The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Kat Brown on ADHD and listening to the similarities, not the differences

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

In this guest episode of the The Therapy Edit, Anna chats to author, journalist and ADHD champion about her One Thing: listening to the similarities instead of the differences.Kat Brown is a British journalist and commentator whose work examining everythingfrom radio dramas to health stigma has appeared widely in her home press. Her firstbooks, It's Not a Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult and No One TalksAbout This Stuff: 22 Stories of Almost Parenthood, were published 49 days apart, whichfeels like both a record and a mistake. She loves horse riding and tarot and lives insouth London with her husband, their dog, and two appalling cats.You can follow Kat on Instagram here and visit her website here.

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist's mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. I have with me, Kat Brown. Now, what amazed me is that I have just followed Cat Brown, and I'm really excited to find her, and sometimes such is social media, that you aren't exposed to certain people.

So I'm just really delighted. I found her feed, and I'm already kind of knee-deep in her words. So I'm really excited to chat with her. She is a British journalist and a commentator whose work examining everything from radio dramas to health stigma has appeared widely in press. It's her first book, It's Not a Bloody Trend, Understanding Life as an ADHD adult. And then her other book, which I did know about, no one talks about this stuff, is 22 stories of almost parenthood. Now, these were actually published 49 days apart.

And as someone that has done the book thing a few times now, my mind is slightly boggling as to how she did that. And she said it felt like both a record and a mistake. And I can see why. I don't know how you made it through, Kat. That is incredible. Cat loves horse riding and taro and lives in South London with her husband, their dog and two appalling cats. It's great to have you.

Oh, Anna, it's so lovely to sort of meet you IRL, really. I know. In real life, as in real life as it gets over whatever platform we're on right now. But yeah, I'm just excited to have a. little grab a cup and have us go through your feed later, especially around the ADHD stuff. Well, in keeping with all ADHD stuff, it's absolutely all over the place. I know that consistency is key for Instagram. I've done a lot of social media consultancy, but that is categorically not what I can do on my own feed. So it's all kinds of random nonsense on there, but I hope you

find something useful. I love that. Yeah. And I would definitely say that wasn't nonsense. I think it's always something amazing when someone is able to articulate things. So honestly, because, yeah, it just helps us make a little bit more sense of our own chaos. So I'm really grateful, really grateful for that. I'm going to grab a copy of your book. It's Not a Bloody Trend, Understanding Life as an ADHD adult. I'll have a bit of that. Thank you very much.

So how are you today? Your wallpaper is absolutely amazing behind you. I think having lemurs on a wall. Leamers, that's what they are. Very cheering. Yeah, I've been incredibly slow. renovating this house for the last seven years. And almost immediately I discovered that basically all interior magazines have lied to me. And the only way you are ever able to renovate anything

quickly is if your entire family is a project manager, electrician and so on, which sadly is not the case for me and my similarly DIY inept husband. So we've been doing it very slowly. And there's just lots of things hanging off the walls still. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's lots of stuff hanging off our walls because my husband is great and many things in DIY isn't one of them. So, Kat, with all of your knowledge and you have written about so many different things, what is the one thing that you would love to share with those listening today? So I'm sharing something with your listeners, which is so blindingly obvious. I've written about it in both books, whether it's about infertility and loss or ADHD diagnosis.

reasonably late in life. But it is something that even now, like four years after we knew for sure that we weren't going to be able to have children, four years after my ADHD diagnosis, that I'm still processing because I've forced myself past this incredibly essential stage. And it is giving yourself time to grieve, whether it is after a diagnosis, whether it is after a loss. my self-esteem, my self-image, partly due to living with undiagnosed ADHD for decades, was very, very low. And as soon as I was going through the experience of knowing that we weren't going to have children, whether it was after two mystifyingly unsuccessful cycles of IVF where my eggs didn't even mature enough to fertilise, let alone have embryos, let alone implant, or, you know, after two.

discovering I had ADHD, my immediate thing was like, right, need to move on, need to be helpful, need to try and do something, which in the former case was completely impossible because I basically had a nervous breakdown and just fell out of the world for a long time. And with ADHD, it was like, well, now I need to spread the message and everything will be great. And or rather, maybe everything will be great for other people, because whether it was when my husband and I were first getting this news that we weren't going to have kids, there was something very cheering for us in the idea that this non-diagnosis of unexplained infertility that we got would hopefully maybe lead to the science that meant that 50 years down the line, it wouldn't

happen to another couple or somebody else hoping to have children. So my sort of response to everything, whenever anything really bad happened, was instead of going, why me, to go, well, why not me? And actually, that's really great, but that's also not reality. It's not quite toxic positivity, and there isn't a real element of stoicism in there. But you also need to have some flipping time for healing. And if you've been through a miscarriage or any, any kind of loss, whether it is, you know, family, friends, hope, you know, losing a timeline in which something happened for you and your family, that's really deep, deep stuff. It's huge. It's so huge, in fact, that when I was interviewing one of the experts for the ADHD book,

Dr. Susan Young, who not only co-founded the first adult ADHD clinic in the UK at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1990s, yes, the 90s, but co-wrote the nice guidelines about ADHD and adults in 2008. she basically said people who have just had a diagnosis and she works across all kinds of conditions. So if you don't have ADHD, please feel free to just insert whatever is relevant for you here. You cannot go from having a diagnosis as an adult of something this significant and immediately go into learning how to make the Pomodoro technique work for you, how to make lists work, how to make sure you remember to take and order your medications, that sort of thing. there needs to be a real period of reflection, therapy and acceptance, not just for the person that you are, but also for the life that you could have had for perhaps mistakes that you've made through the years. And again, if you've got untreated ADHD, these mistakes are probably

going to be fairly colossal. It's probably no coincidence that the same year that our IVF journey came to an end, I gave up drinking alcohol, which I'd used as a sort of coping strategy of sorts for years. But in a way that looked so socially acceptable, nobody would ever have, you know, thought that anything was up. So just actually having that time and making sure that that time is factored in, not in a sort of like blink and you'll miss it sort of way, but in a really concentrated, thought through way. Professor Philip Asha said, who co-wrote the nice guidelines with Professor Young and was also interviewed for my book, he talks about a golden triangle of treatment, which is, yes, medication, yes, behavioral

strategies, what we know as coaching, but also therapy. Because in adulthood, we have had to live with so many other things going on. Like, life is not a single issue problem. In the same way that I've had infertility and ADHD and giving up drinking, I also had a hip replacement. And then the hip replacement got infected and I was on terrible antibiotics for three months, there's been a lot. And that's not even looking into, you know, friends, family, those sort of wider, wider relationship circles. It's, you know, we're going through quite a lot, actually. And it's very tempting to think that you just need to keep going on that treadmill, but we need to pause because if we don't stop, then somebody or something at some point

is going to take that decision out of our hands. Wow. Such a, yeah, huge invitation just to allow yourself to feel how you feel as a result of what, of what you've been through, whatever that might look like. And I'm someone that's walked through grief and loss and late stage diagnosis of ADHD. And I'd love to ask you what, how you manage it when the, when the pressure and the expectation to move through and move faster and move think positively, turn it into something good and helpful for the world. You know, that comes externally often, doesn't it? Even if we address that internally, I remember, I remember the friends at school, you know, saying you're still upset about your sister's death, you know, now. And I think it was like six months later, but, you know, she totally have been over that. Well, of course, I mean, how dare I?

But, you know, that's quite a polarised example. But I do think, you know, a lot of this, come on, let's look at the positives, but it could have been worse. But, you know, it's actually around other people's discomfort and other people's timelines and other people's challenge of sitting with alongside your pain when actually they, they find it hard to look at their own. So maybe they, that's why they're unable to kind of make space for that for you. So I'd love to know, yeah, how you've made space for that grief in those different contexts. despite the timelines and the discomfort may be of other people. How have you honoured that for you? I'd love to say that I have at all.

I'm not necessarily sure that I have. I think it would be very easy for me to just present my nice, neat little boundary list of 10 ways to process. I love that. Wouldn't that be great? That would be great, Kat. I've actually just started therapy again. And we're sitting there sort of listing not just all the,

things that I wanted to work through, particularly those sort of four pillars that keep, you know, coming up in my way because they are like fairly significant life events from the last few years. But I was also going, you know, I've done loads of work, I've done loads of therapy, I've read all the things, I've read on stoicism, I've listened to all the things. You know, I'm, I, there is actually a really useful idea that I take from the support groups that I go to around alcohol, which is to listen to the similarities and not. the differences in somebody's story. Because actually, if we are trying to find someone who has exactly the same experiences as we do with exactly the same background intersections of, you know,

class, race, gender, I'm also six foot one. I'm also a redhead. I also speak like somebody from downtown abbey. I'm sitting here wearing, you know, a purple jumper with a horse's head knitted on it that I got from eBay. If I'm looking to find that person, I'm going to be sorely disappointed So actually, one of the most useful things that I did in all of not just madness, but years afterwards when I was still reasonably mad, but didn't quite understand that, was I sought out any kind of story by which I mean like somebody actually sharing their experience and just if it was somebody that I just felt like I could, you know, chime with what they were saying or how they were saying it or their viewpoint. it almost didn't matter what had happened. So I absolutely adore the actress Mini Driver, who has become a quite frankly unfairly brilliant writer and speaker in this second phase of her life.

She's got a great podcast, and her book, I think it's called Managing Expectations, is like a series of essays from her life growing up and everything. And none of that, I have none of that in common, apart from the fact that I went to school about five miles from where she did. That's what you've got going, yeah. Yes, but it's maybe it's a wavelength thing or maybe that the emotions were similar

or just her way of experiencing the world. I found that so comforting and so healing. And I mean, I think actually the one that I would recommend to anybody, whatever they're going through, just simply for if you want to be on a wavelength with people going through really bloody hard things and not wanting to do it in that awful way of toxic positivity,

which is just repellent. Kate Bowler's podcast, everything happens. It's been going for a few years now. She is a professor of divinity in the States. Please don't get put off by that. There is a spiritual element through it, but it's not like church in the podcast at all. She gets the most fantastically varied guests.

I always actually like the people who aren't celebrities, which is actually something that I've reflected in my infatility book, because sometimes if you're going through something really difficult and the only story that you can find is of a celebrity, it's like, well, of course you're allowed to go through that. You're famous. You have some other value or whatever. And again, that's the voice of my very historically low self-esteem self-worth kicking in. And again, we've been working on that. Don't worry that has gone up. But she was diagnosed with an incredibly advanced form of cancer when she was only in her mid-30s. She was a parent. to a lovely son and say there was a lot of grief work that she has had to do, obviously, about not being able to expand their family further, as that was a consequence of treatment. But also about, you know, wanting to talk about these really dark, difficult feelings. And some of the experiences that people have gone through are, I mean, I know mine, my little list sounds quite weighty, but I mean, some of them really are, like, just truly devastating.

And I think there is, when you are going through something really difficult, even if you don't realize it, even if you're just like, why do I feel like crap all the time? Actually, sometimes the most optimistic, enlightening thing can be not somebody switching on, you know, a comedy show or going, oh, let's cheer up, let's go for a walk or something, although walks are great. But it is sometimes just having somebody there to sit down in the dark with you and go, I suppose, like that lovely Mary Oliver. a poem, which I'm going to misquote horribly, but about, you know, show me your tragedy and I'll show you mine. It's that, it's that companionability. And it's not about comparison. I think comparing, saying, for me, for example, just immediately trying to deal with my own huge, wild, completely unmanageable feelings by going, it's not that bad. You know, I'm not a chimney sweep in the Victorian era. It could be worse.

You know, why not me, et cetera? Actually, what I'm discovering now is that, yes, that's fine. But by doing that, I didn't make space to allow myself to go, well, you know, it's not bloody fair, is it? Yeah. Yeah, by all means. By all means, be somebody who deserves to think, well, it's not fair, is it? That doesn't mean that it's, you know, fair for everybody else at all.

And it certainly doesn't mean that that is somewhere that we should. should sit for prolonged periods of time. But I honestly think if I had given myself the grace of allowing myself to do that, and I just, to be honest, wasn't in a place where I could, then I might not be at the place where I am now where I've had lots of healing and I'm feeling, you know, pretty solid. But every now and then, every now and then I will still, you know, metaphorically open up my hand and examine my precious tragedies and go, oh, oh, and then, you know, put them away again, but not sort of healing with them. And it's like, it's not like all of that is going to heal and will never speak about it again. In fact, Jody Day, who wrote a wonderful

book about, you know, not having children and living life as a childless person, which actually, she was a real, you know, flag waver for discussion around that. She was just like, well, maybe it's going to, you know, it's not going to heal over, but maybe your body will heal around it. So you'll still carry it with you, but not, it won't be like a wound. I mean, it won't be, you know, violent, pulsating horror in your body every day. And again, that's why we do somatic work or tapping or any of these other ways. to sort of try and bring brain and body together because otherwise we can just end up floating around

and that's when you go down paths like, well, maybe if I just became Mother Teresa and sort of that'll lend my, you know, upset or tragedy or loss some value. And it's like, no, you are a person who has value. Yeah. We don't need to go and, I don't know, stupidly write two books. I mean, to be fair, I am a journalist. Writing a book was always going to be. And they are. They're good. It's You can't be able to do it. That's quite a short quick succession. Yeah. But you don't, that's not something that you have to do. And that is why that acceptance work is so important. You don't need to compensate whether it is for having had a miscarriage, multiple miscarriages, for being, and my God, so many of my friends

are going through this. How dare you be a parent to one child? I mean, my God, it's, you know, potentially a worse crime than me being ginger at school than the 90. It's, you know, it's a just, I just honestly, if, you know, A, if Mary and Jesus were actually real, but if Mary were around now, people would look at literally Jesus, son of God, and be like, won't he be terribly lonely? So there is so much different sort of types of healing and acceptance to do. And it's not acceptance like, oh yes, I will take this biscuit, but, you know, it's a cliche. I am enough. It's a cliche for a reason. And sort of repeating all of this, this very basic idea, that's why I wanted to talk

about this today, because it is basic, but it's very often something that we think is okay for other people, but not for us. Oh, no, we just need to work harder. It's basic, but it's just so important. It's emotional validation, isn't it? It's making space for, yeah, what can often look conflicting, the gratitude and the gratitude for what is and the grief for what isn't and how they can sit side by side and there is space for all of it and how actually it's the grief in all its discomfort,

it's messiness and it's chaos and it's kind of one key timeline that doesn't necessarily fit with what the books say and the world saying it should look like this and it should have finished by this point and you should be positive and actually it's a rebellion against all of that and saying, you know what, it's moving through and accepting this, yeah, this wound, I guess, that enables you to start growing around it and enables you to come to that place of acceptance. So it's basic, but it's also something we constantly need to be reminding ourselves of because, yeah, the world's and all, and all of its rules and all of its everything will come and keep trying to tell us otherwise. This is the massive thing.

So thank you so much and thank you for your words and your wisdom and all that you've written, all with this kind of passion and heart just to just to share the stuff that people don't talk about and just to validate people's experiences of living with undiagnosed ADHD or loss and infertility. And yeah, it's a real gift that you bring to the world. So, Kat, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, Anna. I am so excited to announce that my brand new book, The Uncomfortable Truth, Change Your Life by Taming Ten of Your Mind's Greatest Fears, is available for pre-order now and is out on the 8th of August.

And in this book, we tackle some of life's big, unavoidable, uncomfortable truths, such as some people don't like me. I am going to fail. Life isn't fair. Bad things will happen. And in this book, we tackle these big, uncomfortable trees that rob us have so much headspace and energy as we try and control and avoid them. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones in Amazon.

We can celebrate together. Thank you.