syndrome and all of this angst. So having a reliable way of almost like not even waiting for these dysregulation moments to come, but preventing them by having practices in place that we do regularly even if we have a day or a week where we have nothing to do with our business because we have to train ourselves that way.

H: Yeah. As you're speaking, I wanted to flag it. The best thing that I've learned, and it's been a relatively recent kind of thing that I've been practicing in my business, is that if I make a decision, I commit to the decision being the right decision for whatever reason, the lesson that it's meant to give me. So even if I decide to launch something and the sales don't, you know, pan out the way I thought they would, or I take someone on and, you know, pay a retainer for a few months, and I don't quite get, you know I've definitely learned something. There's not something that's come out of that that has been a complete failure. So and the decision, if I commit to that decision, that decision was meant to have been made. Like, that's just the way for me, from my sort of spiritual perspective, it was meant to pan out that way because there was a lesson.

G: There was something in it that I needed to learn. So for the next time, I can, you know, audit or make that decision in a slightly different way. So that, for me, has taken a huge amount of weight and pressure of making the right decision. You've always got to make the right decision because that's gonna lead to the next right thing. But the next right thing might be the thing that teaches us something, and it might be a failure dressed up as, you know, you know, a decision that we have to make. So I feel really strongly that, especially as us, where we are having to make all these decisions, and there's a lot of pressure on our shoulders, that if you just make the decision, something will come out of it that you meant to do, and it's gonna be a stepping stone to the next thing that maybe you'll pivot, maybe you'll change direction, maybe you'll learn from that a new person will come in. So for me, that's been really helpful.

And now I just kind of go, it's meant to be. Whatever happens is meant to be. Obviously, I'm not making stupid, like, really ridiculous decisions. But I'm trusting that if the decision feels right at the time, there's meant to be a reason for it. And that for me just kinda goes, okay. I can breathe a little bit. And there has been times where I've done a workshop or launched a a series or done something, and it's not quite been as profitable as I wanted. And I have to just kinda go, that's okay. But actually, I learned something new. I spoke to a new expert. I did a different course. I learned something for myself, and that for me has always been my growth. And I have grown a lot during this process, and I think we have to recognize that we're never gonna be the finished product ever, like ever until we die.

H: I hope not. I mean, it is a goal of mine to continue growing and learning and developing and evolving until the very last moment of this lifetime. But I'm really appreciating, Kate, how you are bringing spirituality and self acceptance into the way you run your business. Because the reality is, we get to think whatever we want. If we want to think we are a freaking idiot who doesn't know what the hell they're doing and is literally fumbling their way from one bad decision to another. That's a choice we could make. I strongly don't recommend it, but we could make that. But is there any harm in deciding that I am prepared enough?

I am intelligent enough. I am strong enough. I am smart enough. I am resilient enough, and I'm gonna make the best decisions that I can possibly make moment to moment. And they're gonna pan out how they will. And the result will either be, it's a success that I can repeat, or it's a learning experience that will help me grow. But what is not on the menu is shame or regret. Like, just to be able to distance ourselves from shame and self consciousness and regret and all the negative self talk that goes with it, that is it's part of what I teach and practice and call radical self acceptance, but I haven't heard it described in quite the way you do. It's literally like I can't make mistakes because every choice has value one way or another.

G: Yeah. And this is new, by the way, for me, because I was, you know, a few years ago. Shame, imposter syndrome, what if, if I do this, this is gonna happen, and catastrophizing, and it was exhausting. You know? Yeah. I couldn't run a business and be a present parent, like a mom, and the person I want to be in my family while having all of this weight and this this pressure that I was putting on myself. So it's been an active choice for myself to grow spiritually. And when I say grow spiritually, it's been it's had such an impact on my business, but also, like, my life because I this this the acceptance of where we are right now and instead of wanting to be 10 steps ahead just recognizing that where we're meant to be, what we're doing right now is where we're meant to be with the with the kind of desire to keep growing and expanding and learning.

And so it's now made business a bit more fun, I have to say. I feel a bit more lighthearted. I was never really lighthearted. Everything was life and death. Everything was scary and dreadful. Now it just feels, okay, let's give it a go. Let's get curious. Let's play.Let's have fun. Let's try this new thing. Let's do this, you know, and I think it is experience because I've been, I guess, working for myself now for, I don't know, 6, 7 years, and this is definitely an evolution.

H: This is it makes me, yeah, it makes me wonder, Kate, if you needed to be in business this amount of time. I'm very analytical, so just indulge me for a second. It makes me wonder if you needed to be in business for this amount of time to kind of reach this turning point, if you will, or if you needed to experience this amount of frustration, this amount of suffering, to kind of reach that tipping point where, like, I cannot go on like this. Yeah. Or it's if it's even part of the fact that you mentioned, earlier that you are in the stage of a woman's life that we know as perimenopause, which I personally, being on the other side of that myself, find that that is the time in your life when you begin to struggle more with emotional regulation, with your energy levels. You're more easily triggered by events, internal and external. So for me, it's an invitation to, like, get a handle on yourself, and you have the opportunity to decide to stop beating yourself up because it's too hard to keep doing so. I wonder if you think you could have reached this point, this turning point, any sooner.

G: Probably not because it's the time. And, you know, I'm nearly 44, and perimenopause has been around for a couple of years, and that's been something that I've been dealing with. And, thankfully, I'm on, you know, HRT, and that has helped me enormously because I wasn't sleeping. My emotional regulation, my moods, my cycle, I really, really kind of struggled. You know, from the age of about 41, 42, it started being very prominent. And I was so sensitive to anything that would go wrong and so sensitive to overwhelm and just feeling so unresilient. Like, I felt like I didn't have any reserves in me for anything to go wrong. So I was overcompensating all the time to just manage and control, and everything had to be perfect, and everything had to be right.

And if I didn't, I couldn't launch anything unless the sales page was exactly how it wanted it to look over the website or the pictures. And now I'm a bit more you know what? If we need to tweak the sales page, we'll tweak it. If we need to add something else, we will. If we need to change this or, I feel a little bit kind of it's not the end of the world. Maybe life as well, that just the perspective with after the pandemic, the way the world is at the moment. There's bigger stuff going on with whether or not there's a spelling prop spelling mistake on the website. You know, something like that would be like, it's gonna be the worst thing, and everyone's gonna think I'm so unprofessional and all of that. And now I just relax a bit more.

But what I do want to say is I have a default state of overwhelm, anxiety, fear, worry, catastrophizing, hypervigilance. Like, that is my kind of default state. And I actively worked the muscle, flexed the muscle to feel to bring myself back to the present moment. And like I said at the beginning, this is daily. Like, I'm day there's a daily check-in. This is not just, you know, going about my day. You know? I have to keep bringing myself back, which is fine, and I'm hoping that as time goes on, you know, it'll get easier. But now I just have to try and be present.

Like, for me, my phone is a nightmare. So I I have to put my phone away because I know I'm prone to scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, losing hours. And I know that's a big trigger point for me. So I'm like, if I wanna get anything done, if I don't wanna feel, you know, like other people are way ahead of me, I try not to look at my phone as much. So we kind of have to know these blind spots, and I think coaching is a really good way. We give ourselves space. You know, clients that come to you and to me, we're able to say, well, actually, this is where I really struggle. This and talk it out and understand that we've always got choice.

Like, we always have options, and to not feel like a victim, and to feel that there's always a way. There's always a way that we can work it out in some capacity. And I think sometimes when we're in our head so much and we're spiraling, like, we feel like that there's no choice. There's no there's no options, and we're just gonna be like this forever. So, yeah, there's been lots of lots of internal work from myself, not just with private coaching. I just want to say if someone's listening now and they can't afford private coaching, and this is the only way that I'm going to, you know, this is through, somatic work. This is through breath work, through using tapping, you know, a couple of times a day.

It's through nature walks. It's through listening to podcasts, audio books, spiritual work. This has been, you know, for me, the biggest shift, not from, you know, 10 hours of coaching here and there that I've had. It's a combination of things. And talk and listening to people like you, you know, like Coaching mentors and women who are so wise who have been there. And I have to listen to the people that have walked these steps 10 years ago. And it's really important because we need to hear from people, you know, like you who have the wisdom, and I really value your wisdom so thank you.

H: Aw, I really appreciate you saying that. And, you know, you're bringing up so many different things. You know, I think most of us, when we have symptoms that make our life more painful, we're always looking to fix it, to put an end to it. And I think the longer I work with women like us, the more I really wanna invite them into the reality that you don't need to be fixed because you're not broken. And while you're you might qualify for something that is being referred to as a disorder, when you are self aware and when you accept all of it. Radical self acceptance, I accept all of what comes with ADHD. And I commit wholeheartedly to identifying my gifts and making the most of them and identifying my weaknesses and my limitations and my struggles and equipping myself to manage them, but not expecting them to ever go away.

Committing to daily practices like you've talked about simply because they make me feel and function better. So why wouldn't I? That may sound like a lot, but it's the same way of living that actually makes things so much less painful. I happen to be Buddhist. So the way I look at the world there is pain, which is necessary. There is suffering, which is the way we interpret that pain. And the way you interpret pain, which is not getting what you want or getting what you don't want, is a learning experience. That eliminates unnecessary suffering. Unnecessary suffering, in my worldview, is the way we torment and torture ourselves. I shouldn't have done that. I should have done this. I should have known. Why can't all of that stuff, which by the way, changes nothing and is quite addictive and literally keeps your body, mind, and brain in a state of existence where you have no access to your creative problem solving skills.

I think if people remember one thing about why you want to learn how to regulate your emotions and commit to daily practices that allow you to be more in control of them is this. You know you're a creative person. You know you're probably the brightest bulb in the whole light store. But if you are unregulated in your emotions, you cannot access your creativity. It is literally off limits and offline. So we need to regulate ourselves so that we can make the most of the gifts that we all have. And I think understanding that is like, yeah, I'll do the things I need to do. And, Kate, some of the things you mentioned early on in this conversation are things that literally everybody can do and would benefit from doing whether you identify with ADHD or not. You mentioned, like, going for walks, getting enough going through, like, the bio, doing your bio scan. Okay. I'm feeling a certain kind of way.

I'm feeling, like, overwhelmed. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling kinda depressed. I'm feeling a sense of impending doom. I don't even know what I'm feeling. Okay. Do your bio check. How much water have I had today? I might be dehydrated. When was the last time I ate something and what was it? Did I eat a candy bar or did I eat a nutritious meal or a snack? Am I moving my body? Have I been outside? Have I had any access to nature? Have I done something for the sake of fun or excitement? Have I had any pleasure today? You could even just play on the ground with your dog. And so it doesn't have to be this, oh, I have to have my morning routine and have to go exercise for an hour. No. You don't. No. You don't.

G: Yeah. And what you're saying so many people need to hear. It's this permission slip that we've told, you know, like this, this book. And I don't know whether you subscribe to it. You know, the 5 AM club, which for me, like, makes my body kind of, like, recoil because it's basically telling you that if you don't get it at 5 AM, you're not gonna be a productive person, and you're not gonna get everything done that you need to get. I've not read the book, but the title just makes me wanna, like, just curl up and die. But I just think that we have to work with who we are. And like you say, this radical self acceptance of as long as we are ticking those boxes, this bio check that you said, which I really like, is we can do that.

Like, if the walk in the morning is not gonna happen, but you're able to do the walk at lunchtime or in the later on in the afternoon, and that's gonna work for you, that's okay. Like, if you work really well in the morniing, and you just think I'm gonna work until 1 o'clock, and then I'm gonna go for my morning walk, no one's gonna tell me that the morning walk has to, you know, has to happen at 9 AM. Otherwise, you're not gonna be creative. There's all these things that we're allowed to be flexible, but we do have to do these things, moving our body, hydrating, making sure we are eating good nutritional food that feels good to us. And I wanted to go back to when you said about, accepting how we're feeling.

Using tapping is one of the best practices for self radical self acceptance because the very beginning of the tapping sequence, and I don't know if this is gonna be on video or not, but we tap on the side of our hand. And this is sort of like basic 101 EFT. And the tapping on the side of the hand, we can say, even though I'm feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, anyway. Even though I feel horrendous and wanna scream at everyone and everything feels terrible today, I'm just gonna accept that that's how I'm feeling, and maybe tomorrow I'll feel different. So we're just bringing in instead of trying to suppress it and push it away, this is how I'm feeling, and I'm just gonna accept it. And when we say the words, like, and I accept how I feel, or I truly and deeply accept who I am, our body hears it. There's something that happens inside our body that just kind of softens and goes, why did no one tell me that? Like, why did no one tell me that it's okay for me to relax while I'm still feeling in a negative, bad mood or whatever it is so that's a really nice thing.

Sometimes I'll just get in the shower after a really stressful long day, and I kind of just wanna scream. And I'll tap in the shower all over my face and my body, in the tapping places, and I'll just say what however I'm feeling, whatever's coming up for me. And even, you know, 3 minutes, 4 minutes in the shower, I'll get out, and I will feel lighter because I've not, suppressed and tried to pretend that I should be feeling different. So these little things, it's vital, you know, with someone, you know, who's neurodivergent, running a business, carrying a lot externally, probably, you know, maybe family life, commitments, all of that, but also internally, like the the noise that goes on in our head of running a business, making decisions, wanting to do things differently because that's kind of part of us. We'll wanna be doing, like you said, the autonomy, knowing that we wanna make this feel different to other people. Like, we want to run things differently. And so we have to kind of let things release.

We have to release these emotions, and that prevents us from waking up the next morning feeling even heavier and even more shame and all the things. Like, we're it's almost like a cleanse. Every day, we're just wiping the board clean. We start again and even though yesterday was a bad day, today you know, that's a great way to start the day, actually, sometimes, just waking up, doing some breath work, doing a bit of tapping, and just saying, today is gonna be I'm gonna be regulated today. I'm gonna feel good. Today, I'm gonna feel calm. I'm gonna feel grounded. And, yeah, these are little just things that sometimes I do, sometimes I don't do, because I've got ADHD Diann I forget.

H: Oh, this is so good. Because this is the other thing people need to hear is that, yes, it would be really helpful, really skillful. For you to make it a regular habit of these things. But I recently interviewed a meditation teacher who also happens to be a psychotherapist and an adult with ADHD. And I was surprised to hear him say, I don't meditate every day. Sometimes I'll miss a week. And I'm like, what? Like, this is the meditation teacher. And he's like, and I have ADHD. I think this notion that we have to do these things because they're good for us, Diann it. And we have to do them regularly. Otherwise, it's this tendency that we have, all humans have, but I think we really have, to get into this all or none thinking.

Like you say, if I don't get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and get busy, I'm a loser. It's like, maybe you get up at 10 AM, and that's your morning. I mean, we don't have to fit ourselves into anyone else's box, including any other entrepreneur or business owner, even if they have the same type of business. Because our body, mind, and brain, and our life circumstances, and our stage of life, and our conditions we might have, We have to create the lifestyle that supports us feeling and functioning at our best. And if you're not a 100%, you know, consistent, I mean, it's probably better to just not even expect that.

I like to set goals with an optimal and a minimal level. Optimally, I'd like to exercise at least 30 minutes a day. But if I get a 10 minute walk in on days that don't allow that, that's my minimal, and I still check the box. I did it for the day because I'm not doing all or nothing. I I swapped my on off switch for a dimmer switch. And some days, I dial it up, and some days, I dial it down. But you really do have a lot to determine about how you're gonna feel and how you're gonna function from day to day. And it's the best way I know to steer clear of the victim mindset, which I think most people who grew up struggling with ADHD, whether they knew it or not, we can oftentimes get into a victim mindset because our lives can be much harder than other people even realize.

G: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, again, I was prone to that. I really was. You know, way before I was diagnosed, I had this constant narrative of why does everyone do it so much better than me, and I can't do it. And, you know, everyone is, like, so good in their careers, and I'm still not far my thing. And I have this just constant and it was boring. I was boring myself. I was boring my husband, but I couldn't get out of it. And it was just so negative. And I see a pattern in my family. There's a victim mentality in my family. And I I started noticing it being quite a draining energy. And the more conscious I was being with kind of my own work and helping myself and really kind of helping my, you know, my self development, I was noticing it more, noticing how bad it made me feel being around other people who were very sort of victim mindset y and negative and depletion depleting.

So I made a choice, and I made a choice that I wasn't gonna speak like that anymore, and I wasn't gonna have those conversations. And that doesn't mean I don't complain, and it doesn't mean I don't moan, but I check the words that come out of my mouth now. And that is something that, again, I've worked on. Before I'm about to say something, I kinda think, do I wanna say that? Can I change it? Kinda reframe it just to help my own energy, just to help myself know that I am resourceful, and I have and empower myself with finding different ways to state something, how I'm feeling, so it doesn't feel like I'm in self criticism mode. And that comes with self compassion, a huge amount of self compassion of working through many, many years of not finding my groove, of feeling like a failure in certain places, but also feeling like I was doing really well in other places so being able to recognize that.

This thing is never gonna be linear. And whether we're gonna focus on business, we're gonna focus on our self development, our health, our well-being, parenting relationships, we're gonna have times where it's gonna feel harder, and we have to accept that. And there's gonna be ebbs and flows and cycles, where one part of our life is really thriving and another part feels harder. And to know that it's normal, you know, going back to, I think, what you kind of alluded to was this, like, perfectionism of if I don't wake up at 5:30 in the morning, then I'm a loser. And, you know but we just have to recognize that we're gonna have it it's just gonna feel that there's there's flexibility in our in our thinking in in certain times where we can pull back, where work doesn't wanna be doesn't have to be a priority, and family has to be our priority and we move, we move, and we dance.

And that, for me, has also helped just take this pressure off to be the you know, the podcast before I had my ADHD one was called The Ambitious Mum. And I think that's connected a little bit because I was seeking answers for why am I so driven by ambition. And I understand that now there was something I had to prove. I needed to prove that I needed external validation. This where was all this ambition coming from? Yes, there was a drive within me. There was, and there is still. But now I'm able to kind of recognize, well, what am I doing that for? Is that for external validation, or is that because I'm really hyped up about this thing, and I really wanna help people, and I really wanna get this out there. And so I'm able to see a little bit more, like, why I'm doing the thing, like, why I'm putting pressure on myself. And hopefully, do more things out of being of service and helping people, and not because I have to be the best at the thing that I'm doing. And that yeah, it's an ego thing.

I've kind of, like, been able to check-in with my ego a little bit and be like, why do you wanna do that thing? Is it because you wanna, you know, outdo someone? Is it because you wanna be the best at it? Or do you wanna do it because you think there's a lot of people that really need that help right now? And so when I work from that place where I'm like, the support's needed, the service is needed, the people are needing this resource, then I'll get really push forward, and I'll put that pressure on myself. But if I'm doing it from that place of, well, so and so is doing it, so I better do it, it never works. It doesn't work.

H: Your level of self awareness is really impressive, Kate.

G: Thank you.

H: Quite sincerely. Because I think that I think it's one of the things that can really hold people back, with ADHD is that we need to be a little grounded. We need to be able to calm ourselves. We need to be able to create a little bit more focus and kind of slow things down a little bit to develop self awareness. And if we're just kind of impulsively and, you know, we don't wanna plan, we don't like structure, we just like winging it, We don't learn from our experience in a way that helps us grow. We just keep making the same mistakes again and again. And I think, you know, my coaching program used to start with the first phase was self awareness.

And then it went into self acceptance. I have reversed the order in the last couple of years because what I realized is that if we do not have the foundation of self acceptance that basically says, like you said, you know, even though you brought me back to my EFT Coaching. Even though I'm feeling completely overwhelmed, I'm filled with self doubt, and I hate every human being on the planet right now. I deeply and completely love and accept myself. You know, from studying psychology for so many years, I realized the ability to hold 2 opposing thoughts in our mind at the same time is a sign of cognitive maturity.

And we can help ourself develop by committing to holding the thought that even though I may think like I'm a freaking shit show right now, even though I may feel like I'm a hot mess, even though I feel like I'm literally flailing about, I can still choose to deeply and completely love and accept myself because that is a choice that is always available to us. We do not have to deserve it. We don't have to earn it. We can choose it and practice choosing it. And when we do, then we don't have to be afraid to steady ourselves. We don't have to be afraid to develop more self awareness because self awareness without self acceptance might lead to more shame, more guilt, more unnecessary suffering. And that stops people in their tracks. Like they it would be painful for them to develop more self awareness because it would require them to actually stop and look at their choices, at their behaviors, at their symptoms, and the consequences of those things.

I think to be able to really deeply look at the fact sometimes I'm freaking obnoxious. And sometimes I'm unless, I'm hurtful because I might just blurt something out that seems funny to me, but I hadn't really like, read the room, Diann. This is not the place. Like, you've got a highly sensitive person here who is gonna be triggered by what you think is funny. Like, check yourself. But if I don't accept myself first, then I'm like, oh, geez. Look what I just did which used to be my pattern. I'm pretty impulsive. And I would just blurt things out or just say whatever came into my head. And if I noticed someone kind of flinching or having a weird look, I'd be like, well, whatever and so I wasn't teachable.

I wasn't humble. And it was all like a defensive way of not wanting to develop the self awareness, not wanting to really look at my own behavior and take responsibility for it so that I could work on it and change it. And I think everything that we've been talking about is in service to that. Like, no matter how many mistakes we make, no matter how littered our life history is with regrettable choices, we can always make the decision to deeply and completely love and accept ourselves and start equipping ourselves with tools to bring our nervous system back under control when we get triggered by rejection sensitivity or a catastrophic event or a huge mistake that we've made that we couldn't have predicted. We have to have a way to get back to baseline so that we don't become terrified by our own life experience. And I think all of us need this. All of us need this.

And I actually you might not agree, but I'm inclined to think, Kate, that you and I can be grateful that you need to do this on a moment by moment basis. Because if it wasn't required of you by your body, mind, and brain, you wouldn't have developed the depth of knowledge, the ability to serve others, and the profound confidence in these practices that you have. Like, if you hadn't had this level of need, you probably wouldn't have developed this level of skill. That's just how things work, I think.

G: Yeah. No. Absolutely. And I think as tiring and exhausting it can be, I also see how powerful it can be because I need it, and it does keep me level. It keeps me grounded. And it's powerful, you know? It's powerful, from a daily basis, but also helping my kids as well. And I just wanted to say, just to go back to what you said was, you know, how we've got let's say we've got a partner, and we love our partner unconditionally. Or we have kids, and we love them unconditionally, but they can really annoy us. Or a partner can do something that's really irritating. Or our kids be so rude and obnoxious and ungrateful, but we still love them. Like, we can have that duality with them.

But why do we find it so hard to have the, you know, like you said, to be able to see ourselves as a hot mess, but also accept ourselves for who we are and still love ourselves. And I often say to people, you know, well, if you need to bring in that self compassion, how would it feel for you if you spoke to your kid like that or your best friend if you're you know? And the beginning practice of recognizing that you are the same. You know? You're the same as that person that you love. And, no it's okay. Like, we're gonna have time after time after time where we are gonna think we've messed up again. We've forgotten something. We've double booked. We've done, you know, all these different things, and it's okay. And I'm still a good person. And I'm still a good business person. And I don't have to close down the whole business because I've messed up on a couple of things.

So it's just it's just being able to hold that, and it feels much easier to just move through life knowing that it's okay to not be this perfect person that we think we need to be And just kind of work through using our nervous system and using these daily practices, So every day we can look back and get into bed that night and say, actually, today I didn't spend the whole day feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Like, I only had a few moments where I felt anxious and overwhelmed. And maybe 60% of the day, I felt really present and really calm, and that's a good day. And that's, yeah, that's just we just keep going every day. That's a check-in, and we hopefully get better and better each day.

H: You're reminding me of the conversation I referred to earlier, Kate, with the meditation teacher whose name is Jude Star, and I'll link to that episode in the show notes. And you're reminding me that he has kind of a tagline, if you will, or a mantra with himself that, well, I didn't exercise today, and that's okay. And I haven't meditated all week, and that's okay. And I've been kind of mean to myself and other people, and that's okay. And if you just sort of make a regular practice of saying whatever, whatever your performance is, you know, you're not the critic of your performance. You don't have to be. You can just say, and that's okay. And contrary to what a lot of people believe, bullying never made anybody more successful.

Bullying ourselves never made anyone more productive or more successful. A lot of people are kind of caught on this habit where they think, well, I'm just naturally lazy and unmotivated and I'm a procrastinator and I wait till the last minute. And it's like, well, you do have ADHD. So they think if they bully themselves, they will be more effective. They will get more done. They'll be more productive. They'll be more successful. I am quite sure it doesn't work that way.

So if you are listening and this is what you've been doing, if you're willing, after listening to everything that Kate and I have said, if you're willing to try and experiment, try accepting yourself and telling yourself whatever you did today, it was okay. And see if that isn't the game changer you've been looking for instead of the harsh treatment that I don't it hasn't worked for me and I don't think it's worked for you, Kate. So, you know, a lot of people hang on to it because they think that's what keeps them doing anything at all. And otherwise, they would just do nothing. I just don't buy it.

G: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, what we know is, you know, to get the best out of kids, you don't want a teacher that's screaming and shouting. You get the best out of kids with a teacher who is kind, compassionate, funny, you know, has a bit of fun with the kids, gets down to their level, and we have to do the same with ourselves. That's as simple as it gets you know?

H: I love that. And I will make sure that I link to Kate's website and all of her wonderful workshops, as well as her podcast and, connecting with her on social media. My friend, I am so glad that you were able to accept this invitation and we were able to reconnect in this way. I knew the conversation would be good, but I think it was even better than I expected. So thank you.

G: Thank you so much, Diann, for everything you do. Honestly, you've been an amazing mentor, and I've loved listening to you. And, yeah, I'm glad that we will keep this relationship going, and we'll keep working with each other because you have taught me a lot over the years.

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