Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Diagnosing ADHD in Adults with Dr. Heather Brannon | Clutterbug Podcast # 174

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Do you get distracted easily? Are you forgetful? Do you struggle with daily "adulting"? It's possible you have adult ADHD!  I am joined by the wonderful Dr. Heather Brannon, co-founder of Greenville ADHD Specialists.  Dr. Brannon explains and helps us understand what ADHD really is, how to recognize it, and the best way to treat it!    Check out the Greenville ADHD Specialist website here: https://greenvilleadhd.com/ Watch Dr. Brannon's Ted Talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/heather_brannon_recognizing_adhd_in_adults?language=en     You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, clutterbugs. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I'm excited for today because we're actually going to be talking about ADHD, specifically adult ADHD. And we have an incredible guest today. We have Dr. Heather Brennan with us from Greenville ADHD specialists. And she has an incredible TED talk all about ADHD and adult ADHD. I'm going to put that link down below. But welcome, Heather. Welcome. Well, thanks. Thanks. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. How did you get into ADHD? I know that you're a family physician, and now you pretty much specialize in helping people with ADHD. How did this happen? Well, yeah, so I'm a family practitioner, and I've been practicing for almost 30 years. It's kind of weird to say that. But I tell people, I just, I got tired of getting it wrong. I was doing primary care and I would see people and they would come in and they would say, I'm feeling overwhelmed, I can't sleep, just various things, and I would hear anxiety.

And so I would treat them for their anxiety. And I had people come back and say, nope, didn't do a thing, not a thing. So then I've got to ask more questions. I've got to find out, well, why didn't this work? And so in the course of asking questions, and I think this only happened one or two times, it was probably just once, you know, asking questions. And then somebody's telling me things and I say, I think that sounds like ADHD. Well, I wonder if we should treat that. And then this person comes back and says, oh my gosh, life changing, anxiety's gone.

I am amazed at what's going on. I mean, how many times do you have to hear that before you start to realize there may be something to this? So I actually came up with my I feel crappy questionnaires looking for sleep disorders and bipolar disorder, and I put an ADHD screen in there and anxiety and depression. And when I would give them out to people who felt crappy, then, you know, they would, they would be positive for ADHD. And so I just got more and more experience doing it. And, you know, treating it is just life-changing. And that's why I went into medicine was to help people.

And this is, it's a big help. It is a big help. So I, looking back, why wasn't it obvious from day one? that I have extreme ADHD, but I didn't know. And I was always diagnosed with anxiety. And I had multiple family doctors over the years, put me on different anxiety medications. And I'm going to, like some of them numbed me. Some of them did calm me down a little bit. But I always had the same, it's hard to explain. You can't explain it to somebody if they don't have it, like a neurotypical brain. It's almost like there was always like three movies on in my head at the same time.

And I finally said to my doctor, I have to write a book. This was when I just had turned 40. And I said, I cannot sit at a computer and type. I don't know why because it's boring. I don't want to do it because I want to do the fun stuff. I don't want to. I said, please help me. And he said, maybe you have ADHD.

I'll tell you what. I'll give you riddalen. if it works, you have it, if it doesn't, you don't. Now, I don't know if this, Heather, is this a good diagnosing tool? I don't know, but. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Yeah, it probably wasn't.

But I'm thrilled that somebody was actually, you know, willing to do that because so many, so many people aren't. And I'll take it to tell you what happened. And this is what really surprised me because at first I was very scared and I read all about the medication. It's a stimulant. It said like meth on the bottle, which I'm like, This is not good. I was so scared to take it. I took a dose.

It was only 15 milligrams, so a very low dose. I felt calm. Right. How is taking a stimulant making me feel calm? I still don't really get it. Can you explain this to me? Yes. Yes, I can.

So one of the, you know, what we, what most people know about ADHD is not just the tip of the iceberg. It's the tippy, tippy, tipy, tipy, tipy. tip of the iceberg, ADHD is complicated. There is a lot going on this underneath the water. A big part of, and this is completely oversimplified, but a big part of what's going on is a deficiency in neurotransmitters in dopamine and noraphenephrin. There's the big ones. So dopamine, you need dopamine to be interested in things. So if you're, so if you're doing something that's interesting before you get treated, you probably can't you away from it, but if you're not interested in the underwear on the floor, then you're going to

walk past it 100 times. So maybe somebody's coming over. You're going to be embarrassed about your underwear. So now you're interested and you pick it up. So the medicines, the stimulants help out with dopamine. They help out a little bit with norapinephrine. So now you're interested. And the other part of that is, you know, when you have all these thoughts running around in your head, now when your dopamine level is normal, you can go down to one thought at a time. And that's calming. So the fact that we call these stimulants really is it just creates, it contributes to all of the myths and the misunderstandings out there about ADHD. We really should call it dopamine replacement therapy, but nobody asks me about that. So we don't call that. So that sounds much nicer. Okay. So for my

listeners listening, they could be in the same position that I am that they literally just didn't know. They thought they were anxious. They thought they were stressed. They just maybe are a scatterbrained person. I used to always call myself, oh, I'm just flighty. And I have a bad memory. What are really are those that, like how do you recognize this now as an expert in an adult? Because I feel like it looks very different than it does in a child that's just bouncing off the walls. Right, right. so that most adults still have that hyperactivity component. And so that's why we call it ADHD, and we don't divide it into ADD and ADHD anymore.

It's just attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Like I say, most adults still have that hyperactivity, but it becomes internalized. So it becomes an internal restlessness and anxiety. So at some point in your life, you learned you couldn't jump around on the pews in church, even though you wanted to jump around on the pews in church. You still may want to jump around on the pews in church, but you know you can't do it. So that kind of contributes to that just internal restlessness. Can't sit still. Can't relax.

Always have to be doing something. Can't just sit down and chill out. Can't let something go if it's in your mind. And there's just there's just so much. There's so much underneath what those, yeah, there's typical, what people typically think of as ADHD. And so, okay, we're saying all these things. I'm like, yes, that's me in my whole life. And even as an adult, I was still a spas. So people would say, oh, my gosh, you're so obnoxious or you never stop talking or you talk a mile a minute. or you're just like, that was just always me.

And it still is to some degree, even with medication. It's not like a switch and I'm fixed. So I want to tell you a little story. I have a new family doctor. My old family doctor retired. So I went in for the initial consultation. And it was a very hectic day for me. And so I'm this, this is this is this.

And I need this. And I need this. And he literally looked at me and said, You have ADHD, right? And I was like, yeah, I forgot. I definitely have ADHD too. ADHD too. And then he said, are you able to manage your finances?

Do you have someone who can help you with these day-to-day things? And I was shown, first of all, I was insulted. But second of all, I was like, wow, I do have to have someone help me with those things. I need my husband to almost regulate those things because to me, that's boring. I would never pay a bill. And even on medication, I don't know if it's because I'm older and I'm just, this is me now. I suck at adulting. Listen, Heather, is this normal, even with medication?

It is. It's not, medication is not a panacea. And this is not, I probably spend, I mean, I spend a decent amount of time getting somebody's medication right. But I spend a whole lot more time after that. working on having realistic expectations of yourself, setting personal boundaries, getting enough sleep and realizing that you have to take care of yourself and not feeling, you know, realizing that you can say no about things. I have a whole list of speeches that I give to people about different things. but it's all about, it's about how do you manage things afterwards. And sometimes it's setting up systems and coming up with a system that works for you to help with this one thing,

but then you have to have different systems for different things. And so, you know, there's a fine line between having realistic expectations and having help. And I think it is okay to have. have help and just to realize and say like, oh, I'm not stupid. I'm not lazy. I literally have, like, really a disorder and I need to kind of hack it. I need to fill in the gaps where my brain is. But this also isn't like a horrible diagnosis. I don't, maybe you, I think that ADHD is kind of a superpower. I really believe that, Dr. Heather, listen, I look at my life and I think, wow, now that I know

about ADHD, I'm like, this is probably why I was always so creative, why I can multitask and juggle a thousand things, why I can start a new project and be like, oh, that's good enough, and post it and move to something else, and move to something else, and move to something else. I'm always trying new things. 99% fail, but that 1% has really grown a business and taken me to this incredible place that I really think I wouldn't have had if I didn't have ADHD. So it's like a blessing and a curse. Do you hear this from other patients?

I tend to hear more about the curses, but I do know that, yes, there are blessings. And so, you know, most of the time, whether you have ADHD or not, By the time you're an adult, you really need to be focusing on your strengths. Do the things that you're good at. Quit trying to rehabilitate those things that you're not good at. I'm terrible with doing spreadsheets at work. So I'm going to really, I'm going to take a class and I'm going to take a job that's all spreadsheets. So I make myself do that.

That's just a recipe for disaster. So instead of doing that, why not focus on what you're good at? And so, and there are lots of things that people with ADHD are very good at. It's, you know, we all have, we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses. We all have little annoying quirks. And we all have, you know, we all have those things, whether we have ADHD or not. Yeah. Okay.

So I see on your website, which is awesome, by the way, that you take a really holistic approach to ADHD. So it's not just the medication. it's a whole lot of things. Do you recommend maybe therapy? What does this look for your patients when you were talking about a holistic approach? It's really, there are so many different avenues, different resources that people have. I think of, you know, we try to take care of the biggest thing. And for a lot of people, that's their dopamine levels. That's, you know, once we get medication right, then we figure out what's the next biggest thing. What's the next thing that we need to work on? What's the next thing that we need to work on? You can just bombard somebody with a whole

bunch of stuff all at once, and that's going to be just as successful as you think it's going to be, right? But if we go step by step, okay, what do we need to work on next? What do we need to work on next? Then we're able to hone in on those things. So I'm a huge fan of therapy. I wish, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, well, I tell my patients. I think everybody needs a therapist. So if you tell me that you don't, I won't believe you. So, and I wish so many more of my patients would actually, would actually get into therapy. I'm a huge fan of coaches, you know, a specific ADHD coach, someone who understands the ADHD brain, who is in the weeds with somebody and helping them figure out their systems and come up with those. But then, you know, the other part of that is,

well, so I used to, well, I still say it, people with ADHD have weird stuff. And so we've had to figure out some weird stuff. And so, you know, for a time there, we were doing lots of neurotransmitter and cortisol testing. We do genetic testing, trying to figure things out. Why isn't this working? What do we need to be doing? Why, you know, how can we do this better? And when we started doing the neurotransmitter and cortisol testing, I found out how huge, how huge ideal cortisol is.

And then also there are supplements out there that can really help and they help a lot faster than medicines do. So part of, you know, we're doing medicine. But then, you know, there are also other supplements that can help. We need to be looking at genetics. Are there some places where we know that you're at risk, and so we need to be doing something about that, or at least be aware of that. And so it's really looking into that.

If somebody has non-complicated ADHD, they're doing fine, then they're doing fine. We don't have to, like, dig into their brains, open up their brain and really, you know, root around in there. But if things aren't optimized, then we try to help them figure out how to do that. I love that. And I notice, so you say cortisol, which is like the stress hormone, I notice when I'm stressed, my symptoms are exaggerated whether I'm taking my medication or not. So the more things I have in my plate, deadlines, stress, I'm forgetting everything. And so right now, I actually, my new doctor said, I would like you to have a therapist who's an ADHD specialist. And I said, I'm managing my ADHD fine. I don't need that. And he said, you know what, medication made you feel a lot better. This will make you feel better too. So sometimes we may have the perception that things are all going great. We're not having any huge,

obvious, you know, things happening in our life that we feel like we're failing, but something isn't quite right. And I think we know that. And medication can help and therapy can help. But my point is, see, I'm getting distracted. I had this appointment with this therapist four times I forgot about it. She keeps rescheduling and I keep missing it. I'm like, oh, this is so normal for me. And I said, the last time I said, I'm so sorry. I missed her appointment. Again, I don't know what's wrong with me. She said, I'm an ADHD specialist. Most people miss their appointments. That's the whole point. And I was like, oh, okay. Okay, I'm getting off topic. But I would love to talk about ADHD and kids for just a second because I'm,

going to be honest before I was diagnosed and tried medication for myself, I kind of bought into the stigma of kids nowadays. There's all this 8-8-D diagnosis. They don't really have it. It's bad parenting. It's, you know, they have too much screen time. All they need to do is have some discipline and they wouldn't act so spazzy. Looking at my own life, I dropped out of school. I was constantly kicked out of school. I was fired from every job I've ever had. I just said I was a bad kid. So, right.

But then when I took the medication for the first time, like literally took it, it was like, wow, I feel so much calmer. Right. And now I have a completely different outlook on Ritalin or whatever type of medication for children. because it isn't a fix for they have too much screen time. It isn't this. It's something in the brain. Please, if someone's listening and they have a child who maybe is exhibiting some of these ADHD behaviors, but they're afraid that it's their fault or it's parenting and they're,

what can you tell them? How can we reassure that this isn't an environmental thing, that this is actually like a nature thing? Or maybe it isn't. I just am assuming. No, no, it definitely is. So when you think about it, when I talked about the tippy tip of the iceberg, it's ADHD is very inherited. So if mom has ADHD, the likelihood that kids are going to have ADHD is probably is around 50%. If both parents have ADHD, the likelihood kids are is around 85%. So when people talk about bad parenting screen time, they're talking, they're seeing the ADHD parent with the ADHD child and that ADHD parent has an ADHD parent or two and, and, you know, so on and so on and so on.

So part of this is it's a just many lifetimes of poor coping skills that get handed down. but and that's what people see what they don't see is the abnormalities in the brain and they don't because you can't we don't we don't have a test that tests for dopamine we don't have a we don't have a way to actually show here this is this is a true abnormality right so so they don't see they don't see all the behind the scenes kind of thing so the interesting thing is um there's a study that came out that showed, and it's an fMRI study, showed that when somebody takes a stimulant, it actually fixes part of their brain. It's actually fixing an abnormality. Now, for adults, our brains, well, I mean, we have neuroplasticity, but our brains are more set than kids are. So then another

study showed that kids who take medicine for their ADHD regularly until they're 10 years old are less likely to need medicine when they're adults. So this is not, this is a big, it's a big deal. And medicine is not, it's not the terrible, terrible thing that people think of. I don't know a parent who doesn't, who doesn't agonize about putting their child on medicine. You know, it's just, that's what parents do. But, I mean, so you spent, you spent all that time thinking you were a bad kid. and you weren't.

And, you know, it just breaks my heart when I see, when I, I don't really see kids that much anymore, but when I would see them, you know, and before we treat them and they're like this, and, you know, mom or dad is talking about all the things that are going wrong. And then when you see them when they can see things more clearly, you know, after we start treating them, they come in and they're sitting up taller, their eyes are wide open, they're smiling, they don't, they don't think they're a bad kid because they're usually not. They're usually not. And I'm even thinking of my own daughter who I never thought.

This is the moment where I'm like, does she have ADHD? But she's not hyperactive, but she struggles to do things. Like she struggles in school. And isn't that she's not intelligent. She just doesn't hand in her work. She just doesn't do her work. Right. It could be because it's boring.

man, because school is boring. And I don't know why I never thought of this. And she has so much anxiety. She was diagnosed with OCD. But now I'm like, wait a minute. Is this just ADD? Maybe she doesn't have the age. Or like you said, she's internalizing that hyperactivity because she wasn't even hyper as a little girl. And it has kind of come out as this as anxiety because she's the hyperactivity. So we tell people all the time. So OCD is the friend of ADHD. It's a coping mechanism. It's, you know, it's how you make sure that you turn your stuff in on time or how you make sure that you do the thing that you were supposed to do. You don't know if you're going to do it. I don't know if I can if I can do it. So then you have to get, you get anxious about it. And so then I have to have everything exactly this way because if it's out of it, then I can't think. And, you know, it's just, it's, it's part of what keeps, it kind of keeps people in line. So, you know, it's the intelligent and attentive ones who fall through the cracks. I'd like to take a second to thank today's podcast sponsor, Cozy Earth. I'm pretty much in love with my Cozy Earth

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clutterbug. Okay. So this is so, so, so good because I think people listening, we we, we, we may see some of ourselves or some of our children in this, but there's all this narrative being told in the media that ADHD isn't really real and that doctors are over, just are over-diagnosing it and over-medicating the children. And there's all these things that are making people kind of like, well, yeah, I guess everyone has ADHD. So then that's literally what I thought about myself. I thought, I don't have this. This isn't really a real thing. I was so wrong. So have you heard this as well?

I'm sure you've heard this. Right. Why is this a narrative? I don't. I don't understand. I don't. I had a patient recently, a new patient who saw her primary care provider and asked about, you know, her struggles. And he said, I don't believe in ADHD.

You don't believe in it. So what he's really saying is, I can't go there. That's way too complicated. Because there is no doubt about whether it's a real thing or not. There are just reams and reams of studies about this. So is it real? Yes, it's real. Are we medicating our kids too much? Are, you know, is it overdiagnosed?

No, it's underdiagnosed. So people think they see bad parenting and they think, well, you know, Parents just need to, they just want to numb their kids so they'll quit, so they'll be robots, you know, and so that they'll mind. No, they want their kids to be calm so that they can listen, so that they can do what they need to do and not fight them every single step of the way. So it's not underdiagnosed. It's, there is, there's just a huge body of evidence that,

supports the fact that it's a real thing and that medication does help and that there are other things that help. You know, I tell my patients, one thing you can say to people is my doctor says uninformed people are allowed to have their own opinions too. I can't help that you're uninformed, but, you know, I don't need your judgment, you know. And that's for pharmacist. That's what they say to the pharmacy techs, you know? It's just sad. I had a stigma in my mind, and I had taken anxiety medication in the past

and felt numb, felt like a zombie, felt slow and sluggish. Right. And so there was, I had a fear, because you hear these things, ADHD medication is going to turn you into a zombie. It's going to change your personality. I couldn't really,

I'm no different. And sometimes now when I take it, I forget sometimes to take it. There isn't really a difference that's noticeable to me. It's noticeable to other people because they'll say, oh, you're not so scatterbrain today. But also, it's just my brain doesn't hurt. I don't know how else to describe it. Like it just, it's a very nuanced difference when you take ADHD medication. It isn't a drastic, It's just like I can hear one thing at a time. I am not constantly, it's not as exhausting just to think. I don't know.

It's such a hard thing and it's very hard to explain. But it doesn't change a personality. It doesn't make me into a zombie. I'm still kind of a spas muffin. My brain just isn't as spazzy. I can actually interpret one stream. at a time instead of I'm looking over here and I'm listening to have to this conversation and I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner. And I'm like also listening

to the person talk to me. That is not happening anymore when I take the medication. So, okay, again, somebody listening, what would you say or like how would you suggest that they, what could they recognize in themselves, I guess, is the point? What is maybe some things that you would recognize or that they could recognize in themselves to say, maybe I do have ADHD or maybe my children do have ADHD. What are like the big red flags, I guess? Well, you know, so we talk about the three big components of ADHD are being hyperactive and then inattentive and impulsive.

To me, those are just words. They don't mean, you don't mean much of anything. it's how how do those things how are you impaired and so what's the conversation that you have going on inside your head can you what things are boring and what things do you not do because because they're so boring you know it's the the TEDx talk that I did was it's a much longer version of like a two and a half minute talk that I give to my patients about what you what you hear on the inside why am I doing this over and over again why can't I be on time why why did I set myself up for this but then hearing it on the outside you know you know what people say to them you forgot how could

you forget I told you 10 times do we need to get your ears checked you know and so they hear it on the inside of their head, on the outside of their head, they start feeling anxious. They don't have confidence. But the pervasive, it's too boring to check my mail. I don't, I have, the only time I check my mail is when the mailbox door, it won't shut all the way. And so then I pull all that mail out. But then I'm not interested in the mail, so just, you know, set it on the, on the kitchen.

table. But then I'm still not interested in the mail. And so it piles up and I just put it in a box and I stick it in the closet. I keep walking past this underwear and I don't even see it. I don't even recognize it. And I don't care that there's underwear there. I'm not interested in the underwear. I'm just, I'm just not, I'm not going to do it. There's there's the what are you anxious about? You know, what are you worried that people are going to find out about? What are you hiding? And because these are, I mean, this is that people lead this hidden life of shame.

They're just, they're so ashamed of not being able to conform to society's standards. And it's not just that, it's adulting. It's, I can't pay my bills on time. Dr. Heather, this is it. It's like we're fake adults. Right. And that's what, and that's what, that's what people feel like. That's where imposter syndrome comes from. But then, so executive functions, I, you know, I can't, I can't, I have no idea how much time has passed. I can't prioritize things. I have no idea what. I have so much I have to do. I have no idea what I need to do, what I need to do first. My emotions are all over the place. They're up. They're up.

down. Somebody, I walk past somebody who's just stubbed their toe and, and I, for the rest of the day, I think I did something wrong. What did I do? You know, they had a look on their face, and I think it's all my fault, you know? So I can't keep a thought in my head long enough to finish a sentence. I keep interrupting people, because if I don't, I'm going to forget what I was going to say. I forget what it was that I was doing what I want to. to do when I went to this room. What was it that I wanted to? I can't keep those thoughts in my head because there are just so many thoughts running around in there. Yeah, I can relate to all of that. I spent money impulsively. I did everything impulsively. And I was always looking for a fix,

if this makes sense. So I would always have to be stimulating myself in some way at doing something this or doing this or doing this or doing something new. If I, I couldn't just sit in a doctor's waiting room without tapping my toe or reading on my phone. Even watching a movie, I would have to be scrolling something or reading a magazine at the same time. There was always I had to fill. And I even got bored having conversations with people. Oh, yeah. Like, how awful is that?

I'd be like, oh, this person's boring. I can't talk to them. Snoosville. Like a toddler. You're out. Okay. When I get done here, I'm going to go to the grocery store. I need to get baloney.

Oh, I forgot about. Oh my gosh, I didn't pay that bill. Shoot, am I going to be able to use my credit card? All the while, a very important person to you is talking and they're saying important things, but you're not saying. You just said baloney and my brain started singing the Oscar Meyer Weiner's song for some reason. Right. Like, what? Okay.

So it doesn't hurt to go and talk to your doctor about this. And even though my doctor said, try the medication. you feel better, you probably have it. I honestly think that was kind. I'm grateful to him. He was like 90-year-old doctor that should have retired, but I'm still really grateful because if I hadn't tried it, I never would have known.

Right, exactly. Exactly. And I never would have known how not only, yes, the medication makes me feel a lot better, but getting that diagnosis, now that I'm researching it and I'm learning that it is just low levels of dopamine, I mean, that I'm not, I'm not failing morally. It isn't because I don't have enough self-discipline. It isn't that I'm not trying hard enough. It's that I really have something that isn't making it

incapable for me to do these things. No matter how hard I try, I can't change that about myself. Right. Wow, did that make me feel better. Right. Right. Yeah. It was like, oh. We wouldn't shame someone for having cancer. We wouldn't shame someone for having diabetes. Why are we shaming people for having ADHD or even ourselves? And so I hope people listening are going to just have more of an open mind. Right.

Yes. And go. It would help. I would say, so for people who are, if you're wanting to talk to a provider about, you know, if you're thinking this is what I have, if you want to talk to a provider, honestly, I think, you know, this is when I say it's complicated, it's, it's complicated. And if, you know, you may get lucky and find the exact medicine at the, you know, at the right time, at the right dose, and then that works.

But if it doesn't, it's better to have somebody who knows how, who's had experience treating this. Unfortunately, and I was the same way, primary care providers, we don't, I never got any kind of training. I didn't know anything. Psychiatrists, they don't get training about ADHD. I think the best thing to do in what I tell my patients if they move away is do a search for ADHD treatment centers in your area. And look for people, you know, a clinic that talks about using evidence-based, treatment practices, things like that. And because there are a lot of them out there.

And even for adults, even if they just treat kids, call them up and ask them where they send the parents. Because the parents have to get treated too. And so they're going to know it's much better. It's much better to see somebody who has experience, who has experience. So you're not just going to get stuck on another SSRI. You know, the studies show that before somebody gets diagnosed, before an adult gets diagnosed, they're going to see at least 2.2 providers, and they're going to be on 6.6 different anxiety medicines before they get diagnosed.

And that's a lot of... Now, talk about drugs. I mean, drugs that aren't really helping, you know, it's just... And you need somebody who understands you. You don't need somebody who's going to be who you think is criticized. you because that's just not, it's not helpful. Judgment is not helpful at all. And, okay, so if you don't have ADHD, you're just really stressed out because I have

working with people, maybe they do have ADHD, but anytime you're living in a very cluttered environment or you just have a lot of like stimulation, it kind of feels like all these symptoms you're talking about these red flags. They're like, yeah, I have that. If someone without ADHD was to take ADHD medication, would they feel the exact same way or would they feel different? They would feel different. It's, so if they didn't feel like they took too much, like this, I don't feel right, you know, if it, if it didn't make them jittery, then what they think it's helping out with, it's actually not helping out with. So it just doesn't, it doesn't do anything.

There's a study, they did a study in college kids, and they gave college kids with ADHD medicine and without ADHD medicine. Or maybe they didn't give it to them, but they, you know, they asked if they had taken it. And so they found that the people, the college kids with ADHD who took medicine did better on testing. The ones without ADHD who took medicine thought they did better, but they didn't. So, you know, that's when people start having a lot of side effects. And the side effects may be jitteriness, but it might also be just a lot of fatigue.

And that's where that zombie comes from. So it's just, yeah. Okay. So we're just trying to get rid of the stigma here. This is what this podcast is all about. And even so even like myself looking back now, it's very obvious. I've ADHD, but if you've lived with this your whole life, it's really hard to recognize the difference between this is just how I am or this is how I was raised or this is just because

I haven't tried hard enough and, oh, I actually have ADHD. And as a person who has ADHD my whole life, this is normal for me. It's also hard to recognize it in my children because to me this is just normal. It's normal. That's the way things are, right. Right? It's normal to hate something. school and kind of not want to do things and hand in homework and not be able to sit still.

It's normal to want to be stimulated all the time. But wow, stepping back and saying maybe this is only normal because I have ADHD is really eye-opening. So I hope listening to this, you are feeling maybe like you can recognize this in yourself or your children or someone that you love. and if nothing else that we stop the stigma that this is a made up thing and people just don't have enough self-discipline. Right. Right.

Okay, Heather, thank you so much. Please let my listeners know if they could find out more about you where they should look you up and follow you and how they can get in touch. So the best thing is to just take a look at our website is Greenville. Sorry, greenville-a-dhd.com. Yeah, and definitely check out the TED Talk. I'm going to put a link to that in the description of this podcast. And just thank you so much for being on here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I feel like apologizing because I'm a little spazian all over the place. But that's the point, isn't it? That's the whole point. But I will say, you were on track. You kept me on track. You asked good questions. And, you know, it's, I would say, I think it was a great conversation. Yeah, it wasn't a flighty ADHD conversation.

So. Thank you. I appreciate that. I've been working on trying to focus my brain for a long time. And the medicine definitely helps. Okay, well, thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. And we'll see you guys next time.