Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 138: Dr. Stephanie Sarkis, Meditating While Having ADHD

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Stephanie Sarkis, an author and expert in ADHD, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorder and chronic pain, brings a unique perspective to her work because she herself struggles with ADHD and anxiety. Working mostly with adults, from college-age on up, Sarkis said she began recommending mindfulness meditation to her clients and then began a practice herself when she read about the possible benefits and saw positive changes in those she treated. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I'm Dan Harris. It's become a sort of modern refrain. You hear this from people all the time. I have ADD.

I don't think they mean, in many cases, I don't think they mean that they actually have a diagnosis, but we often just feel completely attentively challenged, pulled in a million directions because of technology, the pace of modern life, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, some of us do actually have ADHD or ADD diagnosed or undiagnosed, including several people in my life. So what do you do if you have this condition? Well, we've got an incredible expert who has suffered with it herself and treats people who are dealing with it and can talk about attentional issues as well for the rest of

us. Stephanie Sarkis is her name and you're going to hear a lot from her coming up. First though, one item of business and then your voice mail. So the business, I have spent much of the last few hours toggling back and forth between observing Kanye West's new album and watching the amazing new videos for the new course on the 10% happier app. We've got this new course up. It's, uh, I have, in my opinion, one of, if not the best courses, uh, we've ever done, uh, it takes all of these never before seen behind the scenes moments from the meditation tour that Jeff Warren and I did not long ago where we cross the country

in a big silly bus and met all sorts of wannabe meditators and talked to them about their challenges. And it so it takes all of this great behind the scenes footage that we've never released and also pairs it with incredibly useful teaching on all sorts of issues from how to establish healthy habits, which is a huge problem for people who are dealing with who want to set up a meditation habit for finding time in your life to meditate, if you're a new parent, creativity, dealing with the stress of being overly scheduled, busyness. And also, there are some really intimate and somewhat embarrassing moments where I talk about some my own inner demons. So, I'm just really proud of the team who put this together. I love this course. It's really great and

You can find it on the 10% happier app if you're a subscriber and if you're not well Think about it. All right, that's the business on now to voice melons and before we do the voice melons Here's my usual caveat which is that I am not a meditation teacher nor a nor am I a mental health professional. Nor have I heard these voicemails in advance. So I just do my best to answer as a journalist and fellow rank and file meditator. So here we go. Here's voicemail number one. Hi, Dan. This is is Ellen calling from Los Angeles. Thanks so much for the work that you do. I recently started meditating and I've found your podcast and all of your conversations

with guests so enlightening. My question is, in your experience with battling depression or anxiety, if you have found the process of cognitive behavioral therapy helpful, how does it balance going through your day and identifying when to just note and be mindful of the thoughts that are going through your head versus using CBT and really taking the time to stop and analyze those thoughts and challenge the negative assumptions behind them? Thanks so much, bye. So cognitive behavioral therapy for those who, for the uninitiated, is a type of, I think

I'm saying this correctly, it's a type of psychotherapy, a type of mental health treatment. I have not really done it, so I'm not really well equipped to talk about it in detail, but I think I can generally speaking answer your question, which is if I think I'm going to try to restate it and I hope that I'm doing so correctly. What is, you know, in a meditation practice, you are noting your thoughts non-judgmentally and letting them go. So you might note, you might have a flurry of self-judgment. I have a lot of that in my practice. You know, you suck at this, how can we can't stay with the breath?

Why is this sleepy blah, blah, blah? And so you might note it as judgment and then let it go. That's generally how meditation practice is taught. In CBT and in traditional therapy, you're encouraged to really analyze the thoughts, which is a, you know, I think, a sort of very much related to mindfulness and it can be powered by mindfulness, but it also employs a part of the brain that in meditation, we're not emphasizing so much which is analysis. In meditation, we're emphasizing,

at least as in my experience, we're emphasizing, just sort of the raw data of your senses as opposed to getting stuck in, and even that term I just had getting stuck in your thinking processes. So, I actually think the answer for me walking around in my daily life when I'm off the cushion, so to speak, is not that complicated, which is, you know, in actual meditation, I'm probably not going to do a lot of analyzing of the type of thinking I'm doing.

Maybe I will, maybe if something, seemingly useful insight has arisen about the quality and frequency of my thought patterns, maybe I will analyze it. But generally speaking, my training is just note that I'm thinking, maybe note the kind of thinking, judging, anger, whatever, and then let it go and go back to my breath or whatever it is, is my primary object of meditation. But off the cushion, I think actually the analysis is very helpful and this is where meditation

can be, you know, can lead you to be a better human being, to be much nicer to yourself and to others, which is that you can notice if you're just walking around that you have this habitual pattern, say, of judging people based on how they look. That's a big one. Judging people on their skin color, on your guesses about their socioeconomic status on their gender. That's just an interesting thing to notice. And I think cognitive analysis

about why you're thinking these ways can sort of decouple you from your unconscious biases and unconscious in the kind of stories you're habitually telling yourself. So I think that's a long perhaps on skillful way of saying to me I don't see a conflict and it can be a little I can imagine where we'll get confusing in terms of how to deal with your thinking processes during meditation but when you're not meditating and you're just trying to be as mindful as possible in the rest of your life, I actually think that's a great time to bring to bear some of the skills that we learn in either traditional therapy or

cognitive behavioral therapy. So there may be mental health experts out there who are screaming at there at me right now because I've messed up that answer, but I I think I think I've given you the right answer, but somebody else should leave me a voicemail and tell me if I've messed up that answer, but I think I've given you the right answer. But somebody else should leave me a voicemail and tell me if I've screwed up. Okay, voicemail number two. Hey, Dan. Big fan. You and Sam Harris, your brother from another mother, were the primary influences for me to start in meditation practice a couple years back and now two and a half years later,

I have a regular daily practice. So thanks for that. Two somewhat related questions. First, when you speak about mindfulness meditation you tend to describe it as focusing on the breath and then when you get distracted just noticing and coming back to the breath. It seems to me based on my reading of Buddhism and mindfulness meditation. That's almost more of a concentration practice that you're describing than a mindfulness practice.

I'm wondering if you could speak a little about the kind of next step in mindfulness practice, maybe kind of expanding your awareness to notice whatever you're experiencing and not just the breath and coming back to it. Second question, I'm curious in your study of Buddhism, if you've come across a practice called Chitano Pasana. I know you advocate for mindfulness meditation, which is a direct derivative of the Pasana practice, but I've come across, and some teachers

have recommended me a Chitano Pasuna practice, which I think is something along the lines of awareness of awareness itself, which is extremely confusing. So I just curious if you know about that and if you can speak to that and the differences between that and the Pasuna. Thanks again. Okay, well there's a lot there. So, on the first question, yes, when I talk about the meditation for beginners, I really try to whittle it down to its basics, which is sit with your eyes closed.

If you don't want to have your eyes closed, you can keep them open a little bit if you want. And try to bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. And then when you get distracted, start again. And again and again and again because you will get distracted a million times. And that's not a problem or a failure. That is just the nature of the mind. And the whole game of meditation is to notice when you come distracted and start again. And why is that a victory rather than a failure? It's a victory because when you see how crazy you are, you are less likely to be owned by it. So you are correct when you say that when I describe the basic instructions for meditation, it can come off as just a concentration practice by which you're training mostly

your ability to stay on task, which is to stay with your breath. The repeated exercise of trying to focus on one thing at a time, getting lost, starting again, getting lost, starting again, boost your ability to concentrate. But there is, and again, I know I do this a lot of, sort of, apologizing for my lack of experience, and I want to do it again, because I can only speak from, I am not, you know, as I've said a million times, a meditation teacher, I can only sort of regurgitate

to the best of my memory what I've been taught. But there is a lot of mindfulness in that, A, so it's in the moment that you see you've become distracted. You see what's distracted you and you let it go. That is, and by let it go, I mean, you just, you don't get sucked up into it or you actually may notice you've already been sucked up into it or you actually may notice you've already been sucked up into whatever story you're telling yourself in that moment or whatever pain in your body you're feeling and then the stories you're telling about the pain in the body. But seeing all of that,

seeing how the mind works in those moments that you are sucked up into a story and it feels a certain way, just seeing that can create the other big skill of meditation. So there's concentration and then there's mindfulness. And mindfulness is the skill of knowing what's happening in your mind right now without getting carried away by it. And so even in those basic, basic instructions, there is this other skill of mindfulness. But then, of course, you know, very quickly, even in an early meditation practice, you move beyond the basic instructions

as I often recount them. And bear in mind, the reason why I recount them the way I do is just because I'm often talking very, I'm trying to rapidly describe the practice to large groups of uninitiated people. So that's why I talk about the way I do. But the other move that a lot of meditation teachers will tell you to do in an early practice is if you're getting distracted when you're getting distracted by something persistent like a powerful emotion or a feeling in your body of restlessness or discomfort, then the move is to turn into that. To make that the object, that's the technical term, the other way to say it is the focus of your meditation, meditate on that.

So say it's a pain in your knee. You might just turn instead of focusing on your breath, which may be difficult if you've got a really strong pain in your knee, bring your full attention to the feeling of that pain in your knee. And there's a lot to be learned there that can build your mindfulness muscles. You will see that the pain is constantly shifting and moving. That the lesson of that is that everything is impermanent. Nothing is solid and everlasting.

You will also see that the mind tells all sorts of stories about the pain in your knee. My God, this is just going to get worse. And I'm never going to be able to do this. And I'm actually never going to be able to meditate. Therefore, I'm never going to get the mental skills that I need in order to succeed. And then I'm going to be able to meditate. Therefore, I'm never going to get the mental skills that I need in order to succeed. And then I'm going to live under a bridge.

So that's a mental process known as propuncia, which is the sort of movie making we do that usually ends up in a horrific ending. All of this is, again, just falls under the category of mindfulness, which is, again, just the skill of knowing what's happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. Being able to see your various mental processes without being owned by them, without necessarily taking the bait and acting on them,

just because you experience anger doesn't mean you need to act on it. So yeah, I think it's a great question, and I hope I've made clear why I generally described the beginning instructions the way I do, but I think A, there's a lot of mindfulness baked right into them, properly understood, and B, there are simple moves one can make that are not dramatic variations of those basic instructions that will really take it from a pure concentration practice to a pure mindfulness practice. But I think also one thing last thing to say is that it's important, it's days of meditating to really build your

some mental stability so that you get a sense of what's going on in your head. With some clarity, and then that allows you to break it down and see how it's changing and see how it produces this sort of proliferating thought process and all of the things that we do under mindfulness which you know is a kind of self-awareness that really can change the way you relate to the world. The second question I can give a short answer to because I've never heard of that term. I did briefly while you were, what was the term again? It was shittanu pasana, which definitely sounds like a Buddhist term. I had never heard it before. I quickly, like, did a rapid Google while

you were talking, and I don't, it's translated as contemplation on the mind. So I can say a little bit about contemplation of the mind. I don't know, I don't know how well I'm gonna state this because I've never really talked about it before. But much of what we do in meditation is, we're paying attention to objects, what we call objects in meditation. So usually one very common object is the breath, but also we can pay attention to objects, what we call objects in meditation. So usually one very common object is the breath. But also we can pay attention to objects

like emotions and physical sensations. So that's generally the pose we're in in meditation. We're looking at something. And in that, there's a kind of duality. It's us looking at some thing. The very interesting move to make a meditation is to turn the lens around and look at what is the mind that is knowing these things. So what exercise that my teacher Joseph Goldstein often recommends, which I've found to be incredibly

useful and interesting, is close your eyes and listen to all the sounds that are available to you, that are audible to you right now. And then ask yourself, what is hearing? Where is the quote unquote, me who's hearing everything? And you won't find anything because it's nothing to find. And that not finding is a really interesting and healthy process. So the argument goes, and I've found it to be very much so much. You are bumping up against a fundamental mystery of the universe, which is

the mystery of consciousness. We know that the lights are on for us. We know that that we're aware of whatever we're aware of right now that hearing my voice or seeing whatever's in front of you if you have sight, feeling your body and whatever position it happens to be in right now. We know that we are receiving data from our various senses. What we don't know is and what scientists have never been able to figure out is who or what is knowing it. And that is so that for me, the contemplation of the mind is an incredibly interesting thing on many levels.

And one of the other things it doesn't, aside from being interesting intellectually, is that it can, over time, sort of break down this sense of solidity we have around ourselves. And this fiction, really, on one level, this fiction of the self, you know, on one level, of course, we have a self. We have to put our pants on in the morning and make dances, appointments, et cetera, et cetera. But on some deeper level, there isn't really a solid self in there. And seeing that fiction can sort of get you to declench a little bit because that fiction of that there is some you in there that you need to

defend and protect all the time can help you live with a little bit more ease? Man, good questions this weekend. I really wish. I really hope I didn't screw them up. If you want to call and ask me other questions that I struggle to answer, you should. The number is available in the show notes of this podcast, so you can just poke around a little bit in there and there's a phone number, call, leave me voicemails and leave me a message, ask me a question or tell me how badly I've screwed up the answers to the foregoing questions. All right, thank you very much for that guys,

really appreciate it. Let's get to this week's guest, Stephanie Sarcus. I really enjoyed this. We did it actually. This is one of the rare ones where we did it remotely. She is based in Florida and she called in. We don't usually do that, but I really wanted to have her on the show. And Stephanie is a specialist in the treatment of attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, ADHD or ADD, as it's sometimes called. She's written a bunch of books on it. She also treats children adolescents and grown-ups with the condition. She writes

for psychology today in the Huffington Post. She also works with patients with anxiety and autism. So she's got a lot to say and a lot to say about how meditation has helped her with attention issues and how it might help you, whether you have full-blown ADHD or just like the rest of us struggle to stay focused on any one thing at a time. So here she is, Stephanie Sarcus. So here's my traditional first question. How did you get into meditation? I was doing research on non-medication treatments for ADHD

and saw the data show to really help with ADHD. So then I started recommending it to my clients and then I started doing it because I have ADHD. And it's helped pretty much everybody that I've worked with. So pretty powerful stuff. And I usually do more mindfulness stuff because people with ADHD, you know, you can meditate while you're doing things

and it seems to me a little more ADHD friendly. Say more about that, because people listening may not know too much about different kinds of meditation. Okay, so mindfulness meditation, you're meditating while you're doing things. For instance, eating mindfulness practices, you just sit and focus on your food. Don't do anything else. You turn off the TV, you don't look at your phone, you read the paper, you just focus on

your food and you chew your food. It's usually about 20 bites per chew, but for people I work with ADHD, I do more like 10 or 15 chews. And people have found that they are eating less food and still feeling C-shaded or full. They're also gravitating towards healthier proteins and fresh fruits and fresh vegetables. Because when you're just focusing on your food,

sometimes people realize the food they're eating, they don't even really like. So they start changing up what they're eating and they start eating healthier. So it's pretty powerful. Huge problem for me. I I mean I've been meditating for a minute, you know for a while and I Mindlessly eat all the time, but anyway, we'll talk about that later Oh because I want to stay on you for a second But just in terms of mindfulness meditation, you can do it while you're doing things

You can do anything mindfully, but you can also do it in a seated formal eyes closed practice, which I imagine you were also doing. Exactly. Yes, very versatile like that. You can do it any type of format. Basically just focusing on the breath, inhale, and exhale. And then when you get lost, which you will a million times, start over. Right. Right.

You just let the thoughts pass and then you keep going. So how long ago did you start doing it? I would say probably about 10, 15 years ago. I started doing it, started looking at as a treatment for people with ADHD and also depression, anxiety. And the research for ADHD came out probably about the last five years or so. A lot of data accumulating about the effectiveness of it. So, and it's one of those things that's got a real high return investment. You take just five, 10 minutes out of your day

and you can get beneficial effects. And in fact, even changing your brain structure and your brain chemistry just by meditating. So tell me about the effect on you. And let me start with, let me start by bunch of pulling back for a second. Define ADHD. Sure, ADHD is an issue with inhibition of behavior and also

motivation. So in your frontal lobes, your brain, you have the executive functions and those are things like organizing, thinking ahead, planning, cognitive flexibility, in other words, changing up what you're doing, and also hyperfocus can be an issue with ADHD. So when you have ADHD, your executive functions are impaired. So you have with ADHD. So when you have ADHD, your executive functions are impaired. So you have difficulty with staying organized, you have difficulty with impulsive decision-making, maybe spending too much money.

You have issues with being so focused that you, somebody will call your name, you don't even realize what's going on. So that's what it looks like when you have ADHD. So that's the frontal lobe dysfunction. And so you had been dealing with this your whole life? And what flavor of it? Because you said there are a lot of ways it can manifest.

Sure, I have the combined type. So the inattentive type is more forgetfulness, losing items, difficulty with getting motivated. The hyperactive and pulsulsive type is interrupting, it's feeling like you have to be on the go all the time, like you don't have an inner kind of calm, and so what I have is the type that you have both, so the combined type,

and the 10 of anthypractive impulsive. Two great tastes that taste great together, I would imagine. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I can only imagine. So how did it show up for you? How disruptive was it in your life? Because you're a big time author and therapist, so it couldn't have messed you up too badly, right?

Well, first, my mom was a special ed teacher. My dad was an attorney, so I was behavior modified from a really early age, and I cannot argue for later curfews. I think my parents gave me enough structure, but also gave me a little bit of freedom, so I think that kept me on track for a while. When I noticed it, that I noticed that I was thinking differently to other people when I got to college. So my friends would sit there and study for three hours straight.

And I had no idea how they were doing this. I was wandering around the library. I memorized all the stacks of books and graduate school. I took classes I really enjoyed, but I could not sit through them. I had a deal worked out with my professor that I could get up and leave anytime I wanted to and just walk around and come back and sit. So that's when I realized that if I'm going to class for three hours, I really like, and I'm having a hard time sitting still, maybe it's time to get treatment for it. So that was about, I think it was 23 when I got diagnosed.

So this is, it sounds, I was being somewhat facetious when I said how bad could it be. But it sounds like it was, it's pretty bad. It can be, yeah. People with ADHD, they not only have a higher rate of anxiety, but they also have a higher rate of depression and suicide as well. You can even sleep disturbances with ADHD. So, it's an all-encompassing disorder.

It impacts school and impacts, work, home life, social, just even how you interact with the world around you. It makes a huge difference. And so, how did that show up for you? Did you, it was anxiety and depression for those problems? I'm always, I've always been a little bit of an anxiety person. I'm from reading your book. I kind of understood what you're talking about. You know that you've had kind of this underlying current of anxiety. So I relate to that. Luckily, I think that kept the ADHD in check. Because when

you have anxiety, your inhibition in your brain kind of shuts off your impulsivity stuff a little bit. So I think that that kind of helped me in check and again, parents that watch me like a hawk helped too. So it was when I really had to do multitasking and setting up my own study schedule and keeping my own place clean and organized that that's when I started to kind of hit a wall

with things because I was able to compensate up to a certain point and then it wasn't covering me anymore. What impacted the meditation have on you? What it did is I noticed, basically 23 I got on medication, I got on stimulant medication, I noticed that my medication actually works better when I meditate. So I started meditating probably about a year or two after Iant medication. I notice that my medication actually works better when I meditate. So I started meditating probably about a year or two after I started medication. And I've noticed that I'm a hand picker.

Like I pick it in my cuticles, and I don't do that anymore. I know you can't see me on camera, but I can actually. You can't have someone to see you. Yes, yeah. The listeners can't, but for some reason, this is the first time I've done a remote interview where I can actually see you. You can't see me with this super creepy,

but anyway, I can see your cuticles from a distance. Yeah, so these are, yeah, see? So I don't pick at them anymore. I've also found that I am more likely to stop and think about something before I say it. So medication doesn't take care of all your ADHD, because you're still somewhat ADHD. I would say probably it decreases my ADHD by about 60%.

So the remaining 40%, that's where I have to monitor and make sure that I'm thinking about something before I do it, or that I'm really focused on driving. And especially if your medication wears off, then the ADHD kind of comes back to the vengeance sometimes. So I've noticed that when I meditate, I tend to stay more in the present moment. Because when you have ADHD, you know, that concept of monkey brain and meditation, when you have ADHD, it's like, you have super monkey brain.

You've got thoughts flying in and out and meditation makes it so that you only have a few thoughts coming in and out rather than a whole bunch of them at the same time. But does it make meditation itself harder? Yeah, it gets tricky. So that's why I usually recommend mindfulness meditation because when I talk to people about doing, quote unquote, standard meditation, the idea for some of the ADHD to sit or lay down is kind of, it's really kind of difficult for people. So the concept of mindfulness where you could be walking and meditating or eating and meditating or cooking and meditating,

that tends to have more appeal for people. What I've noticed is when people do meditation, meditation, when they have ADHD, if they can stick through about three, 15 minute sessions are pretty good to go and they'll stick with a long time, but otherwise the mindfulness practice has really helped. Again, the idea that you can move around, which is kind of the whole thing with ADHD is that need to move. So mindfulness again, that kind of caters to that kind of restlessness piece. So are you able to do extended seated meditation? Is that a part of your daily life?

I tend to do the mindfulness part. I have done seated meditation. It's tricky because again, if I'm on medication, it's a totally different form of meditation than when I'm off. When I'm on medication, I can sit and meditate. This is kind of a quote unquote standard way. For a period of time, off medication, not so easily. So I can usually, I can do and meditate, again, quote unquote, standard way, for a period of time, off medication, not so easily. So I can do it for maybe 5-10 minutes. With the mindfulness practice, I can do that with or without medication. It works pretty well. Why do you go on an off medication?

So it wears out of your system. So when you take a stimulus medication, if you take the long acting kind the last all day It usually wears off like we take it 8 a.m. wears off around 3 or 4 p.m So it doesn't stick with you the whole time. So so afterwards, you know, you're still ADHD when your medication wears off So Medication makes this so that your neurons communicate more effectively in the frontal lobe your brain So when you're off medication your neurons kind of go back to business as usual, and it's tricky to really focus on meditation when you don't have medicine in your system.

That's been my experience anyway. I've always been confused as somebody who doesn't have ADHD, why you would put somebody on a stimulant, because it seems like ADHD, I mean, H is hyperactivity. Right, yeah, it kind of doesn't make sense to me to think of the term stimulants. Stimulants actually stimulate the neurons to communicate more effectively. So that's where the whole stimulant piece comes in.

But yeah, it is kind of an odd name to give something to someone that you want them to calm down. So, yeah, it's kind of a misnomer in a lot of ways. But yeah, it helps boost dopamine and norepinephrine in your brain, and when you have, you're low in those brain chemicals. So it helps get those chemicals back up to kind of where they should be. You know, I said I don't have ADHD, but I mean, I don't know. I never got tested. I will say that I was a bad student in high school.

Definitely have trouble sitting still to this day and you know when I have a big project like writing a book or writing a big story for nightline, I work at a standing desk both at home and at the office I get a lot of trouble kind of staying focused on things. But I don't, you know, people say all the time, it's like kind of a modern trope even that people say, oh, you know, I'm super ADHD. It's become a little like, almost a throwaway thing that people say to describe themselves. How do you know when somebody actually has it or whether they're just, you know, having trouble focusing on as a garden variety level? Sure, because we all have symptoms of anxiety, depression, ADHD at some point are lies, but it's when it gets to the point where with ADHD that your

performance is a matching your ability, there's a gap between in there. So you have 160 IQ, but you've got bees and seas of school. You're not working your potential. You really enjoy what you do for living, but you just can't see you to put it together to write stories on time, or you find that what you do for living, but you just can't see to put it together, to write stories on time, or you find that when you're talking to your spouse, that you're not fully listening to them, and it's created conflict at home. So it's where there's a really impacts quality of life.

Again, when there's a gap between what you should be able to do and what you're doing. And if you look at brain function, when you have ADHD, your brain is about two-thirds that of someone without ADHD as far as neural development. And basically, what I mean by that is that when you have ADHD, you sometimes are one to three years younger, behavior-wise, and your chronological age. So if you're working with, well, if I'm working with someone that's 20 and in college,

it's more like they're 15 or 16 in college. Wow. Or so that kind of, so you may find that sometimes when you're talking with people, ADHD, that seems like they're a little bit younger and you can't really kind of figure out why it may be brain development, so that your neurosis aren't as connected as someone without ADHD.

Does that make sense? Did you take the extent that I'm able to understand anything scientific yet? Ha ha ha ha. Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. You work mostly with adults, right? I do. Yeah, college age on up, yeah, and How widespread a phenomenon do you think this is and in what about the complaints that we often hear that this is

It's overdiagnosed and in their hand and out at a raw like candy. Sure. It's all it's about 4.4% of people in the U.S. so I think that's about 17 million people and as far as it being overdiagnosed they get asked that a lot and it's actually underdiagnosed. There was a study that came out a couple of years ago that said that only 10% of people that think they have symptoms of ADHD, only 10% of them come to see a mental health professional for diagnosis. So that means that 90% of people with ADHD tend not to get treatment or be diagnosed with it.

And it leads to a six times higher rate of substance abuse without treatment. Again, leads to higher suicide rate, leads to, you know know, just again, this loss of potential, this chronic feeling of, I should be able to do more, but I can't. And the way, just to amplify the point you were making before, because I suspect a lot of you are listening to this and trying to figure out like, okay, do I fall in this bucket, the way to really sort of figure out, or one, one gauge for you is there a big delta, big gap between what your capacity is and what your performance is? Right.

Like, in school, did you get comments in a report card? Like, doesn't work to potential. Difficulty staying in seat. It doesn't work to expectations. It doesn't complete assignments. Did you go blank when you took tasks? Those are some of the things you look for on report cards. When you get into the work field, it doesn't complete work tasks, doesn't complete task to ability, doesn't follow multi-step directions. Those are some of the things you'll see on performance evaluations

that may be a tip off to ADHD. So if I would be, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, people on TV news, a lot of them have ADHD because you tend to be gravitated towards jobs that are high, pressure, high stress. Because people with ADHD do beautifully when it's a crisis situation. It's the day-to-day living. It's unloading, loading the dishwasher,

the drives them crazy. So you'll see people in working ERs, you'll see people that are firefighters, you'll see people that are sales people. So you'll see people that really thrive under pressure. So that's another tip off that you might have ADHD is if you really seek that kind of stimulation from your environment. Right. You said actually after reading my book, you were able to do some sort of diagnosis on me. You said this before, we started. Yeah, what would tell me? Tell me.

Well, what I picked up on is that first year in TV news, my undergrad degrees in telecom, so I was going to work at CNN and wound up being a therapist. But I noticed that in the news field, you see a lot of people running around doing stuff and you have to do things, you know, split second, and people with ADHD do beautifully with that. Absolutely amazing. So I've noticed that also.

So are you saying that you think I have ADHD? I would have to evaluate you. But you would say I would be a candidate for evaluation. I'd say yeah, I come down to Tampa and you know we can talk Yeah, and you have a hard time sitting still and Yeah, so it's there's some things I picked up on but it could be you know that like I said You know you also said you have a kind of a low level of anxiety so it could be a little bit that Could be other stuff that you put in your book. I don't know

But overall some of the stuff had a flavor of ADHD to it So it could be a little bit of that, could be other stuff that you can print your book, I don't know, but overall, some of the stuff had a flavor of ADHD to it. But again, we all have those symptoms, but the fact you're in TV news kind of is a little tip off. Yeah, yeah, no, no, my wife is an academic physician and she has struggled with some of these issues. I don't wanna say too much because I don't wanna, I don't know how much she wants

me to say, but let me just say that she chose for a while to go into intensive care work where she was in the ICU. And a lot of that was about the adrenaline. Right. Exactly. I see a lot of people that need to be working in ICU. So when you work with your patients and you say, when you drop the M word, you say, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to recommend you meditate.

Do these people who've been dealing with ADHD look at you like you're crazy? Like there's no way I could ever do that? I get that from about a third of people. One third of people are like, let me start now. Can I meditate like, you know, in two seconds from now? Then I get people that are a little bit quizzical about it, and I get one-third of people are like, no way.

And interesting, I get people sometimes ask me, well, isn't this against my religion? And I'll say, well, do you do any kind of prairie recite? Because that's meditation. You're already doing it. Anytime that you're zoning out and just hearing yourself breathe, that's meditation. I would say that's zoning out. Just a slight that's meditation. I would say that's zoning.

I try to frame it. Just it's just slight quibble. I would say it's zoning in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I liked it. I'm going to borrow that now. Can I steal that from you? I'll tell you what's absolutely.

No attribution next, sir. Right. So yeah, I noticed that the people have some questions about what exactly it is. And then people that I've worked with will sometimes say, well, I came and sit still for two seconds. Now, say, no, it's not about the sitting still. It's about the focusing on the inhaling and exhaling. That's it.

And people are surprised to know that that's the fundamental process of it is the inhaling, exhale. It's not the laying still, sitting still. And people with ADHD tend to like doing things really well the first time, like the first time they go to bath, they want to hit a home run, the first time they sit at the piano, they want to play like Mozart.

And the first time they meditate, they want to reach Nirvana and totally empty their brain. And I'll tell them that there's even people meditating for years find impossible to totally empty their brain. That's not the point, so much is just focusing on the inhale and exhale. And then when you get a lot of started again. Yes. The point is, I am telling this people all the time. The point, yeah, I'm saying this to people all the time.

The point is that is not to reach some sort of special state. It is to be in the muck with the craziness of your own mind and to see it clearly without being yanked around by it. Why is that useful? Because the rest of your life when your thinking mind offers you up terrible ideas, you're better able to surf them and not be owned by them. Right, exactly, exactly.

And the people I work with sometimes, again, they're in really high intensity careers and they'll say to me, but if I meditate, when I lose my edge, when I'm not perform as well, I say, no, actually it increases. It increases your ability to do your job effectively. That's really kind of mind blowing to them that you can do meditation and still be able to function at your job and actually perform better than you did before. Yeah, people think they're not gonna be go-go-go, they're not gonna be ambitious, aggressive, aggressive,

and then not put in the pejorative. But actually, when you stop wasting energy on useless distractions or useless anger and being yanked around by your emotions and you're better able to stay on task, et cetera, et cetera. That is all a massive value add in terms of your professional goals. Right. People think they're getting kind of, when they meditate, they're getting a smaller piece of the pie. Like, they're shortening their skills. And in fact, I'm like, well, no, it makes a bigger pie.

It makes a bigger amount of brain space that you can use to do what you want to do. And again, yeah, you're not thinking too far in the past or too far in the future. You're thinking of just here and now, and your productivity increases a tremendous amount when you're really in the stuff you're in. When you focus on what you're doing, you completely 100% focus.

It's amazing how much more you can channel into your work. You access parts of your brain, I would argue, not a scientific sense, but you access parts of your brain that you wouldn't have otherwise. You put more of your, I guess your heart and soul into your work and that makes a huge difference. And you're just doing that one thing can change everything. So, you work with college age on Apple, but do you don't do any work with kids whatsoever? I do too. Yeah, I work with kids up to teenagers too. Yeah. And what do you say to parents who are really worried about their kids with ADHD and how

seriously should they be taking the option of meditation for kids in this context? Does that work? Yes, it does. Actually, there's quite a bit of research out about teenagers and kids practicing meditation and mindfulness meditation, that it actually can do some brain structure differences. It improves the connections and the prefrontal cortex. It's been found to decrease an inflammatory agent in the body, so there's all sorts of things

that when you start at earlier age, you get more of the benefits over time. And studies have found again, just with kids, just like with adults, it improves symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, and depression. How do you get them to do it, though? Well, we start out really small, so I teach kids how to do inhale and exhale,

and the way I describe it is you inhale like you're sniffing a flower and you exhale like you're blowing out candles in a birthday cake. And so we practice. And sometimes all the kids lay on the ground, they'll put a stuffed animal in their tummy and we'll practice diaphragmatic breathing. So when the inhale, the stuffed animal goes up and when the exhale, stuffed animal goes down. So they have a visual of when they're doing deep breathing, a diaphragmatic breathing, that's so important. So, and also I'll use a bubble wand for real little ones to teach them how to do exhale.

They'll have them exhale blow out through the bubble wand for a count of five. And again, they may not understand the concept of counting to five, but they know visually how long five minutes are by using the bubble wand. So a lot of neat visual cues you can use. I like that. I have a three-year-old duck that could work with him. So, so

just a personal story. I recently finished writing a book with a co-author this amazing meditation teacher from Canada named Jeff Warren. And he has, so in the book, we, the first thing we did before we started writing was we took a cross-country road trip, and the goal of the trip was to meet people who want to meditate and to help them get over the various obstacles they faced to starting a practice. And so we went across the country in this big orange bus, and I really got to know Jeff very well, and during that time, he repeatedly referenced the fact that he had ADHD and had struggled with it since he was a kid.

Maybe it's because we live in a culture where people describe themselves as ADHD all the time. I didn't really take it seriously, plus he's such an amazing meditation teacher. I didn't land, let's just say. But then when we started the writing process, it really landed. And what I, you know, he has, I thought ADHD meant that you just can't pay attention to anything. And as you said before, there's a whole kind of range of flavors of it. For him, it's not that he can't pay attention. It's that he gets overly focused and goes into these rabbit holes of, so we'd be, you know, we'd be writing this book. I'm like, Hey, man, this is a book for beginners and skeptics.

And he would want to talk about like deep end Buddhist esoteric and it was getting all excited. And the book would be a failure if we didn't talk about What blah blah blah and I would be I would be wanting to like throw myself out a window like because I really respect him and we Almost killed each other over over this and it was just over and over again I would point out that he just you know built this tree house in his mind and climbed up into it and lived in it for Well, and he would eventually recognize that yes he had done that uh... and then uh... ten minutes later he'd be back in another tree house uh... and so it was he was an incredibly challenging thing for me to deal with

never mind how hard it was for him of course uh... that any thoughts on it and all the stuff i just blurred it out sure yeah people the dc don't think in a linear fashion. They don't go A, B, C, D. They go A, R, Q, two. If they go all over the place. And if you don't have ADHT,

it can be really hard to track that kind of thought process. And especially when you're doing some kind of structured project. So for people at ADHT, it really helps to get parameters put in place. So for instance, like chapter one, okay, we're going to knock out chapter one by, you know, next Tuesday.

Okay. Chapter two, I need you to do an outline for me by Wednesday. So it really helps to give people parameters that they can work under because it's very difficult for people with ADHD to come up with their own parameters, their own rules for working. Does that make sense? It's so funny to say that because that actually ended up being the solution. When I imposed structure on him, he was able to do really well. And in his defense, the non-linearity of his

thinking is big part of his strength that he is a brilliant guy and able to connect ideas that here to four have been disconnected and he's unbelievably creative and energetic. So there are lots of upsides to his condition. Right. And you're able to channel that into productivity. So that was a great idea to give him those parameters. Yeah. Well, it was not a great idea.

It was born out of utter desperation. You know, I didn't know what to do. It was still a great idea. But, you know, I think a lot of people don't know that ADHD can manifest in many different ways. Yes, and hyper focusing is one of them. So people will sometimes get into a meditative state and nothing will tear them away from it. They could have a fire alarm going off and they don't hear it. So that's one of those things about the regulation

of the brain is that hyperfocus is just as much as symptom as lack of focus. And so the hyperfocus actually can be helpful when doing meditation, because you can kind of channel yourself into it. But the trick is with ADHD, is you have to want to do it to get hyperfocussed. Right.

You have to have that motivation to do it to get hyperfocussed. Right. You have to have that motivation to do it. And motivations are part that's often ADHD. So it's kind of a catch-22. You want to do it, but you can't always motivate yourself to do it. So tell me about some of the books you've written on this subject. Sure. I've written a book on non-medication treatments for ADHD.

It's called Natural Relief for adult ADHD. It's used to be with or without medication. That's old chapter on meditation, mindfulness, talking about the research behind it, user friendly ways to do this, because again, you're talking about the esoteric a part of it, and I think that sometimes people, it needs to be broken down to language

we can all understand, and easy to do techniques, like again, just focusing on your breathing, you know, inhale for five, exhale for 10, and that's a practice of meditation. So another book's 10 simple solutions to adult ADD, and I write about meditation, also jobs that are ADHD friendly, setting up structured schedule,

how to communicate effectively with your spouse or partner, because that gets to be a big issue too, you know, higher rated divorce and people with ADHD. So also, a book on making the grade with ADD, that's on college and ADHD, so chapter on mindfulness and meditation and that, and also talking about again, how do you set up your structure schedule? You know, in high school, you know, you know, where you're supposed to be, seven hours out of the day, and your parents get called as soon as you don't show up for class. So now you're in college, and nobody's reminding you to wake up for class.

Nobody's telling you when to study, and that's when a lot of people with ADHD kind of hit the wall. There are compensation techniques, and that parameter that was put on them no longer exists. And it gets really tricky for people to function. In your daily life being exposed to so many other people with the same condition, is that useful or a challenge for you in terms of managing your own condition? I find it actually helpful because I think I can meet people

where they're at a little bit better. Again, being on medication helps, but I think also, I can understand that nonlinear thinking process and also help people channel it. I think that's one of the biggest parts. Like you were saying the parameters you put on your co-author. Again, how do we set those parameters because your brain doesn't want to go in those parameters. So how can you set up these kind of kind of blinders sort of horse blinders to stay on the track of completing your work. So that's a lot of what I do is help people get that structure in place and then get

effective treatment. And again, one of those effective non-medication treatments is meditation. I mean, medication overall, according to research, is the most effective treatment. But meditation doesn't have a lot of data behind it as the most, one of the most effective non-medication treatments. But in that answer, you talked about how having ADHD can help you be a better therapist. I just wonder like being exposed to all of of all of the pathologies given that you're also dealing with your own. Does it make the challenge is greater for you? Because this is still an issue

in your life. Sure. Yeah. I found that it actually enriches parts of my life because I can see, I love working with people and I can see, you know, their journey through life and their progression and that to me kind of, it makes me appreciate life more, I think, because I see the different past people have gone on and some of the adversity people have gone through. So I think it actually enhances my life rather than makes the ADHD kind of worse.

So I don't know that makes sense? Yeah, it does. Okay. In terms of, you know, the challenges you continue to face as a result of having ADHD, what are the most prominent ones now? Let's see, showing up on time. Really? Yeah, so I showed up at the studio a half hour early.

So what I was doing ADHD is you wind up, yeah, oh yeah, I was here early. So what you do is you kind of overcompensate for stuff. So I'll show up kind of super early for things. And again, medication makes us a lot more likely to stay on time because you actually do more time estimation the correctly when you're on medication. So, but yeah, I'll show up early for stuff

or my friends just know that I'm gonna be runnin' a little late for things. So, part of it is just saying to people, hey, I run a little late. Yeah, it doesn't matter what time I leave, I'm gonna run a little late. So, that's one of the things I notice. Also, I lose stuff all the time. I have those little late. Yeah, it doesn't matter what time I leave, I'm gonna run a little late. So that's one of the things I noticed. Also, I lose stuff all the time.

I have those little tile trackers. I have them on everything I own. So I should probably get stuck in tile because I have like eight tile thing, so I can find everything wherever it is. I have GPS trackers. I also, again, meditation, first thing in the morning, do that.

There's a mindful driving. So I focus on this steering wheel, feels on my hands, I focus on cues on the road. Also, holding a thought and thinking about it before I say it, much easier. Again, I'm medication without medication. You've got to really make a concerted effort to think about what you're saying,

and if what you're saying is actually what you mean to say. One of the trickiest parts of ADHD is what you're thinking and what comes out of your mouth can be two different things. So that gets tricky too. You have to monitor a little more. So that's probably the biggest things I notice. And also, again, I have kind of a healthy dose of anxiety, so it kind of keeps the ADHD a little bit more at bay. I think that people that don't have anxiety with ADHD. If I could wave a wand right now and quote unquote, cure your ADHD, would you want me to do it, or would you say that actually there are the benefits that way that cost? You know, that's tough because there are some things that I really like.

I tend to be pretty creative and I tend to like doing a bunch of different very tasks or, oh, you wanna go on trips somewhere? Sure, why not? I don't think I had about that stuff. But the parts about getting to places on time, that would be kind of nice. So if I could do kind of like a half and a half, like if I could just improve the stuff

that I'd like to improve and then keep the stuff I like. So I'm gonna answer that with, yeah, some things and not other things, just to make things more complicated. Yeah, I don't have that kind of wand, I only have the wand. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha think it's really important to let people know that meditation is accessible to everyone. Again, it's a really high return, your investment. You don't need to spend any money to do it.

You can do it anywhere. You don't necessarily need someone teaching how to do it. And the benefits of it, according to research and just my anecdotal evidence, is that it's very effective. So again, it's one of those treatments that for what you put into it, you get a lot more out of it. And if people want to follow you, do you have a website or a social media that you do? Yeah, it's StephanieSarchis.com.

So STEPH, ANIE, S-A-R-K-I-S.com. That's also my Twitter handle. I'm also on Instagram, Facebook, Stephanie Sarkis. And also there's a contact page on my website if anybody has any questions for me. I'm happy to answer those. This has been super useful. I really appreciate your time and your good humor and your punctuality. Oh, thank you. Thanks so much. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we

should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who help make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus

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