What Moms with ADHD Really Need to Know from the Making the Invisible VISIBLE Podcast with Guest Host Christina Crowe - Best of Friends Series #198
When your ADHD is invisible, we can start to feel like maybe we’re making it up…
Maybe you aren’t really struggling more than others…
Errrrrrrt. Stop that.
Today we’re talking to Christina Crowe about how to make the Invisible Visible. Because ADHD is real even when you can’t SEE its impact on everything. I love Christina’s super practical way of explaining the hard stuff, as well as how she always links her information back to real research and science.
In this episode, Christina and I chat about what moms with ADHD really need to know on her podcast, Making the Invisible VISIBLE, where Christine believes great mental health information should be available to everyone, and loves creating content that makes all of the invisible things VISIBLE.
Christina Crowe is a Canadian Registered Psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and RELENTLESS mental health advocate. Christina believes great mental health information should be available to everyone, and loves creating content that makes all of the invisible things VISIBLE. This show features Christina’s favorite experts on mental health topics like anxiety, ADHD, relationships, self-advocacy, health system navigation and, of course, the occasional rant.
Be sure to subscribe to the Making the Invisible VISIBLE podcast.
Christina’s website: https://digalittledeeper.ca/christina-crowe-podcast-ontario.html
Christina’s instagram: @digalittledeepertherapy
Join Christina’s course, DIY * ADHD
Chistina was also a guest on my podcast on Episode 143: https://www.patriciasung.com/podcast/episode-143-why-you-choose-to-take-adhd-medication-decide-for-your-child-christina-crowe
While I’m slowing down for the summer, making space for more family time and accounting for our emergency construction project, I simply couldn’t leave you hanging for the next few weeks. And my ADHD brain didn’t want to do another vanilla Best Of series… Cue Light Bulb!
Welcome to the Best Of Friends Series, where you are meeting a few of my favorite friends in the podcast community. I’m sharing interviews that I have done on other friends’ podcasts. Not only do you get a new episode, I hope that you’ll find a few shows to add to your podcast queue. There’s a wide variety of topics coming your way, so keep an eye out for a new friend each week of the summer.
This episode includes an affiliate link, which does not change the amount you pay, but may direct a portion of the purchase price to me.
Wish you could get a sneak peek before joining? You can!
You’re invited to Successful Mama Meetup’s very first Open House!
Join us on July 26th for either of our meetups, and meet the other moms, see who you’d hang out with at the retreat, so you know we’re the kinda people you wanna hang out with before you jump in (hint, we’re pretty amazing IMHO).
No charge, no pressure. Just come hang out at one or both of the events!
Let me know you wanna come right here and I’ll send you the zoom link.
And since it's on Zoom, everyone can come no matter what part of the world you live in. And for our mamas in Asia and Australia, the second meetup is on Thursday, July 27th for you.
READY TO GET AWAY?
Our annual ADHD Moms Luxury Weekend Retreat is coming up October 6-8, 2023 in Houston, Texas!
You're officially invited :)
“Gift yourself the opportunity to meet like-minded people (literally), make instant friendships, and the space to finally be yourself.” –ADHD Mama T.H.
I’ll take care of all the details - you simply show up and enjoy.
Put it on your calendar now.
Because you deserve to take care of yourself too.
Grab your all-inclusive ticket here: https://www.patriciasung.com/adhd-mom-retreat
Patricia Sung 00:00
Have you ever been invited to a party and you realize, like you weren't going to know many people there. And so then you like dreaded all the way going up to the event or you talk yourself out of it, so you don't go? Because it's scary to put yourself out there in a situation that like, what if I don't like them? What if they don't like me, and it feels stressful? Well, I don't want you to feel that way about hanging out in this community, Mama. So I am hosting an open house, and I want you to come and meet all the mamas. So that you know what kind of people we are, Ps are great, and that you feel comfortable joining in this community. Because if you are thinking about joining successful mama meetups, or thinking about joining the retreat, I want you to know that these are your people, and what better way to do that and actually meet the people. So come join us at our open house, we are hosting an open house in unsuccessful mama meetups on July 26, at both of the meeting, so we have two meetings, you can come either one and come meet the moms hang out see what it's like pretty much all the moms who are going on the retreat so far are also part of successful mama meetups. So you'll get the feel for like, Who are these people? What's the vibe? Do I want to hang out with them? Yes, you do. It's gonna be so fun. So come hang out with us. So it's totally no charge free 99 Come hang out at successful mama meetups on July 26, either meeting or come to both. That's really cool, too. Our meetings are twice on Wednesdays, if you're on this side of the Earth that I'm on there at 1230, Eastern and 9pm. Eastern. Or if you're on the other side of the world, then the second meeting actually is your Thursday morning. So if you're in Asia or Australia, it's actually going to be July 27. On Thursday morning, go over to my website at https://www.patriciasung.com/openhouse. It's all one word, o p e n h o u s e and sign up for the link so that you get the Zoom link for either of the meetings or muscle virtual. So anybody can come anywhere in the world to see what time it is on your timezone. And come join us for either one or both of the meetings. For the first 30 minutes, we hang out and get stuff done. So I have help there for like how to plan your week. Or if you just like I just need to get some stuff done in the body doubling helps do that. Like there's no wrong way to show up and do stuff at successful meetups. Did you get something done? Great. That's what we're here for. Okay, so that's the first 30 minutes. And then the second 30 minutes is social time where we hang out, we make it fun, you actually want to show up to the body doubling because you get to hang out with your friends, and meet people who understand how your brain works, and you feel at home. So come join us July 26. And either or both of the meetings, sign up at Patricia sung.com forward slash open house and I can't wait to see your face. And if you are listening to this after July 26 still go over to that link and see what the next one is. I think I'm gonna do the second. I'll see you then. Okay, under the episode.
Patricia Sung 03:07
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home or your family? I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD. Hey there successful mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung. Welcome to our summer best of series. Now over the summer, I'm going to be taking a break to slow down a little bit hanging out more with my kids. I'm also managing and like why am I seeing slowing down there is no slowing down. I just have to reshift priorities here hanging out my kids dealing with all of the construction project that's been going on. It has been a lot this spring and I've realized like I gotta let up this summer in order to be able to do all the things shifting some stuff around so is like how do I still deliver great content but also like not just do the same old same old cars Hello ADHD. So here's what we're doing. I am going to be sharing some friends with you. So while I will sprinkle in a couple of episodes From my own podcast, I chose some of the ones that were like the most popular downloads in the last few months. But I think that they are the most popular downloaded episodes because they cover a lot of the like basic things that we need to know about our ADHD. And we could use a little reminder, sometimes just the basic things. But I'm more excited about introducing you to some of my friends, I have asked several of my podcasting friends to share the interview that I did on their podcast, so that you can get to know not only you still get to hear from me about ADHD and whatever their like podcast is focusing on, but that I want you to be able to meet some other really great podcast host. Most of these are women, most of these are moms who are doing great things in the world. And I love what they're doing. I want to support them. And I want you to have really great podcasts in your feed that are they're supporting you and showing you who you can be and like bringing more light and wonderfulness and fun to your summer as you are doing your mom thing and trying to juggle all the things. So welcome to the best of series, and let's dive into today's episode. Today I'd like you to meet my friend Christina Crowe. Christina is a Canadian registered psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor. And she works with people with ADHD all the time. And turns out she is also an ADHD mom herself. I love how Christina is like fearless and relentless in the way that she provides strong research backed information about ADHD like she knows her staff, and she shares it. She is out here making sure that quality information is shared, which is something we need more of her podcast is all about talking about mental health and making the invisible visible so that we're really talking about what matters. Now be sure to go back and listen to episode 143. Because Christina helped kick off our medication series that runs in the 140s, which our discussion is all about, like, should you take medicine like what do you consider going in? In order to make that decision? How do you figure out what the right decision is for you is a really good conversation around medication for ADHD. But today, I'm sharing the conversation that I had with Christina on her podcast, where we talked about what ADHD moms need to know. So be sure to subscribe to the Christina Crowe podcast making the invisible visible. And let's dive into our conversation with Christina.
Christina Crowe 07:46
How many of us have been told that if we got good grades or we finished university we couldn't possibly have ADHD? Today I am talking to a super cool ADHD coach from the US who got really great grades. And guess what she's also got ADHD. She talks about her journey with us talks about the closet ADHD years love that everyone knows exactly what that means extend instinctively I think and we talk a little bit about a lot of the things that moms with ADHD could consider giving themselves permission to do differently. Listening hope you guys really enjoy this one and look forward to everybody's feedback. Welcome to the Christina Crowell podcast making the invisible visible. I'm your host, Christina crow. I'm a psychotherapist and a relentless mental health advocate in Ontario, Canada. I'm bringing you my clinical insights and research based facts on modern mental health. And I'm going to bring you the experts I rely on to share their wisdom with you. Let's do it guys. Let's dig a little deeper and make invisible things visible. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Christina crow podcast where we connect the dots and search for more balanced mental health. Today we are making invisible thing visible for moms who are struggling to come to terms with and manage their own symptoms of ADHD. I'm talking to Patricia sung at transplanted Midwestern are offering compassion and strategies that really do work helping other parents navigate an area that clearly does not have enough support out there. Patricia sung helps moms with ADHD get their crap together one step at a time and feel confident running their family life. After years of serial entrepreneurship and teaching middle school. She has a uniquely practical perspective on strategies for building a life that works when your brain is different. If you're looking for more than theoretical textbook advice put Trisha teaches from a unique viewpoint from her years of effective application in the classroom, as well as her own life. She shares heartfelt truth and painful struggles through her podcast motherhood and ADHD that I was on last week. And in order to be a lighthouse for mamas who have ADHD, and introverted midwesterner at heart, Patricia has adopted the word y'all and resides in Houston, Texas, along with her two young boys, and extroverted non ADHD husband. Welcome to the show. Patricia, thank you so much for making the time to come today. Thanks for having me, for sure. So one of the things I really wanted to talk about with you today, after getting to know you, via our social media friendship, thank you so much for initiating that a while back, and being on your own podcast, which was a lot of fun for me. You know, one of the things that's been really nice about being able to connect with other people helping people through the journey of ADHD online is learning about everyone's amazing backgrounds. And so when I learned about you, I mean, maybe why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience? So I'll say one of the things that stood out to me that a lot of the people that I work with would really identify with is that as a fellow late diagnosed person, you were that kid who had great grades, make good grades. Two people with good grades have ADHD? Oh, if
Patricia Sung 11:31
I had $1 Every time I heard that one. Um, yeah, I was I was the kid who was in on like, on the honor roll National Honor Society, I went to college on an academic scholarship. So like I, I did pretty good. I mean, not to sound braggy. But I did pretty great. And I didn't realize though the unusual illness of how I accomplished that, how much of it was just me absorbing as I went and being able to apply that knowledge. And yet really struggling. When we moved from, read this book, answer the questions. Do this problem, do it again, on the test where it was like, we started shifting into later High School where it became a lot more lecture style from the teacher. And they were not following the book. And all of a sudden, these classes where I had to absorb everything, auditorially sight word auditorily, auditory auditorily. And I just made that up. auditory way. Yeah. All of a sudden, that was really difficult for me. And there was a lot of these, like, weird idiosyncrasies that like I didn't know as a kid, that that was strange that other people didn't like, I didn't realize how much I was like daydreaming, I called it daydreaming when I was reading and like circling back and think, Oh, I missed that like rereading it, or, you know, where I had no problem diving into a book. And I would read for hours and hours, they loved reading. So I never assumed that there was a struggle there with a learning issue because I actually have Erlend syndrome as well, which is a visual processing disorder. Like all these pieces, just like didn't wind up. But yet, because I did fine, actually did pretty great. No one noticed. And then when I got to college is when it just all fell apart. And that's usually when you see women getting diagnosed as either a big hormonal shifts like puberty, pregnancy, menopause, or big life shifts, like moving from middle school, to high school, high school to college, starting a job that's very different. Those are the places where we see a lot of us fall apart because all the coping mechanisms we had up to that point, didn't fit. So when I got to college, and I was responsible for getting up every day, and going to class at 9am When I am not a morning person. And I had to listen to the professor's and read the book, and then tried to pull all that information, that gigantic amount of information together for a test, there was only maybe 10% of the information that I took in. That's where things started to fall apart. And that's when I got diagnosed when I was there was a let's see, what year was that? So I was actually was my second half of my freshman year that I got diagnosed. Okay, and now I got off on that story. And I don't even know what the question was.
Christina Crowe 14:35
No, you answered that kind of perfectly. And I think there's probably a lot of people listening. They're saying, Oh, my gosh, you know, there's a couple of things that you said that I kind of want to circle back to. And the one thing that's kind of salient is is exactly that is there's there's a lot of young people who if we kind of think about learning how to get a good mark at school Good grade is about learning how to play the game, for lack of maybe a better way to describe it. There's a rubric. There's a syllabus, we know exactly, we figure out pretty quick, especially us, girls and women, how we're socialized what the person wants, who will evaluate us, whether it's your teacher, or guys, or your girlfriends are all the other people. That's kind of really how, you know, women are socialized. So we can do that when you have to decide what's important, synthesize a ton of information, prioritize what will probably be on the test versus the other things that won't be on the tests that are interesting to you, like, that's those rabbit holes that we go down. And then it takes our focus off of the main things, or just how hard it is to figure out what the main thing might be. Those are all those like executive dysfunction pieces that really go hand in hand with ADHD. And when you're really bright, and kind of a driven, high achieving person as well, whatever is driving that, whether it's like high intelligence, or, you know, some people, it's perfectionism, all kinds of other things. It could be standards from home, all that stuff, you can go a really long way and be completely under the radar, because that seems to be the measurement of whether your kids, okay, is if their grades are okay. People often will say, well, they're doing well in school, so they must be fine. And I don't know when that one and one started equaling two, but it doesn't equal to very often right. The other thing I want to say is, so you're in the United States, and I'm in Canada, and Ontario, specifically here. And what I noticed is, you know, our elementary school system is actually fairly supportive. So kids who can kind of fly under the radar and get by, excuse me, and especially girls, because they're not the ones causing problems for their teachers, right? They're the daydreamer ones. So the, the teacher might not actually know how focused that girl might be in class, but she's certainly not causing the teacher problem. But the highest high school hasn't changed since we were in high school here. So it's like, you know, the wheels fall off in the ninth grade, grade nine, we say grade nine, here, we see the grade before the number here. And that's when everyone's like, girls will start to suddenly feel like, oh, like, people are talking about me, or, or Oh, that girl looked at me, and she must be thinking something about me. And the second guessing comes in, and I couldn't pay attention in class, and there's so much going on, and I'm really overwhelmed. But the supports that they relied on a lot involuntarily, slip away. And even at home, like your parents are even more supportive. And um, because you know, your kid was younger, and in high school, there is an expectation that you will self advocate that you will start to figure it out that you will start to take care of yourself. And then when the kids really kind of feel like they're kind of drowning under the pressure of that, of course, then the anxiety creeps in, then the sadness creeps in, then you know, there's bullying stuff that creeps in and problems with social friendships. So we can start to see how this starts to progress. And young women. And if you previously got a lot of identity from getting good grades, and that made you feel good, because that maybe that meant you were okay, then it makes sense, then that that would be the thing that you would put all of your energy into focusing on. And that would be the thing that would become most important. And so there's an inordinate amount of pressure on yourself to perform, because that now is now your only signal that you're okay. So I see lots of women who come to me as adults, and we talk about the whole question about your report cards. I think sometimes it's more about teacher comments than the actual grades. But the thing about grades I'm interested in so I'm not a diagnostician to be clear, but I do assess and recommend people to go for diagnosis. So the thing that I'm interested in, because some people will say, Well, you know, I had like a B plus average, I was doing okay, and I'm like, I don't care about your average. I don't know the point spread. I want you to tell me the marks that you got that were really great. But I want to hear about the couple that were like total dumpster fires. What happened there? I want I want that story. Why did you pick that class? Well, and the randomness of those things, is always like a bit of an ADHD indicator. If something terrible happened in your life, you lost a grandparent, something really awful happened and that explains it away. Then I'm less concerned. You know what I mean? So the context around these things always matter.
Patricia Sung 19:36
Yeah, it's funny that you say that because like when you okay, I was on on a roll and I had an academic scholarship, but when you look at my like, actually dig into the grades and you look at my midterm test scores, it would be like C plus D. Because getting into that test and trying to recall all the stuff was really difficult, but I had A's everywhere else. So it averaged out to be okay. Hey, because that test only counted for like 5% of your grade or something, and 10%. But it. It's so frustrating when people look at report cards, and they just look at the surface and the numbers. And that's it. They don't dig in. And it really is about the teacher comments. It's about the point spread, like you said, from low to high. And most people will just look and be like, Oh, well, you had A's and B's,
Christina Crowe 20:27
but everybody has a bad class every now and then. Right, right.
Patricia Sung 20:31
Let's be honest, we do tend to be trauma survivors. And so you know, you get one of these like explainable trauma, things that you're like, Oh, well, it makes sense that you know, you lost your grandma that year and your grades took a dive, it's like, would that have still happened? Even if your grandma hadn't died? Like, would you still have had those problems? Like it's such a layered problem is,
Christina Crowe 20:55
it's less about the achievements of our lives and more about the, the peaks and valleys between the achievements and the inexplicable dumpster fires, right? The things that come up and take you by surprise. And you're just kind of like, how did how did I get here, man, like when you just run that moment? on the bathroom floor? This does not make sense. That's when it's kind of like, oh, let's let's talk about Look, that's a great question. How did you write
Patricia Sung 21:24
the oxymoron of it, of where we are sitting at both ends of the spectrum at the same time, that is one of the biggest red flags to me when you're looking at ADHD, because you are the like, I was the girl who could sit and read a book from cover to cover for four hours straight and not look up. And I was also the girl who struggled to read her biology book, and absorb the information. And we live at the two ends of the spectrum. And so it's easy to explain. We know especially even if when you look at kids are like, well, he can sit there and play video games for hours. Yes. So he's on one end of the spectrum and attention. And then also at the other end of the spectrum and attention. And that ability to be at both ends, is where the red flags to me really show up.
Christina Crowe 22:14
When you look back on your time as a teacher, were you hip to ADHD, during that teaching time or after
Patricia Sung 22:22
i i had already been diagnosed, but I was I call it my closet ADHD years where I didn't tell anybody, and I hit it will have had, and I covered it up and pretended like everything was fine. So while I knew I had not yet started the journey of like really diving in to understand it, I knew a pretty good amount. But then when I was teaching, and I got gifted and talented, certified, I don't know if you have that in Canada, gifted. And there's there's a lot of correlation between kids with ADHD and the GED program. And, and it was just sitting there like listening to them describe the GT kids and I'm like, oh, that's, that sounds familiar, ADHD, probably both. Like all the adjectives, like 90% of them also fit kids with ADHD. And I was like, Man, I really gotta dig into this. And that's when I started getting into understanding it so much more was when I was teaching, but just knowing that how my brain worked, and, you know, we have kind of this, like, sixth sense for picking out our people we know, we know who they are, even if we don't know, we know, they who they are, like, we kind of like are attracted to them, I was able to really speaking to the kids who are struggling with different ways of learning and scaffolding them in another way. But other teachers would be like, why on earth would you do that? And I'm like, no, no, it's gonna it's gonna be great, it's gonna work and I got some interesting stairs, then such a breath of fresh air for those kids. And, and I feel like I was like, that's that is the gifting of ADHD is our creativity and how we can find the we can problem solve in ways that other people don't even, they're not even they don't even see outside the box and we can pull the box apart, flip it on the side where you construct it, make it a pyramid. And that is
Christina Crowe 24:22
I think one of the things I look back
Patricia Sung 24:23
most fondly on my teaching career was knowing that I was able to speak into kids lives who were written off
Christina Crowe 24:32
this intuitive knowing and understanding both of yourself that inner peace that's in there so before diagnosis like knowing that there's a you on the inside and a you on the outside that other people see without actually maybe even being able to articulate that. But they it in those moments when you're connecting like that. It's that that it's the human the inside that's connecting, which is what makes it feel so like synergistic. Again, and lovely in that moment. So knowing it's nice to think that you can look back over your life if you're grappling with an adult diagnosis. And looking back, because it's, it's really easy to just to look at all the bad stuff and diagnosis makes it so because they dredge up all the bad stuff. So we conveniently forget, like part of the protective factor so often, is when I'm like not about something, I often forget why I was mad in the first place, the feeling lingers with me. But the logic, intellectually and cognitively totally escapes me after a period of time, which is protective in the sense that I can kind of just get on with it and get on to the next thing that I'm interested in. But this piece that you can look back, and remember all the good things too. And the moments where ADHD probably saved your butt a lot. And we forget that right. And so I really appreciate the medication awareness and the taking medication stuff that you do, because one of the things that I like to say to people is that when you make a decision to take medication, a lot of parents are afraid of giving medication to their kids, because they think it's going to somehow change their personality. My kids like this quirky, weird, funny kind of kid, I don't like their unique, I don't really want to change that. I'm like, it won't, it doesn't change who you are. But and the minute
Patricia Sung 26:24
it does, you need to like throw up a red flag and get some help. Because the minute that happens, that's the proud.
Christina Crowe 26:30
Yeah, but what it's meant to do is like, reveal more of who you are, because what it's going to do is treat things that are symptomatic. So if it's if it's if it's treating something that's symptomatic, that wasn't your personality, that was that was something that was getting into trouble, ultimately. So we want to treat that stuff. So that you're, you're free to kind of figure out what's underneath it all. And that that unfolding that peeling back the layers of that onion, when you get to work with adults long term is such a wonderful privilege to be able to watch that unfold. And people I love it. It's It's incredible that transformations that some people make over time, it's really a beautiful thing. What are the things that you see in the people that you work with? Because because there's all these different, ADHD is so different and different presentations and people and so in my mind, sometimes I have all these like pockets of people and the way it affects them in different ways. And then, and then it helps me kind of figure out, okay, like, where am I going to start from and then I adapt everything according to the, you know, the person that's right in front of me. And, you know, you fall into this, I think kind of like this, this pattern of high performing person, and driven by lots of different things. And that's a different approach than some other issues that some people have had. So what are like, what are some of the big problems that people come to you with that you end up helping with over time
Christina Crowe 27:57
if you or your child was given a diagnosis of ADHD, that they're not really told what it means, or how it might change throughout their life. Maybe you've been given a prescription for medication, but not had the opportunity to engage in the rest of recommended treatment, either ADHD adapted therapy, or ADHD coaching. Maybe you've known since you were a kid that you have ADHD. The early attempts of treatment didn't go so well. Maybe you're a parent who's worried about making the right choices for your kid regarding medication. If there's gaps in the information that you think you were supposed to have gotten, then this is the course for you. DIY ADHD is a self paced online course created by yours truly, Christina Crowe, a registered psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada, you'll get all of the foundational information to fill in all the knowledge gaps you might not even know you have Reclaim Your Life. Click the link in the show notes to learn more about this resource, decide whether or not it's for you. And if you move forward, use the promo code CC podcast for 15% off
Patricia Sung 29:17
mama Are you ready to get away You are cordially invited to this year's annual retreat. Our successful as a mother luxury weekend getaway retreat conference amazingness that is happening this October. This is a chance for you to get away and take a break and truly rest for you to learn about your brain in a way that makes sense for you. And most importantly know that you are not alone and have a real life community of moms who get you we are staying at a beautiful four star hotel. This is an all inclusive event which means I will handle everything for you once you arrive I take care of your hotel I take care of your meals that you neither cook dinner Eat up, nor cut anybody else's food up that you truly get to have a weekend where you take care of you, because you deserve rest. You deserve to be taken care of. And I'm going to do that for you at this retreat. So I invite you to go ahead and grab your ticket at Patricia sung.com. Forward slash ADHD dash mom dash retreat again, that's Patricia sung.com forward slash ADHD dash mom, dash retreat, grab your ticket, and let's hang out in person, I cannot wait to meet you. Where do we start? I was like, we have so many problems.
Christina Crowe 30:38
You focus on moms, I mean, you're helping moms.
Patricia Sung 30:42
So I specifically work with moms. Because I Because honestly, I thought I was always going to work with kids, because I was a teacher. That makes sense, right? But I found that working with moms, I am now like helping the entire family. Because when Mom is well, and when Mom has skills, she's teaching those to her family. And I feel like that's where I can make the most impact in where we are now and for generations is to get the moms set up. So where I see us struggling the most is one, the all the other diagnoses that come along with ADHD. So usually, before you got into a diagnosis of ADHD, there's been some kind of like anxiety or depression or postpartum anxiety, depression or chronic fatigue, or bipolar that comes with the PMDD is like, all those other pieces have been treated first, or ignored first, either one. And that means that people feel very unsuccessful. Because they've been doing all these things for their problems and not getting as far as they quote unquote, should.
Christina Crowe 32:05
While sad, Patricia, that is really well said. So they're coming to because we find that to Bravo, that's going to be a piece I'm gonna highlight, you know, with with private psychotherapy, I am not the first person people are telling these problems to, you know, in some way or another. People have voiced the conflicts and the challenges in their life, like the repetitive ones that come up time and time again, to their family doctor, to their best friend, to their partner, to their hairdresser, to their mom, to their siblings for a long time.
Patricia Sung 32:42
Yep. And everyone says we look fine.
Christina Crowe 32:46
Yeah, and and then to your point, if you've had anxiety, either by itself, in addition to ADHD, or caused from living with undiagnosed ADHD, because we know that's a natural progression, you know, and that's been treated, and you maybe you got some benefit, but at the end of the day, it's still there. And then what, then people kind of come to me, they're like, Well, I'm just an anxious person. Or I'm, well, I mean, you're a human. So all humans are anxious. Like, what exactly do you mean by that? Right? You're, you're not like a mentally ill person, by nature of who you are. We need to figure out what's going on here. And if you haven't been getting better, it's not because you're not doing well, it's because we're treating the wrong thing. Maybe because patients don't fail treatments, treatments, failed patients, is really important for anyone out there that's been struggling for a long time to consider the idea that it's actually not them. We haven't been looking under the wrong we've been looking at the wrong rock, or we haven't found the right rock to look underneath. Yeah, right. So people come and then it's almost like, sometimes it's obvious right away. Sometimes people come saying, I think I have ADHD, sometimes. I'm actually working with someone for a while and even takes me by surprise with, you know, not very often, but sometimes it happens. I'm like, you know, I think it might actually be this. And it's one of those things where, where it just makes so much sense. And everything lights up. Someone can be like a textbook case even. And they're so frightened to believe that we might have finally figured it out. Because they've been here before, right? And that fear that we can actually be free of all this crap that's been holding us back is like enough to keep people from moving forward for a long time until they're ready. And so I just You did a great job describing that that's the same thing we see.
Patricia Sung 34:39
Yeah, and I like to use the analogy of a tree. Where if you're, if your root cause is the ADHD, and you're busy over here, pruning the anxiety branch and you're pruning the chronic fatigue branch and you're over here and you're doing lots of stuff and you're pruning all the branches, but yet you've never addressed the root. You're never We're going to have a healthy tree because you're just over here pruning and you're not addressing the main cause, not to say that you shouldn't do those things. But those are part of a bigger picture that we need to address the root first, when we dig into the ADHD, and we have healthy roots, we have lots of nutrients and water. We're doing well down here, then we can go up and start addressing all the pruning and making the tree look good.
Christina Crowe 35:25
That's a good visual. Did you ever I might be dating myself here when you're a kid. Did you watch the Flintstones? Yes. So you know, like,
Patricia Sung 35:33
I would say I'm probably not that much younger than
Christina Crowe 35:35
you. Well, when you know and Fred's in the car. And there's no for all of the people who are younger, who are like who are the Flintstones like the Stone Age family. And they, the funny thing is that they had these stone cars they put together with no bottom, obviously, because there's no engines back then. And the wheels were squares. So the like Fred's little feet and Barney's little feet were running. And that's how they made the cargo. And that's what it's like to be a mom with ADHD. It's like, if you just look at the highway, all the cars are going at the same pace. But when you look closely at Fred's and Bernie's car, their feet are running so fast under the surface to just keep up with everybody else who happens to be in a regular car with gas, or a Tesla. Yeah. And you're over here, pedaling with your toes. Yeah. And so it just becomes this thing is like you're used to just going and maybe wondering, is it supposed to be this exhausting? Is it supposed to be this hard to just like function? Why is it it's hard, is it really supposed to be this hard? You know what I mean, some stuff is just really hard. The pandemic, obviously, and Pandemic fatigue. And all of the things that have come with the past couple of years, of course, make it all harder. So we're not talking about things that you might have felt just in the past two years, like this is lifelong stuff, we try to trace back and it wasn't always there. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes it's not. The variance is usually the external stressors in your life. So at a time in your life, when a lot of external things were controlled for, and you didn't have a lot on your plate, and other people were helping you out and you had a routine, you wouldn't be as symptomatic. But when all of those things go away, you become much more symptomatic. So I you know, I find, for example, kids who have a parent that was a teacher, they flew under the radar, because their teacher parent was very structured at home can help be structured when you're trained as a teacher, right. So when those kids go off to university, they don't have their teacher, mom or dad suddenly creating order in their life, and that everything falls apart, or kids who played really competitive sports, all the way through school. And they have the camaraderie and structure and routine and physical exertion of sport. And when they stop playing sports, like there's interesting studies that show that ADHD is over represented in Olympic and elite athletes. And then it gets revealed when they come out of whatever level of competitive sport that is, you know, it's very interesting. Well,
Patricia Sung 38:10
I find it fascinating. And I haven't really dug into this yet. I'm like, this is one of my like, rabbit holes that I'm like, just waiting there lurking, I'm gonna get there at some point. But I find it fascinating, like what you said, where you have students who have been very involved in athletics, or had a teacher or very structured parent at home,
Christina Crowe 38:28
where you were doing well,
Patricia Sung 38:32
and all those coping mechanisms were serving you well. And then when you leave, somehow, we don't absorb those skills to replicate them on our own. When we're by ourselves, and it's one of those who I'm like, I really want to like, sit and just like, pull this apart. Because I'm like, I know, there's gonna be some good stuff when I, like, untangle this. But like, that's how I was, I'm just fascinated by like, I did so well, when I had all that support. And yet somehow, even though I had all of this support, modeled, I hadn't taken it on and learn how to execute it myself. So that when I showed up in college, I didn't know how to create those systems.
Christina Crowe 39:16
And you didn't need to learn myself, Oh, it was being right or you
Patricia Sung 39:20
everything was done for me. But you would think you think you would think that in seeing all that we would know what to do, but we don't
Christina Crowe 39:29
Oh, we know what to do. We don't have practice in the execution of it, which is a different feat of cognitive function. We people with you know, all the things to do. That's why they feel so bad about themselves if they didn't know we wouldn't from
Patricia Sung 39:44
Yeah, well, but when you're watching someone else, oh, and you're upset about it, that you can Yeah, and when you're watching someone else, do it so effortlessly.
Christina Crowe 39:52
And then you are like but how do I
Patricia Sung 39:55
do it with the way that I think and you don't realize that you need to do it in a different way for your brain. Like, this is where we have that disconnect between, I feel like I should know what I should do, because everyone showed me what to do. But yet somehow when I got to do it myself,
Christina Crowe 40:09
it's the consistence piece, right? The consistency, because whether it's effortless or not for the other person, because like I always think of like, keeping a consistent exercise routine is the last thing on my to do list. I do not know how people do something, like go to the gym four times a week for like years, right? Because I can do that, like nobody's business for like four months. And then it will not go for six years.
Patricia Sung 40:44
Yeah, there's definitely a time clock just didn't see
Christina Crowe 40:46
of it. It's just the so to me, that effortless piece comes in with like, you can just keep doing it. Like you don't need to stop and do something else because you got bored. And like balance it or you don't get overwhelmed with something like it's all of that stuff. On that note for any other moms who have ADHD that are listening, who are struggling to keep up, who maybe have just found out or they're just unpacking it, because to me unpacking this diagnosis is like a two three year journey. Like it's not something that happens in a couple of weeks, or six months or even, you know, because it means something different every new level that you get to have understanding your both yourself and what ADHD really means. What a moms with ADHD need to do differently in your experience, or give themselves permission to do differently, maybe I think
Patricia Sung 41:35
that like goes like thinking about your other question of like, what else do I see like this is the other big red flag I see is that we are so overwhelmed. And so burnt out that we want to do something different, but we don't even know where to start. And you hit that like freeze mode of, I don't know what to do now. And we just like, are frozen, we don't know what to do. And for me, it's a three step process is that one is learn about your brain, learn about ADHD, by itself, but then also how your ADHD shows up. Because everyone's ADHD is different. It's kind of like when you ask, in Italian Grandma, how you make the pasta sauce, yes, 10 Grandmas are going to tell you you need tomatoes, but then they're gonna give you a whole bunch of different recipes. They all turn out as processes, but they're all very different. And that's how your ADHD is going to show up for you very different, with a lot of the same themes as the person next to you. So you can't learn everything by knowing one person with ADHD. So that's step one is really understanding how your brain works. The second one is taking care of yourself, you got to put on your oxygen mask first. Like they tell you in the airplane. And you have to be in a healthy early state, maybe not. Maybe being in a healthy state sounds like too big of a stretch, but in a healthier state. Because when you take care of yourself, then you can have you have the capacity for taking care of other people. Which as moms were like not really like that's not impossible. And but it is it's a vital part of the process. And the third part is asking for help and getting support. Because the way that we're going to do things is different than how everyone else is going to do them. And we're going to need our village there with us. And whether that is the village that we were born with, whether we find those friends, whether we have to pay for a village, whatever it is that we need to do to create the support and the help that we need. We have to we can't do it by ourselves. Because like you said, we know what to do. But we don't know how to get there. And like that's the whole reason I started teaching courses because like I just started the podcast as a hobby. I wasn't ever planning on making this into a business. I wasn't I did not foresee this plan coming at all, where I watched all these moms who were like, okay, like, I get this now, but like, what do I do? What do we do now? And that's where like the whole process of teaching moms like how to use their calendar, how do you actually prioritize things? Because our brain doesn't do that for us automatically? How do we figure out a rhythm like a daily routine that makes sense for our selves, that we're not gonna get bored of three weeks later, and make sense for our family? But like, oh, well, my kid is in a new stage. Now it's gotta be different. I got to adjust it. Learning all those skills to fit how we function is a skill set that can be learned. But not if you're on Pinterest schooling charts. That's not where you're going to find the information unique. I love Pinterest. I'm wrong. But I shouldn't get on my sticker chart. soapbox here.
Christina Crowe 44:50
There's a role for all of that stuff. But it's got to be rolled out and executed in a totally different way because family life has to shift right So we stopped doing things the way our friends are doing them, and the neighbors have done them and our cousins and our aunts are doing them, we have to start doing them the way that makes sense for us and give ourselves permission to make new rules that makes sense for our family. It's a really big thing. One of the things that you hit on that also, I think, myself and all of my colleagues up here run into that's really common, is while we know we should ask for help, and we know that it's normal to ask for help, and we know that everyone's telling us, we should ask for help. It's really hard to ask for help. And what does it sounds like? Especially if that is the one thing we're very unpracticed to doing because our whole lives? Maybe we would have figured this out as kids if someone actually helped us. A lot of us weren't helped as kids. And then if you're in that high performing group, you didn't seem like you needed help. So nobody thought check. Yeah, seemed fine. So I didn't really think you needed help. You know, you were fine. People will even go so far as to say they'll override your own internal experience and tell you that you were fine. You know, even though you knew Great, well, you weren't fine, because because nobody asked and so you so a lot of us were left to our own, you know, to fend for ourselves to figure things out for ourselves. You know, on the one hand, there's resilience that came from that, and a lot of us are pretty wily, and a lot of us can figure things out. There's lots of jokes about Gen X and the feral generation on, you know, on tick tock, right, those kids made fun. I said, she asked me, I'm a Gen Xer. Um, but yeah, we are kind of a feral generation and figure things out. But you know, that's why we also need to try therapy, you know, at this stage of the game, because, you know, if we should have asked for help a lot sooner, you know, how do you work through that with people? Or do you? Well,
Patricia Sung 46:53
I mean, if they're talking to me, they started at least some part of asking for help. And, I mean, this is something that I personally, am still working through. Because, you know, we touched a little bit this, like when we did our Instagram Live, is that we've had this whole life where people told us a different perception of what we perceived. And so we started to think that our perception was wrong. And I see that as a pretty big theme within women with ADHD is that we just doubt ourselves, we, we don't trust our own gut. Even though our gut is actually spectacularly accurate, we've learned to ignore it or think it's not right. And part of that process is not asking for help, because we were supposed to be fine. So you don't need for help. So this is a skill that we have to practice. And, like being okay with being bad at it before we get good at it. So in a very practical sense, one of the things we talk about is like, like I want to in my time management course, is we look at okay, what are the things that? What are all the things that you do? What are all this of all the things you do? What are the things that you really hate doing? Can you give those jobs to somebody else? Can you teach your kids how to unload the dishwasher? If you hate unloading the dishwasher? Can you trade responsibilities with your partner so that there are more things that each of you like to do? Because I tend to just like, somehow, like accumulate responsibilities, and there's never been a discussion about who does what it's just all of a sudden, you're doing a lot of things, you didn't realize how you ended up doing them? So to have the actual discussion that, okay, I hate laundry, does this really have to be my job? Can Can someone else in the family take it? Can we pay for a laundry service? Can we like, come up with a new system, when you actually look at the things that you're doing, what you don't enjoy or are terrible at and then start to figure out? Where are the ways where I can get this thing off my plate. That's a great starting point. Because a lot for a lot of us moms, we don't even realize how many things we aren't doing. Because we go all day doing lots of things and we get to the end. We're like, I don't even want it today. But when you write it down on a piece of paper, you're like, how do I do all these things?
Christina Crowe 49:12
I know for sure there's some moms listening right now that are like, well, I don't like the way my you know, my kid unlocked packs, the dishwasher loads it or I don't like the way they do my laundry. That's why I do it. And I would just submit for evidence that if you're if you're kind of hanging on to really rigid ways of doing things that put a lot of extra things on your plate. You know what I'm going to say here, right? Like you're not doing yourself any favors. However, if you have ADHD that is actually a symptom of an executive dysfunction. In the section that we talk about black and white thinking or rigid concrete and flexible thinking, and it is a feat of executive function to become a More flexible thinker. So starting to consider Patricia just in the way you described it, what if, and maybe, and can I, and perhaps, and just being able to think about things in a different way, allowing yourself some space to just consider things differently. Like, sometimes I don't ask people to do anything, I'm like, I just want to be able to talk about it. Sometimes people are so afraid that if we talk about it, that means something is going to happen. And it's like, no, we can just talk about it. You can feel things and not do anything as a result of your feeling, or your emotion that comes up, right? So emotion comes up. And that's normal. And maybe we avoid something but maybe we don't have to. So that doesn't have to direct what we do, you actually get to stop and think and stopping to think is the thing that's hard with ADHD. So you can train your brain to do some stuff. With or without medication, there comes a point when, if your brain does not turn off at any point, like if you don't know what it's like to experience, you know, sometimes when you look at someone, and you're like, What are you thinking about? And they're like nothing. And they act, they actually mean nothing. And it's just unfathomable how someone could be thinking of nothing, that if you've never had times when you've been actually thinking of nothing? If you don't know what that's like, all the moms are laughing right now, then, then, you know, maybe it's worth looking into if this is something that's been plaguing you since childhood. Really, right? Because you deserve some peace. And you deserve to be able to start to think about things differently. Because as an adult, you're in charge of your life. No one else, right? Pinterest is not the boss of me. My religion will be the boss of me, right? My kids are not the boss of me. My partner is not the boss of me. My boss is not even the boss of me. You know? Like, how am I actually living my life? With me deciding what gets done in a day, not the X number of fires being lit in front of me that I feel like it's my job to put on them out.
Patricia Sung 52:10
Yeah, and I will offer this to like, when you are afraid to let something go. One that could be a coping mechanism that served you really well, at some point, but possibly isn't serving you right now, too. I like to weigh the difference between not having to do this thing. And having to look at it done poorly for a little while. What's more important, and for some people, this is going to drive them bonkers, that it's not done in a certain way. So it's like okay, yes, that is very hard for me, like I I fully own the non retentive adjective, I know the Italian. But yet number three, a lot of these things are skills that our kids need to learn to be functioning grownups. So as hard as it is to watch your kid put away the dishes wrong. They need to learn that skill so that they can be an adult who hopefully one day puts away their dishes and doesn't live on paper plates. So how can we turn this around and say, Okay, this is part of me being a quote unquote, good mom. This is part of my job is teaching my kids how to do these skills. So I'm going to be very uncomfortable right now. But I'm going to use this as a way to teach them how to be successful adults. And like this whole process that was like I won't get into but like,
Christina Crowe 53:43
modeling for kids how to be uncomfortable, and not let that take you down is like hands down and essential parenting Yeah, thing do at some point. So they
Patricia Sung 53:53
need to see you be uncomfortable and they need
Christina Crowe 53:55
to see you put away dishes and
Patricia Sung 54:01
and be and be okay with how it is. And it's like I have learned to it's okay for me to say like, Okay, this is really hard for me. I'm very frustrated right now and just talk my feelings out loud in a nuttin in an accusatory tone, but like just is I am frustrated right now. And I need a minute with this or I really, I really like having the dishes put away a certain way. But the teaching you is more important than me putting them away a certain way and like literally saying that out loud because sometimes our kids need to hear that it's okay. Like even though we're frustrated and grumpy, like it's okay because, like the mistakes are part of the process and allowing them that room to do it incorrectly so that they can learn and that it's okay that they did it badly.
Christina Crowe 54:50
In order to get I think narrating what's going on for yourself is actually a wonderful tactic to strengthen a mindfulness training practice for yourself. because sometimes I tell people like pretend you're in your own reality TV show. If you're in your kitchen, there's a camera up in the corner are kind of watching you, the cameras, you, obviously, and you're you're becoming the observer of yourself that really strengthens that mindfulness muscle, that ability to self reflect, it makes you present in the moment, which strengthens your working memory, which allows you to have more memory, like a lot of us don't remember a lot of stuff. And we might, it might be because of trauma, but it might just be because of ADHD, right? Because when we're zoning out of things, TV shows, conversations, all that kind of stuff. We're not laying down memory tracks for long term memory. Right. That's my big gaps in the memory of a lot of us. But thank you so much for all of this, because there were so many little gems in here that I really appreciate. Where can moms find you tell us about like you had mentioned a couple of courses, all of this stuff that you offer, and I'll make sure I link it all in the show notes.
Patricia Sung 56:00
So everything I do is under the same name for ADHD friendly pneus is it's motherhood in ADHD. So that's the name of the podcast. I say Christina was episode 143, I think so there's a ton of content there to binge and learn about your brain and figure out how it works and strategies and encouragement. The same thing, like my facebook group is named that. So if you are a Facebook er, and you want to find your people, they are a beautiful community of women that are supportive. And then I also teach courses in daily planning for ADHD moms and time management mastery for ADHD moms. So one is like a short program like a short course that you can watch the videos and implement pretty quickly. And the other one is a an 11 week program where we go through like, how do we create a routine that makes sense for you and for your family? And then also, then how do we have the ability to adjust that as your kids grow? And seasons change? And you're going from summer to school or school to summer? And dropping naps? Like how do we grow with our family, and still keep that like base layer of organization without wanting to poke our eyeballs out with forks because we're bored and, and, you know, the word routine makes our skin crawl like we're making this to fit you and your brain and your family. So
Christina Crowe 57:21
there's a lot of freedom and routine people are afraid of routine, sometimes I find because they don't want to be like trapped or like stuck with something that they can't be flexible with. And I think it's with more actually, it's less specific routine and a rhythm of life that's really predictable for you and for your kids. And the more there is a predictable rhythm of life, that that they can adjust for different stages of development for your whole family, the more you actually have a lot more freedom to have to have the times because you build in all the downtime you need. We build in the fun. Because a lot of the times are not the fun mums. Like I'm not a fun mom, I wish I was I actually it was actually New Year's resolution of mine, at one point literally wrote down being more fun Mom, can you imagine? No. I
Patricia Sung 58:11
mean, that's I'm the same way of a lot of us who were the high achieving perfectionist kind of types like we have trembled down that fun side of us. Because we didn't know how to do both. Because we are people like we talked about like where people have both ends of the spectrum. And so we either know how to be super structured and consistent. I hate that word consistent. And we're doing all the things and we're following all the rules, or we're Footloose, fancy, free and fun. And we feel like we can't like find a balance between the two. And there is there's a middle ground that we can find. But yes, the more structure you have, it actually creates the freedom there because you're not stressed about the laundry that didn't get done because soccer is tomorrow and you have to have the uniform for the championship game. Like all that stuff just weighs on you. So the more that you can create automation and ease around the things that have to get done as a mom, the more that you have space to be like you know what, we are going to go just randomly craft store and buy a thing to make a volcano today because we know because I know that I can and I don't feel guilty or stressed about it. And I'm not up till 3am Watching the soccer uniform.
Christina Crowe 59:18
Maybe that's what we do on Thursday afternoons. Like you know what I mean? Like maybe Thursday afternoons is our free time to go explore the town or the city and go to around the dollar store or the craft store or whatever, because that's actually built into a rhythm of life for us. So we don't have to wait until we hit the wall and we're exhausted and we're starved for that kind of creative play free space, because it's actually built into our life to have that time. Yeah. Because when
Patricia Sung 59:46
we like purposely try to be so onpoint because because we feel like everything's out of control and we try to like put a tight rein on everything. That's actually where things start to fall apart because then the fun side of our brain is gasping For error, and then that's how we ended up on this like rabbit hole and ended up guilt tripping ourselves into getting off track. Because we didn't create space for that,
Christina Crowe 1:00:10
yeah. And then life happens and throw something extra onto our plate that makes us drop the whole plate, and then hit the wall and the overwhelm, which I think we both talk about, in our respective content that both of us share, we both talk about a lot of the same thing. So that's really neat to see that.
Patricia Sung 1:00:28
Yeah, and when you and we also plan for those emergencies, because as much as we want life to be this, like ideal day where everyone eats home cooked meals, and you know, unicorns fly by, and all the glorious things happen, and no one throws up like that's not realistic as a mom. So we also know like we talked about, how do you have your like, basic plan for like, when the doodoo hits the fan, if all of a sudden you did end up at the craft store buying volcano supplies on Tuesday, okay, we know how to rearrange things so that everything still gets done. It's like the we're building things to fit your brain instead of trying to shove your brain into the chore chart with the stickers so easily. Okay.
Christina Crowe 1:01:12
Thank you so much for being here. I want to ask you one last thing, of course, for you. And it'll be a personal question, I guess. So for you, when you look back over the whole journey that you've experienced, what do you think has been the biggest gift about yourself, that you've kind of learned that maybe you didn't know before diagnosis?
Patricia Sung 1:01:36
I think in what I've learned in the last 40 years is that I was made this way, for a reason, like I'm not broken, you're not broken, you are worthy of support, you deserve to be happy in your life the way that you are. And that when we lean in to who we are, there's so much beauty and how we can create a life that makes sense for us and use all of our strengths to make the world a better place. And it is possible, it is possible to have a life that you love with ADHD when you have the support there to do it.
Christina Crowe 1:02:21
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. us so welcome. It's wonderful.
Patricia Sung 1:02:27
I also realized that all my yammering, I don't think I actually said the website, which is motherhood and adhd.com. Like I said a lot of stuff don't think I actually tell people where to go. I think he might have said anyway,
Christina Crowe 1:02:38
I'll link it, I'll link it for sure. So all your info will be there.
Patricia Sung 1:02:44
Think that's the beauty of talking with people. They usually when you're like I'm not sure if I said this and they're like, I'm not sure either. We'll make sure it happens.
Christina Crowe 1:02:51
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Christina Crowe 1:03:00
That's it for today, my friends. We hope you enjoy being a fly on the wall for this one. Leave me some messages through the page on Anchor if you have any questions that you want follow up on and please check the show notes for all the relevant links that we did discuss today. If you liked the show, please like and share it, share it in your snobbish social media tag us dig a little deeper therapy. And that kind of lets us know that we should keep doing this and it will help it the podcast show up in all the places that you do listen to podcasts until next time.
Patricia Sung 1:03:55
More Resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhood in adhd.com