In this week’s episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, we’re diving into the world of somatic ADHD coaching, and why connecting with your nervous system might be the missing link in managing burnout, chronic stress, and overwhelm.

I’m joined by Jenny Adams, a somatic ADHD coach who helps women understand the mind-body connection and develop nervous system regulation and calming strategies that feel safe, sustainable, and uniquely aligned to them. Together, we explore how tuning into your body’s signals can help you set better boundaries, honour your energy, and stop pushing through at the expense of your wellbeing.

My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available. Grab your copy here!

What You’ll Learn:

• What somatic coaching involves and how it supports nervous system healing
• Why safety and regulation are deeply personal and essential for thriving with ADHD
• How nervous system dysregulation contributes to chronic stress and burnout
• The effects of masking and overachieving, and why authenticity matters
• How to assess and reduce your allostatic load (the cumulative stress on your system)
• How a business or career “audit” can help you find your true focus
• Practical tips for entrepreneurs and corporate professionals to set boundaries, ask for support, and honour their limits

Timestamps:

• 05:21 – Understanding somatic ADHD coaching
• 09:25 – The role of nervous system safety in everyday life
• 12:15 – How chronic conditions are linked to stress and dysregulation
• 14:30 – Burnout and chronic stress explained through a somatic lens
• 23:10 – Entrepreneur advice: knowing your limits and doing what works
• 25:45 – How to do a self-led business audit
• 29:13 – Somatic support in the corporate world
• 33:40 – Finding balance amidst overload
• 36:40 – Empowering decisions through body awareness

This episode is about giving yourself permission to slow down and soothe your ADHD nervous system by recognising your limits and learning how to create systems that support you in your business and your life based on what really matters.

Join the More Yourself Community - the doors are now open!

More Yourself is a compassionate space for late-diagnosed ADHD women to connect, reflect, and come home to who they really are. Sign up here!

Inside the More Yourself Membership, you’ll be able to:

• Connect with like-minded women who understand you
• Learn from guest experts and practical tools
• Receive compassionate prompts & gentle reminders
• Enjoy voice-note encouragement from Kate
• Join flexible meet-ups and mentoring sessions
• Access on-demand workshops and quarterly guest expert sessions

To join for £26 a month, click here. To join for £286 for a year (a whole month free!), click here.

We’ll also be walking through The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit together, exploring nervous system regulation, burnout recovery, RSD, joy, hormones, and self-trust, so the book comes alive in a supportive community setting.

Links and Resources:

• Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website [here].
• Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
• Connect with Jenny on Instagram @jennyadamscoach or her website

Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity. 

Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

I'm here today to talk about something that not only affects me and my guest, I know it affects so many of you guys as well.

We're going to be talking about our nervous system, we're going to be talking about burnout, we're going to be talking about chronic conditions and how to help ourselves move through this world and this life and all the things that we want to do with more compassion, but with more ease and more energy and more regulation.

So I'm really happy to welcome my guest, Jenny Adams.

Now, Jenny is a somatic ADHD coach and she supports female entrepreneurs with ADHD to get out of burnout and overwhelm before it turns into a chronic illness.

So very much based on prevention and live a balanced and values driven life that started your business, that you started your business for without working 24 7.

I am here for it all.

Tell me how to do it, Jenny, because this is something I deal with every single day and guide and teach my community as well.

But we're still living it, aren't we?

So welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me on and thank you for doing what you do as well.

Because I came to you because I got so much value from your podcast.

And as you say, I think there's so many of us that yes, we might be in this space of providing support and help, but we're also learning ourselves like we're never done.

So thank you for all the conversations and all the wisdom you have shared and I'm honored to be, to be here some of my, some of my great crazy brain.

Well, first of all, thank you and like I said, I said we all need this information and I would love maybe that you could just break down, just essentially I described your job description as a somatic ADHD coach.

And we hear this word somatic, but can you break it down a little bit?

So People understand what that means.

So the way I see it, I mean, soma is, I think it's the Greek or the Latin word for body.

The way I see somatic work is it's linking the mind and body together.

It's not just working on like ADHD strategies, like have you got a trello board and have you written a to do list and you know all the stuff, have you, if you set a timer, have you.

It's not just the strategic stuff that often it doesn't work that well for us.

And why is that?

Because there's a bunch of body that we are inhabiting and there are patterns and there's a nervous system which is linked to our brain and there's, there's all of this lived beingness of, of who we are as humans that we need to bring into the picture.

And for so many of us, especially those late diagnosed women who have been conditioned, ignored, traumatized through living with ADHD for most of our lives and only just figuring it out that we are getting to this place now of being like, okay, my nervous system has been wired in survival mode for decades.

What the hell do I do now?

So if we're constantly in this kind of fight flight, survival place, that is our nervous system saying, the world is not safe, I don't feel safe.

And if we ignore that, like there's an 80% body to brain pathway, it's 20% brain to body.

So if you ever heard of like the top down, bottom up approach, that kind of stuff, the somatic element is working a lot on that, that the bottom up, the, the body and how it influences the mind as well as some of the mind influencing the body.

It's more of a rounded approach as opposed to like, let's just get on a trello board and then beat ourselves up because it didn't work.

Oh my God.

Definitely don't even talk to me about trello boards.

I like ptsd start in and that I got rid of that within about a week.

I was like, this is not right for my brain.

And I was always really good for adhd.

I was like, it's not good for my adhd.

But what's interesting, what you said then about the top down, bottom up approach.

And historically many of us have gone through therapy and we've gone through years of this, of trying to understand ourselves just from a brain perspective.

And we're like, why is the therapy not working?

Why am I going around in circles?

Why is the rehashing of my childhood still not giving me peace?

And healing and that' we're going just from this brain approach.

And we've ignored the body which is inhabiting this nervous system.

And like you say, all this trauma, this stored memories, and that is what is really interesting.

And so.

And I think somatic work especially for neurodivergent people, when we hold so much, that trauma in our body is so powerful and so many of us are only just understanding and learning about this.

So I wanted to know, what does a somatic ADHD coach do physically?

Like, what are you helping people with?

So first thing to say with this is we, when we have felt chronically unsafe in our bodies, I mean, how many of us have very switched on smart brains?

And we all want to work things out on a cognitive level because living up here is often safer than living down here in our body.

So we can go to some of the talking therapies and we might kind of enjoy them in a way, or feel like we're getting something out of it.

Oh, someone's listening to me.

I'm brain dumping, but not actually see much results from it.

So the somatic element is quite individualized per person.

But I do have a framework that people go through which looks different to everybody because it's figuring out you as a person, what is it that makes you feel safe?

Because if we're looking to change things, if we're looking to, you know, grow a business, develop a better relationship with someone, grow in some way, we need to feel safe first.

Nothing's going to work until we find that level of safety.

And that doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, I'm, like, chilled out on a beach and I'm super relaxed and loving life, but it's not being in that constant heightened state.

So I support people finding out what it is for them that helps them feel safe.

So for, for someone, it might be something like orienting, which might be a great somatic tool, checking out your environment, going into your senses.

We're telling the nervous system there are no threats here.

We're looking for things that are curious, the anchors to certain things, finding that safety, okay, there's not a tiger chasing me in this moment, but someone else.

Especially if you're on the Audi HD spectrum, that can feel like, whoa, there's just too much input.

They might really respond to something like a butterfly hug or like some, like, let's give your brain something to do a body scan, for example.

So it's finding out individually as we are all different, because what's the saying once you've met One person with adhd, you've met one person with adhd.

What is it for you that helps you feel safe?

And I have a framework and various different tools and support to help people actually figure that out for themselves and start to tune into their body, listen to their body.

What are they asking for?

What does it need in this moment?

And as much as we can, can we, can we offer ourselves what, what that is.

When I think about sort of safety, I think about, you know, maybe from a business perspective, how I had to feel safe to be visible, like to be out on social media, what people might think, that fear of judgment, safety around money earning money, talking about money, prices, putting, you know, putting your prices up.

There's safety around being compared to other people.

We don't even realize like there's something in our nervous system that like jolts and jars us and limits us and keeps us small and does all these things because of trauma from like you say, sort of conditioning how our families were, how our parents were brought up, what was said in the house, how we may not want to be different to our peers, all these different things.

And sometimes we just don't even.

We're not conscious of it.

So unconscious we where this, this lack of safety is.

Yeah, so you made a really good point there about safety as well.

Because this somatic work doesn't, you know, I can say I, I help people with their businesses, but that's the big fancy tagline.

But when we look at actually feeling safe in our nervous system, this affects how we relate to money.

This is how we relate to our partners, our kids, parents, work colleagues, just everything we touch in life, every, anything we have a relationship with, food addictions, just everything.

When we feel safe, that relationship changes.

That's a big, can be scary because anything that is a new change or is new, our nervous system goes, I don't know what this is.

This isn't safe.

Even if it is something that actually we choose to do.

So part of what I support people with and see people with is managing and kind of hand holding in some way that change.

Because when people have lived for decades not being understood, not necessarily understanding, they even have trauma, like being a woman is traumatizing in society.

You know, add on being neurodivergent, add on hypermobility, all of these things we are holding so much that we don't always know about.

And often the people that come to me are kind of at the end of.

They're often at rock bottom.

They're just about hanging on to something that they love doing their business, their work.

They are trying to maybe implement some changes.

They've tried things in the past that just haven't worked.

Because one thing I see as a pattern is rather than going into a compassionate change, they're going into.

But I've been told to do this.

My counselor told me I should be doing this.

I'm not coping.

And there's a masking within the trying to change because the authentic need is not being recognized.

The authentic person is not being heard.

They're just being told, you should be doing this, you're doing it wrong.

So we kind of get into those parts and actually see, okay, what is this often very hurt, wounded part in here?

And can we just say this, this is okay, let's give this some space.

Let's allow this to be here and not make it wrong.

So they've tried various different things.

They're often burnt out or have something like me, cfs, fibromyalgia, chronic pain.

There's generally a few different things going on.

I've worked with people who are so severe they are completely reliant on a wheelchair or they're bed bound.

And we've helped them get back to going out and doing something that they love.

But being an ADHDer and being able to recognize patterns quite easily, I have seen time and time again the link between being an ADHDER and these chronic illnesses.

We need to start addressing this earlier on.

So if anyone's listening to this episode, thank you.

Because once we are starting to get certain symptoms, I ignored them for years.

And I spent a long time during my 20s reliant on a wheelchair, barely able to work in such a bad state.

And just in life, in my health, just, I do not wish that on anyone.

But I had to learn the hard way, and I just don't want that for anyone else.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know, I know your story.

Cause I've been on your podcast and you explained, you know, explained it, and it's just, it's horrendous.

That level of chronic exhaustion and burnout and fatigue and pain.

That sort of this cycle that goes with like, just pushing.

I just need to push more, do more, be better, try something different and just keep pushing against what our body is trying to tell us and our brain and our nervous system.

And because, you know, we go back to this conditioning and we go back to this lack of understanding and no diagnoses in women and believing that everything that we're doing is wrong, like it's a me problem and it's just something I have to fix and sort out.

And can you imagine that toll that takes on our bodies, on everything?

It's just like, even talking about it, and I talk about this all the time, and I'm still just like, how, like, how have we got to this point where so many women didn't understand what was going on for them?

And it's very, very sad.

But I know that you said to me that you love to work.

Yes, these women are coming to you, and they are often at rock bottom.

They're at breaking point, burnout central.

But for you, that key is.

That is prevention.

And I'm going to speak very personally here is.

I know my warning signs now after unfortunately learning the hard way and lots of episodes of burnout.

And I still get to the almost the tipping point like it gets.

And that's what's hard with being adhd, is that we get excited and we get enthused and there's something new happening and there's novelty.

And then we're like, this dopamine happens.

And then we have all these great ideas.

We want to implement it, and we are ambitious.

And then something happens where we're like, oh, this doesn't feel good in our bodies anymore.

So it's trying to.

I always find it is like trying to find this balance between all this excitement and all this enthusiasm and ambition that we have and all this, like, zest from wanting to make change and do something good and make something different in the world, and a very sensitive nervous system that has to hold all of this and how we balance that with our rest and our recharging.

And it's a formula that is very unique to us all.

But we all kind of have to find that formula, don't we?

And that's not easy.

And often we only find that formula a bit later on in life.

Yes.

And often through doing it the hard way.

And that passion and that.

That zest, as you said, and that drive like that is one of the things that makes us, like, incredible people.

Like, we get stuff done.

Like, if we're passionate, we are doing it.

It's boring.

No, thank you.

But, you know, that is one of our incredible skill sets.

But when we expect to be at that level all the time, we.

We cannot run at that level all the time.

Like, that is a recipe for burnout, as you've said.

As I have been through, probably people listening will go, yeah, I kind of knew I was pushing it a bit too much.

And also, this isn't a.

This isn't a blame game either.

This isn't.

You have ADHD and therefore you will be like this.

We often also have a crossover with hypermobility.

Things like proprioceptive issues, interoceptive.

So knowing where we are in space, being able to actually address and notice, oh, hang on, I need the toilet or I'm thirsty.

Like we struggle, we can struggle with those.

And I say this because especially with the hypermobility and proprioceptive element, we often need to literally stretch ourselves to our end limits and have some feedback.

So I have my hands on my desk right now.

I know where I am because my hands are on my desk.

And when we put that into like a life situation that can be okay.

I only know my limits when I've pushed past them and I've hyper focused the entire afternoon and I've got home and I have just crashed.

There's my desk, there's that limit and we can listen to that and go okay, well what happened before that?

Can I start to tune in and maybe recognize some patterns as we are very good at doing.

But if we think of something like allostatic load so how much stress our body can hold, like you know, if you imagine we've got.

I've got a dirty mug on my desk here.

I'll use this as an example.

There's a certain amount of stress as we can pour into this before it starts to overflow.

Overflow.

And when we're just pouring in and pouring in and pouring in and pouring in and there's no outlet that will overflow at some point.

Same with how much stress we can hold when we're putting stresses in.

But then we are doing things to, you know, just gently tip a bit of that out.

There's the balance and that will look different to everyone.

You know, this is the mug I have.

It might be this big, it might be this big, it might be tiny.

It's figuring it out for you as a person what that is, what that looks like and also what are those things that take some of that stress out of that allostatic load.

For some people it might be a yoga class, it might be a massage, it might be having a chat with your friend.

Loads of different things that just help to take some of that stuff out so we can then find a little bit more balance that when we can switch that or I say switch the hyper focus on.

It's not a button we switch on when it just comes often inappropriate times.

Mine was 6pm on Friday.

The other day, a two hour hyperfocus.

It comes and we go.

Okay, well I have just used a lot of energy doing that.

What do I need now?

I think I just need to go and line the grass for half an hour or put something mind numbing on Netflix and just sort of tune out.

And yeah, it's figuring out like what are those things?

Because when we're not what that overflow looks like when we're talking about stress, allostatic load is energy that isn't being transmuted.

It has nowhere to go if we're not using these tools to take that out.

That energy then just goes into the body and turns into pain and symptoms.

And if you are someone who has noticed, well, that was hurting and I went to the doctor and I said, you know, I've got a knee problem.

And they said nothing's wrong.

And then I've got a problem with my lower back and then, and then it's my shoulder and then I keep getting headaches and I've got gut issues.

And there are all these things that just kind of bounce around the body.

That is your body trying to get your attention.

It's not always necessarily a physical shoulder issue.

Sometimes it might be and it can ping around.

And I notice this in my body.

I'm like, okay, there's me getting close to something.

It's trying to tell me something.

Let's listen to this.

Not necessarily just do shoulder exercises.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my God.

Literally I'm just like resonating so much on, on all of this.

And I have exactly the same.

I've historically always had lower back problems.

You know, I even had it less than a year ago.

I went on holiday, very, very stressed, trying to cram so much in because I was going on holiday.

Got on holiday, obviously what happened?

My back went.

Spent my first two days of holiday going to acupuncturists, physios, having like crazy kind of stretching situations with different types of physio.

And that was like a one week holiday.

So most of it was spent in pain, going to pharmacies, trying to get medication.

And I knew exactly what it was.

It was because I was trying to fit everything in before my holiday and I'm learning now.

I've actually just said one of the biggest no's of my life, a challenge that I was meant to do.

I signed up for, raised money for, made a whole big song and dance about it and I had to pull out of it because the load of everything else happening, you know, I've got a book coming out in July and as amazing as that is, I have worked so hard.

You know, that was a year of my life of just complete nervous system stress because I could never switch off.

And then the builder to the book and everything around it has seeped into different areas of my life.

You know what I have to say yes to, what different boundaries I've put in, having to make more space in my diary to do other podcast interviews.

And as amazing as all this is, because I wanted the book, the load, it's added so many more different stresses into this, this bucket.

And I've had to unfortunately pull out of things and say no to things and be sad that I can't go to certain social situations.

But what's kind of kept me going throughout all of this is that I know it's temporary, but I'm trying to be in prevention mode all the time now.

Like I really am.

That is kind of how I base my job and my career.

And sometimes I think, oh God, I could be doing so much more.

I'd be earning more money and be so much more ambitious and all of this.

But what does that.

It takes from me so much and I don't have, I have really finite energy and a very sensitive nervous system.

What do you say to entrepreneurs that do want to be successful but also know that they have a capacity with what they can hold in their nervous system?

I mean, we all have a certain capacity, we all have limits, whether we're neurodivergent or not.

So I just want to put that out there first of all.

And also, especially as women, we are now conditioned.

We're in this world where we have, we have more choice, we can do anything.

But we get mixed up with then trying to do everything.

Yeah.

And then we sprinkle some ADHD in there and we're like, but we have to do it now because it's going to be boring if I do it next week.

And I've got the energy now.

So come on, let's, let's do this thing.

And one thing that I have done for my business and I support others with is focusing on what's important.

So just because you can do all the things, let's celebrate.

Oh my God, you have so many ideas.

How creative are you?

Like, this is incredible that you can just ping off ideas constantly.

There is a never ending stream.

You have an abundance of ideas.

What are you focusing on?

So I have a 10 minute walk from where I park to my office through a nice park every day.

That is my little walk into work to say, what am I focusing on today, what's important, and I get in and that's what I focus on before I open my inbox, before I look at WhatsApp, go on Instagram and just get pulled into the gazillion different things.

And then I'm like, oh, but I actually really wanted to, you know, write this thing or do this one thing, but I've been pulled in all these different directions.

So when we're trying to, you know, run the podcast, support one to one clients, have group coaching, you know, get out and do some local funding, like doing all the things, like we're just spreading ourselves too thin, and then we think, well, am I the issue?

Why can't I do it all?

Well, they look like they're doing it, but actually that, that boring piece of advice, do one thing that works well and just keep doing that and pruning your schedule so if it's not in alignment with that goal.

So like I did a, like a little reflection session at the beginning of the year in, you know, like Crimbo Limbo week when everyone's off.

And I looked back at the last year and I looked at like key things I really enjoyed doing, what also was impactful on my business, and looked at the breakdown of like, how much time did that take me and how much money did that earn me and if it was like a really big time investment, but not necessarily a financial one, is that like a real passion I want to do or is there something that took me less time but earned me more money?

So could I maybe focus on that a little bit more?

So having that kind of business audit and having that information, and it doesn't all have to be done in one session, but actually looking at, looking at your numbers, looking at what you enjoy doing, what feels easy and focusing and sort of channeling your energy into that as opposed to just spreading yourself too thin and then you can have that.

Okay, there's opportunities come to me.

Is this in alignment with my goal for the year?

Is this something that I actually want to do?

Could this lead to another opportunity?

Or is this just taking me out of where I want to go?

Because it's interesting right now.

In which case, thank you.

Maybe I'll come back to you when, you know, you've, you've done your book promos and everything.

I'm in the middle of moving house at the moment and between two weddings because, you know, I'm extra and I'm going to get married twice to, to the, to the same man.

But yeah, there's a Lot of organizing and planning going on.

And right now I have stripped out.

Like I've paused on my podcast for a few months.

It like if it's not supporting me right now and isn't an absolute need, then it's not happening.

So everything is being stripped out.

So this afternoon I'm going to see my osteopath.

Tomorrow I'm going for a massage.

When it was really hot, I had like a four hour gap in the middle of the day.

I could have filled that with admin business growth.

I went to the beach and I had a chat with my friend on the phone for two hours because that was what I needed and I had zero guilt about doing that because I tune in now and go, what do I really want to do?

And you know, you have that thought sometimes of, oh, I wish I was doing this instead.

I don't want to be doing this, I want to do that.

And then I'm like, okay, I really want to be on the beach.

Go to the beach.

It's a five minute walk from my office.

Wow.

Just go, oh my God, you're so lucky.

That's incredible.

You know, there's like lots of people probably listening going, oh my God, that sounds amazing.

And yes, we can speak as entrepreneurs and working for ourselves, but what happens if we're finding ourselves but there's just we're answerable to so many people.

How do we step into this sort of more somatic support when we're stuck in a job and we don't have the luxury to have more flexibility?

And I'm going to speak to quite.

You know, there's a lot of women out there who are understanding and recognizing they are neurodivergent but they're still not able to.

Their careers are still not aligning with them and maybe that's because finances are keeping them where they are.

And that's a very real thing.

I guess what I'm saying is like what advice or what can women or people do right now somatically to help themselves if they don't have that freedom and flexibility at the moment.

So I have been there as well.

I've been in corporate world where I didn't understand ADHD or my health and I get it with the being pulled on a lot.

So this might sound a bit too simple, but body first, always putting you your body first, that age old, put your own oxygen mask on first and then pulling on your strengths.

So are you spending half your day doing admin that somebody else could be doing?

Are you stressing out about cleaning your house and spending all of one of the days on your weekend cleaning when someone could do that in a couple of hours.

If you are a very good project manager, let's say.

But part of what you have to do is like the answering emails to people, maybe it's putting together some financial spreadsheet stuff and they're the things that you get tripped over, like tripped up with and that take a long time.

You might struggle with some sort of executive functioning things around that.

Can someone else do that, support with that?

So there then you are able to channel your finite energy and time into what you are good at.

So when again when we're trying to do all the things and spreading ourselves too thin, like we just, we can't, it's, it's a recipe for burnout, it's a recipe for failure and to feel crap about ourselves.

If you absolutely love cooking, put your time and effort into making a lovely dinner and like bringing the kids in.

If you hate cooking, can you, you know, get.

I get like plant hood boxes, you know, it's just, it's a meal, meal kit.

Like how can you make this easier?

How can you get some support?

And yes, I hear the financial element of this.

But let's say especially for those of us who are self employed, if we can bill, you know, 50 pounds an hour to a client, let's say, and we are spending half all day Saturday cleaning our house, which we could pay a cleaner £15 an hour to do, could we then take that time back and say, well actually my time is more valuable doing this than doing that and maybe don't work Saturdays.

But the point is, where can you actually save money because you're saving time doing what you're good at.

And there's also the body part is do I have capacity for this right now?

If a relative is calling, do I have space to answer this?

Can I check in with a friend and say okay, like I need some support right now.

Can you hold this for me and make that a two way pattern as I do with my friends?

Like I'm really struggling, I just need to dump and cry.

Are you okay to hold this space?

And when someone's coming to you, and this is also a boundary thing is actually no, that is my sacred time.

I get in from work, that is my half an hour.

For me, this is sacred time.

And a boundary is not just something we ask of people.

A boundary needs to have a consequence.

So if you interrupt me when I'm doing X, Y, Z, therefore I'm going to lock the door next time so you can't come in or I'm going to put my phone on airplane mode so you can't get hold of me.

It has to have some kind of consequence, otherwise what's the point?

So looking at our lives and saying, well actually where do I have some control?

And even if we are feeling very time poor, do you have two seconds to just, just take a breath?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's all really, really helpful and it's just reminding me I had a client yester straight away we got on the, got on the call and I was like, how are you?

And she said I'm very, very overwhelmed and stressed.

And I said, okay, tell me what's going on.

Like what's the, what's the big thing that's causing this?

And she said it's my birthday coming up and I'm being put into all this pressure and I need to make a decision and people want to see me.

And I was just like, it's all just too much and I've got loads of work on and there's just, just so much going on.

And I said, well, let's just strip everything back.

If it was just you and you having to make the decision about your birthday, what ideally would you like to do?

And she says, well, ideally in an I perfect world, I'd just see like four friends and we'd sit in the park and get a picnic and I wouldn't have to sit in a restaurant, I wouldn't have to make plans with my parents and this one.

And I just do that.

And we broke it down and we said, right, okay, how can we make this happen?

Because she was so beholden by people pleasing and this lack of boundaries that she had, she just wanted to please everybody, especially her parents.

And then this perfectionism that was just rearing its head in so many different ways of how things should be looking and have to look.

And until we break it all down, there was just one big loop of overwhelm and like, oh my God, I don't even know where to begin.

And then we break down a birthday, which sounds so sort of like surface level, but actually it had much deeper meaning because it showed how when you put some boundaries in place and just ask for what it is that you want and need and desire without the fear of upsetting people, like how powerful.

And she felt so much more empowered by the end of the session because she was like, yeah, I just want to sit under a tree with a picnic with my favorite People and I'll see my parents a few days later.

And I said, well, how realistic does this conversation feel to you now?

She goes, oh, it's fine.

I'll just call my dad and explain to him and it'll be fine.

So we can get so caught up in our heads, can't we?

And I said after the session, I was like, right, just go and have a walk now.

Just like, let that energy come out.

Because like you said, it's this.

It has to go somewhere, doesn't it?

And if we don't expend it somewhere, we don't release it, then it just stays and contains and mutates in different types of pain and inflammation, which no one tells us.

No one tells us any of this.

Yes, no, unfortunately not.

And you know, a big key part of that, that, you know, I know you said, why don't you go for a walk afterwards?

But just being in that safe space of co regulation when we are so overwhelmed, the executive functioning part of our brain, which is weaker, unfortunately, and us ADHD is all smaller, just switches off.

So when we're in overwhelm and we're like, but I've got my birthday to sort out and I don't know what to do.

And, you know, all the things like, don't try and figure out the problem.

We need to signal safety first, find some regulation.

That part of our brain will then come back online and then we can go into the strategy of like, okay, actually what might this look like?

And I know.

Well, one.

One fantastic question that one of my mentors says is if this decision was fully supported by everyone in your life, there were no, like, financial implications, just everything was there supporting you.

If you made this decision, would you still make this decision?

That can tell you a lot about why you're trying to do something.

So if you're fully supported in saying, actually I'm gonna go and have a picnic, then why would you go to a restaurant?

And I think we had this conversation a few months ago because I was in the midst of wedding planning and I think I shared with you.

I can't remember if it's on my podcast or like, when we were chatting at the end that I've just had this massive email from our wedding planner asking for basically loads of decisions to be made, like, what do you want the rings held in?

What songs do you want?

And when are they going to be played?

And like, what flower arrangement do you want?

And just so much stuff.

And this is something, you know, I'm getting married, like this is something very exciting and I think the old me would have looked at that email and even now I did feel overwhelmed seeing it, but then gone into a spiral of like, why am I getting so overwhelmed by an email?

Like, this is my wedding, I really, I really want to do this.

Like, come on, I need to try really hard to answer these.

Don't get distracted.

And it would have taken days and it would have probably been pushed to the very last minute and only been done in a place of stress as well.

And you said to me, well, why don't.

I think I was.

I think you said, why don't you just ask for what you need, send them an email.

Because my mum had said, oh, well, I can answer it.

Which is very disempowering.

I know I communicate best chatting.

And I was like, I just want to have a zoom chat with her.

And I think you said, why don't you just email her back and say that?

And that's exactly what I did.

And she went, cool.

I said, I've got adhd.

This is a lot of information.

I process better talking it through.

Can we have a meeting?

And she just went, yeah, cool.

If you can give me the link, I'll see you on Monday.

And then we went through all of it.

I knew who our wedding planner was then because we got married abroad and it was a really empowering, good experience.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, wow.

Well, I do remember that conversation now you're reminding me and I'm really glad because, yeah, because straight away it's like just finding that communication style or finding a way to break it down, isn't it?

It's always like the minute we just go straight to overwhelm.

I'm exactly the same.

If I see someone requesting order lots of different things from me in an email, even if it could be a great opportunity, my brain just goes, oh, my God, that's far too many questions.

Like you're asking me to provide this and that and all sorts.

And yeah, often I'll reply back with, you know, a voice note or this or that.

But it is like you say, it's just trying to find a way that we can operate in this world and still protect our needs and our desires and our nervous system and our boundaries and our energy and all of that.

And it is constantly learning.

But I do believe that these conversations is just, you know, just even a nugget that someone takes from this conversation just goes, oh, so that's why my back always hurts when it's really stressful.

Or all these different things.

So I just want to say I think what you're doing is amazing, Jenny and I'm sure lots of people will be like, how can I work with you?

Like what, what options do you have for people if they would like to get in touch?

Yeah, well, thank you.

And yeah, this, this work is, is so powerful and has changed my life and many others.

I have a podcast called Calm youm Nervous System which you have been on.

So I talk all things about specifically adhd, chronic illness and the nervous system.

I also work with people on a one to one basis.

I will have some groups coaching probably later in the year.

I do workshops with workplaces that will be tailored specifically so.

But I would say if you're interested, I offer a free 45 minute alignment call.

You can find that on my socials on my website.

Come to me with what you're struggling with and we'll work out what is the right fit for you.

But I offer a lot of sort of free resources and things.

So I've got a seven minute overwhelm, just calming your nervous system down a little bit.

Video which you can find at jenny adamscoach.co.uk forward/regulate and there's loads of stuff I put on Instagram and things.

So I'm at Jenny adamscoach.

Amazing.

Well, thank you and I will, I'll put all of this in the show notes and I'll also include our conversation on your podcast as well where we kind of like touch on similar topics but it's all quite different as well.

And yeah, I really, really enjoyed this content conversation and I know, I think, well, I, I know it's going to.

Be very helpful for lots of people.

So thank you Jenny and I'll speak to you very soon.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having me.

Hopefully people have found this helpful and know that there is, there is hope.

You're not going to stay like this forever.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the A.D. aDHD Women's well Being Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.