Check out all my free resources and on-demand workshops on my website here

Is our ADHD 'hackable'? Can we create new ways of thinking and being to make living with ADHD easier? We get curious about these topics in this week's episode, with guest, Alex Campbell, an ADHD specialist, psychotherapist and coach.

Alex dedicates his life to helping others understand and thrive with neurodiversity. His portfolio career spans film & television, international business development and non-profit operations.

During today's episode, Alex and Kate talk about:

• Reframing our old ADHD stories and beliefs
• Seeing the genius in our old workarounds and scaffolding
• Leaning into our 'new' strengths
• Making life work better for us on our terms
• What is "working memory"
• Sprinting marathons and ADHD burnout
• The ADHD Working Memory
• How we respond to our wins
• Using self-compassion every day
• The benefits of working with an ADHD coach
• Thriving with our speedy brains and using our working memory in a way that works for us
• Taking a compassionate, systematic pause

Look at some of Kate's ADHD workshops and free resources here.

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

Follow the podcast on Instagram here.

Follow Kate on Instagram here.

Find Kate's resources on ADDitude magazine here.

Mentioned in this episode:

Gratitude link

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom, your Sunday episode where we bring in fantastic wisdom from all the guests from over the years who have really got something quite important and insightful to tell us.

And I know that so many of us struggle to get in front of these people, to be able to either afford or be able to make appointments with people who really understand ADHD and all the nuances that that it brings.

And today we have Alex Campbell.

Now, Alex is an ADHD specialist, He's a psychotherapist, he's a coach, and he also now trains coaches.

And he's really dedicated his whole life to helping others understand and thrive with neurodivergence.

And he has got a fantastic life story himself and has gone through lots of different incarnations, but he really has found his niche with helping other people with adhd.

And he was actually one of the first kids diagnosed in the very early 90s.

So he really understand how ADHD can show up and all the different ways.

And now he is training many coaches, which is fantastic because this is what we need out there, lots of people helping us to lean into our strengths, seeing our genius, helping us reframe our ADHD stories and beliefs and actually living life on our terms, living life according to our strengths, and offering ourselves lots of love and compassion and forgiveness and all the things that we didn't know.

So here is my conversation with Alex Campbell.

I really hope you enjoy it.

I think we need to nuance compassionate acts for ourself.

So I think when we think about self compassion, and this is one of the things I talk about in my self compassion course, is I think a lot of the.

There's quite a lot of misunderstanding, I think, or not misunderstanding, but as ADHD is, I think we switch off to these things quite quickly because there's such a strong negativity bias and if anything is possibly good or positive, we've already already discounted it.

And because we've got such speedy brains that it's like, nah, you know, we might have done like, we might have downloaded that app that was marketed to us on Facebook and we downloaded it and because it didn't work, I've thrown out mindfulness and self compassion.

And part of that is just because that's just how we're wired.

But I think the.

For me, I would say that self compassion has been as impactful as medication, if not more, because we can learn lots of great things about how to work with our ADHD and thrive with adhd But I think it's.

There's a deeper work that's, that's transformative.

When you really look at how I respond to life, like, not just what I do, but how I respond when things don't go so well, how I respond when things even.

How do I respond when I win?

How do I celebrate a win?

Right?

Do I brush it off and go on to the next thing?

Classic ADHD behavior, right.

Or do I savor the win?

That's a compassionate act, you know, you don't have to be sat with your legs crossed meditating.

It's just a way.

We have to find our ways of doing it.

But we do have to understand that it's quite challenging for us to start to see ourselves clearly.

And that's the essence of mindfulness, is like, how do I be here?

Can I be here?

Really here?

That's mindfulness.

You having a bit of a shit day and then going, do you know what?

I just need to dip into 2.0.

You're being here.

How do I be here now?

That's what I need.

That's a compassionate act.

You know, it's a.

And I think we, again, we have to just normalize.

You need to find your way with this.

No one's, no one's going.

I can't tell you.

I can support you and try and hear you, but it's going to come from you.

Otherwise you're never going to keep it up.

Yeah, I think the being present with ADHD is the ultimate.

It's like that.

It's the thing that we're all trying to aspire to.

And it sounds so easy to other people, but to be here now, to be present, to be mindful when we are risk assessing hyper vigilant, worrying, ruminating, overthinking, we've already disregarded something that we thought about in two seconds.

It's.

It's such hard work to be mindful.

But I do believe that we.

The more we have that awareness, the more we know about it, more we understand it is possible in small bouts.

But we just have to keep bringing ourselves back.

Bring ourselves back.

Katie and I developed for the training this concept.

We call it systematic pausing.

Because pausing is one thing.

It's like saying to someone, just be kind to yourself.

And you're like, yeah, that's an Instagram post, darling.

Fuck off.

We kind of have to embed some of this stuff into our everyday life.

And so it has to become systematic in its nature if we're going to stick at something.

And so we Came up with this concept of the systematic pause, which has a compassionate kind of focus to it, and that you can systematically pause habitually, that is, I naturally want to do yoga at whatever time in the morning, every day.

That's a habitual systematic pause.

We have in the moment systematic pauses where you kind of go, hang on a minute.

Like, what's going on here?

That's hard, but it takes practice.

And then we have.

We haven't really come up with a name with it.

I call it the daring systematic pause, which is where you.

You look back on a situation and go, what was going on there?

What if I had paused there?

What might that have enabled me to?

And it becomes this way in which you start to, with kindness, allow yourself, permission yourself to pause in different ways in different parts of your life.

For some people, the idea of doing yoga at 8am Every morning is like, no.

And nor should you aspire to that if that's not what's for you.

But for some people, that is a fundamental way of setting up their day.

It's a habitual systematic pause that they need.

For me, the in the moment stuff is really, really important for me to be able to go, hang on a minute, I need a moment.

I'm going into overwhelm.

I do it when I unmask my working memory, when I'm speaking.

And then I forget my train of thought.

Instead of trying to keep talking to find it, I just go, do you know what I've lost thread.

That's a pause.

Because there's a risk, right?

That if I do that, you're going to think, I don't know, I'm stupid because I've.

Because I've forgotten my thought.

So if I keep going, I'm going to get more and more exhausted.

I'm going to get more and more hard on myself.

And it's that kind of systematic thing of allowing ourselves, these pauses in different parts of our days, in different situations.

And the compassionate piece, particularly when I coach around this, is, can we experiment with pausing?

Can we try different things?

It's an experiment because it might not go the way you intend, by the way.

And that's okay.

Can we stay open to what you learn?

Like, because we're building this together for you, you know, we're building some kind of a way in which you find these compassionate moments, these pauses, you know?

Yeah.

Hi.

So I'm just interrupting today's podcast because I wanted to let you know about a free webinar I'm doing with my friend, my colleague, Adele Wimser, she's an ADHD hormonal expert and what she doesn't know about hormones and ADHD is, you know, really is second to none.

And this is happening on July 9th at 7pm and with the conversation that we're going to be having is about demystifying progesterone and adhd.

So we hear a lot about estrogen and perimenopause, but actually, can we understand the role of progesterone and perhaps the slightly negative reputation it's had, especially for those of us who considered ourselves progesterone sensitive and many of us with neurodivergent minds and nervous systems, we have very much felt that progesterone is sort of the anti hero in our, in our story.

So this is happening on the 9th of July.

Now, I know that all this information is very overwhelming, so I'm going to just say go to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk and you'll see on the homepage the two buttons and all the information is on there.

Now back to today's episode.

It's almost like compensating for the fact that our brains are on like fast forward mode, you know, like I listen to all my podcasts on, you know, double speed.

And that's pretty.

Yes, me too.

You know, and that's just pretty much how my life is and how my brain is.

But it's not healthy.

This is why we get, you know, we're being burnt out.

This is why we're exhausted, this is why we're overwhelmed.

Oh my goodness.

So we have to compensate for the fast forwardness of our life and take these pauses, you know, this is why I literally just do some silent tapping.

Just five minutes, two minutes of just tapping.

Calming, regulating really does help.

But even if it's just two or three breaths literally in the car before I get out the car to get into the house, just that alone, that reset button.

So, yeah, I mean, there's so much there.

Most.

I've got another concept I want to throw you here.

We talk about in the course, which is a lot of my clients kind of exec.

Exec level.

And they are like machines, they are insanely powerful human beings who have achieved the most amazing things.

But they all burnt.

They're all burnt out.

They're all at the end of their rope.

And there's a little con, another concept that we talk about in the course, which is called the sprinter, marathon runner, which is that we are sprinters in a marathon runner world.

We have These really incredibly powerful, very finely tuned brains, right?

Who is it?

He talks about us having Ferrari engines of.

Engines of a brain with bicycle brakes.

It might have been Hallowell.

Either Hallowell or Racy.

And I love that because it makes me realize I have to pay attention and I have to.

You wouldn't get your regular run of the mill mechanic to service a Ferrari engine.

And you wouldn't take a Ferrari engine like down some long winding road.

Like they're designed for these flat, fast, straight roads, right?

And that's normal.

That's an environment where they and their engine goes for it.

That's us.

But if we don't know that, then we are sprinting a marathon, right?

We will burn, guaranteed.

And that's quite an important piece, isn't it?

Like, so for me, I break up my week or my days into sprints.

So I see like say three clients back to back, hyperfocus sprint.

I'm in the fast lane.

I then have to have these transitional shifts.

Like the car has to slow down, the engine's going to tick and it's going to be warm because it's going to take me a while for my brain to disengage from that thing to whatever it is that I have to do next.

Maybe I'm going home to bath my children and I've just seen three clients back to back.

What do I do?

How do I pause?

What's the compassionate act?

Particularly if I don't know that that's where my brain is wired.

The knowing piece allows me to experiment.

So I say to my wife, because I very thought, well, she's in New Zealand now, but my office is literally just around the corner from my, from my house.

I'd say to her, okay, so when I get home, I need like half an hour.

Don't ask me anything basically because you're not going to get much from me.

I need that space to transition.

That's a compassionate act.

That's a pause.

That's a habitual pause.

I put into my day.

And then I'm here, I'm with you and I'm all ears.

I don't know, I just, I think I went off on my.

Sorry, no.

And I mean, listen, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking how I put that in my day.

But before I was diagnosed I was intuitively trying to do that because intuitively I knew that there was this like low lying irritability, there was frustration, I was in a bad mood.

Emotional dysregulation.

Like I couldn't I didn't really have the language for it, but I knew that there was something going on that made me very shouty with my children.

So I just had to make sure that there was a pause, there was a buffer between doing the thing that was stimulating my brain so much, to the point where I was like, I just need to close my eyes and sit in a dark room, which isn't really, you know, reality, but now I understand it.

And I think I do give myself that compassionate pause where I go, right, I'm going to take the dog for a quick walk around the block before I do this.

I'm going to go and have a bath before I sit down and we have dinner, or I'm going to do this thing because I know that I'm a better person, Parent, partner, all of that.

Where beforehand I think I would have just been like, you're so precious.

You're not.

You haven't got very much energy.

Like, you're not very good at this parenting thing, like, all of this.

But now I'm just like, so what?

What's half an hour bath like a half an hour bath.

I put my magnesium salts, my oils.

I have a lovely time.

Oh, yes, Preaching my language.

I love the magnesium.

Ye.

And then I'm just like a much calmer, nicer version of myself.

So I just think we need to just lean into the ways and the things that we find helpful, you know, whatever that pauses, whatever that compassion is, because we achieve a hell of a lot in a very short amount of time.

You know, that sprinting that an ADHD brain does is very powerful.

You know, you're talking about your clients being, like, hugely powerful.

They're machines.

We can be machines with this hyperfocus, but it also saps a huge amount of energy.

I guess, you know, going back to that analogy of the cars, like, we are revving our engines and draining the petrol tank on another level.

Whereas, you know, we have to just kind of, like, just settle for a little bit and kind of reengage in a different way.

So, yeah, there's another piece here as well.

I was just.

I have a client who.

She is.

She's a sales director for a big American company.

She's got ADHD, autism and she's got bipolar.

She only works 50% of the year and she outdoes her peers, like, double.

Her targets are double.

And she always beats them.

And she only works half of the year.

And my working memory, it's just gone.

It's like it's fallen off.

It's fallen off.

I was going to go somewhere with that, and I have no idea where I was going with that.

That's so interesting.

That's me being compassionate.

I'm like.

And I've lost you recognizing it.

Yeah, I was setting something up and I wanted to introduce this.

But the point that I wanted to make with the introduction, that's that working memory bit.

I haven't been able to hold it.

So I.

I was gonna say I apologize, but this is.

This is normalizing.

I've got something to say.

It's gone.

And then, yeah, that's normal.

My daughter does this all the time.

She goes, mummy, Mummy, Mummy.

I'm like, yes.

She's, oh, I've forgotten what I was gonna say.

And she's, you know, she's.

She's got adhd.

So I'm, you know, I'm constantly trying to normalize that.

But if we can model to our children that compassion, they can hopefully give it to themselves and not talk to themselves.

Maybe how we speak to ourselves.

Growing up.

I remember a lot of these execs.

This is why I was introducing this client that I used to see, which is because we've got such speedy brains, and we don't realize that that's really quite phenomenal.

We almost think that that's how everyone is.

That if you can imagine that we can get what a lot of people can get done in a day in much less time.

And so if you can imagine that you don't know about adhd and that's your brain that you develop this core belief of nothing is good enough because you're sprinting a marathon and you're trying to do essentially double the workload, because that's what you think is accepted in normal.

And so there's something about understanding actually how powerful my brain is and starting to take stock as to what it is you're actually producing, what it is that you're actually creating, because it is phenomenal.

And sometimes it's actually saying, how much time did it take me to do that piece of work?

And then ask somebody else how long you think it would take them.

Sometimes you'd be really shocked at how long they might anticipate to do that piece of work?

That's the power of the 150%, the speedy brain.

So if you're saying to yourself, I need to be revving it for a whole day?

And then we tell the story that we're not good enough because we should be able to do that for a whole day, no, that's not okay.

You need to work in an environment that helps you thrive with your speedy brain.

That means you shouldn't pack out a whole day with back to back meetings.

Yeah, no, yeah.

Get rid of the busyness.

You're not going to get the best out of yourself and the team or whatever if that's the way you live your work life.

I just think that there's something about this core belief that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

We haven't met our potential.

That's a classic one that what I'm doing is not enough.

It's more than enough if we're conditioned.

To be told that we have to work eight hours, nine hours a day, but we can get it done in three hours.

We need to be protecting our brains as well, you know?

Exactly.

Our mental health.

Because the way we work is different as opposed to being on the back foot.

It's almost like we have kind of got like a bit of a key that unlocks a different door and it's like, okay, let's protect that.

I mean, you just.

That's what you were just saying.

They reminded me of.

I used to work in PR years and years ago.

Used to work in consumer PR for a really fast paced agency.

We used to release all sorts of stories, you know, crazy stories and stunts.

And we had the opportunity to speak to all the nationals and all the big papers and get on the news.

And then there was the regionals and that was a really boring job.

I hate to speak to the regional.

Sorry, anyone that is a regional news reporter.

I can feel it from you.

Like, oh, it was like, that was not enough of a dopamine hit for me.

And so I would go in there with the story and just think, right, so this.

I'm going to pack a punch and I'm going to call the Sun, I'm going to call, you know, the Mirror and the Times and all of that and I'm going to get this story, you know, on a big page.

And I did that.

I would do that like in an hour.

And I get like three people going, yeah, want the story.

My boss would be like, what do you mean?

Like, how have you just done that in an hour?

Because in my head I was like, I do not want to sit there going through 50 regionals and send it to the Yorkshire Post and the this and that.

I want like the Times to take it, the sun to take it and then I'm done.

I can.

But that wasn't the case.

And so I would burn out.

But yeah, that analogy just came to me because that's pretty much our brains, isn't it?

It is.

There's only.

There's only so much.

I use this analogy because people go, what's working memory?

It plays into everything.

Working memory, you know, it's not long, it's not short term memory.

It's this memory that we have when we're in the moment, taking in something holding in our brains for long enough to agitate it and then do something with it.

But we have a post it note size working memory.

Someone who doesn't have ADHD has an A4 piece.

They can actually hold this information for longer to process it and do something.

You're like, wait, I've got to contact the regionals.

I have to wait for how long?

And then I have to coordinate all this and then action that your post it note is like full, full.

But if we flip this for a moment, that's why we're so speedy.

You create this perfect environment.

What happens with our working memories?

We go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

We can go from A to B in lightning speed if the conditions are right.

Because our working memory is set up to do that.

Someone once sent, we are hunters in a farmer world.

This is normal.

That's why we're great in a crisis.

I've got a client of mine's ER doctor, he's a not an ER AE doctor, surgeon.

And people like, how can he have ADHD and like that is hyper focus.

He can get A to B in.

You have no idea.

Lightning speed.

You know, people who are in like crisis management, unbelievable working memories because they have to make decisions.

They haven't got a lot of memory on this note, but they have to make a decision fast.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

They can get through those post it notes like you've no idea.

Yeah, that's why we're great in a crisis.

Well, it's one of the reasons I think.

Yeah, totally.

That's powerful when you really realize, huh, okay, this is my brain.

So I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD women's wellbeing podcast.

I've called it the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom.

Because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.

So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder and I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.

Have a good rest of your week.