Emotional regulation — and yelling — as a mom with ADHD from ADHD Aha! Podcast by Understood.org with Laura Key #255
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Meet my friend Laura, host of the ADHD Aha! Podcast by Understood.org. In this episode, Laura and I chat about managing emotions with ADHD - specifically as a mom who yells a lot.
Laura shares:
Patricia Sung was diagnosed with ADHD in her first year of college. It wasn’t until she became a mother, and other people relied on her, that she realized just how much ADHD affected her. Patricia now hosts the Motherhood in ADHD podcast. Join Patricia and host Laura Key as they talk about managing emotions with ADHD. Patricia explains the concept of “raging” — that moment when you go from 99 to 100 and emotions boil over. She also shares strategies that can help!
Laura Key is an editor and content strategist with nearly 20 years of experience. As host of the ADHD Aha! podcast, she draws from her own experiences with ADHD. This lets her connect with podcast guests and listeners on a deeper level. Her knowledge covers a wide range of subjects, like parenting, special education, lifestyle, and more.
Be sure to subscribe to the ADHD Aha! Podcast.
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Welcome to the Best Of Friends Series, where you are meeting a few of my 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 this January.
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>> use 1 simple movement to disrupt growing anxiety so you can avoid a total shutdown
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Patricia Sung [00:00:02]:
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 you, 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 wanna be good moms. But, spoiler alert, you are already a great mom.
Patricia Sung [00:00:52]:
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. While I am on break for the next few weeks, I am bringing you some friends. This is my best of friends episode, and these are all interviews that I've done for other people's podcasts. First of all, thank you to these hosts for sharing their episode with us.
Patricia Sung [00:01:23]:
And I want you to go in the show notes and see where do you find them? Go listen to their other episodes. Put their show in your queue, in your download list so that you have an extra friend to hang out with when you're cleaning or on a walk or riding in the car. Every time I am interviewed, I find myself often sharing very similar things, but there's always some nuances and new things that, oh my, wow. I have never shared that before. I've never talked about this in this way. And I can't wait for you to get a new flare and perspective and, a new podcast friend to join you today. So listen in to this episode on A Friend's podcast. Go check them out and enjoy this Best of Friends episode.
Patricia Sung [00:02:05]:
Here's my episode from Laura Key from Understood's ADHD podcast. I think the, like, true moment came when I became a mom and realized that all of the strategies and skills that I had weren't cutting it anymore, and I needed to do something different. And that's really when I dove in to figure out, how do I live well as a mom with ADHD, and be the kind of mom that I wanna be, and be able to raise the kind of kids that I wanna release into the world one day.
Laura Key [00:02:42]:
This is ADHD a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I head up our editorial team here at understood.org. And as someone who's had my own ADHD moment, I'll be your host. I'm here today with Patricia Sung. Patricia is an ADHD coach for moms with ADHD. Maybe I'll call you later about that. And the host of the motherhood and ADHD podcast.
Laura Key [00:03:14]:
Patricia, welcome to the show today. So happy to have you.
Patricia Sung [00:03:17]:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm just I cannot wait to dive in this conversation.
Laura Key [00:03:21]:
Let's start with when you were first diagnosed. I know it was not recent, which, you know, it's always interesting with women with ADHD because so many women with ADHD are diagnosed later in life, especially these days. So tell me about your diagnosis.
Patricia Sung [00:03:35]:
So I was like, technically, I would still call myself a later diagnosis because I was diagnosed in college. I was diagnosed in the year 2000. So my freshman year of college, and I went from being, like, an excellent student. I was on the National Honor Society. I was at Tulane on a merit based scholarship. And I got there and fell apart. And I almost failed out my 1st semester because all of a sudden, I was in charge of all the things, and I didn't actually have the strategies in place that I thought I did. And then when it all of a sudden was on me to show up to 8 AM class on my own without my mom there waking me up.
Patricia Sung [00:04:14]:
And it was on me to figure out how to get 300 pages of reading done in 2 weeks with no one to break it up in chunks for you like they do in high school. And, like, all those things that the way that, like, high school prepares you, like, I didn't realize that I hadn't internalized, like most of those systems. So I fell apart. I almost failed out. And thank goodness my doctor recognized it, which I know, like, admittedly is, like, really lucky that she saw me and was like, I think you have ADHD. And I was just like, what? Like, I didn't even know what it was. I didn't know what it meant. So thankfully, she referred me to the student services center at school, and they did the full shipping battery work up on me.
Patricia Sung [00:04:52]:
And that was a it was like a wake up call, but at the same time, it wasn't it because we didn't know as much back then, we didn't realize all that comes with it. And so it was really just like, okay. Well, here's some medicine to help you study and you need to learn some study skills. Good luck. We didn't fully understand, like, all of the emotional regulation and the anxiety and the depression, like, all those underlying things that show up when you have ADHD. So it was a, I guess, technically, a late diagnosis, but I've known for 24 years at this point. But I do like, I look back and I'm like, oh, poor, like, poor little Patricia. Like, I wish 10 year old me had known.
Patricia Sung [00:05:24]:
I wish 13 year old me had the skills, like, socially to be able to adapt. Like, I got both ends.
Laura Key [00:05:32]:
Paint a picture for me of what you mean by fall apart. That's a term that you used twice.
Patricia Sung [00:05:37]:
I think that I didn't realize how hard I was working to hold it all together when I didn't know that I had ADHD. And I didn't realize how much I was like duct taping things and like white knuckling things and trying to hold on as tightly as I could in order to keep it all together. So when I got to college, it was like all the stuff that I was already dealing with. And then on top of it are all these new experiences and all these new responsibilities. And, like, the culture shock of moving to like, I grew up in Ohio and I went to Tulane, which is in New Orleans. Like, it's a completely different, like, culture wise. And here, like, you don't have your family system. Everything was different.
Patricia Sung [00:06:22]:
It was, like, all that white knuckling that I was doing to hold it all together. I couldn't do it anymore. So when I fell apart, it's like, it wasn't just that my grades suffered. It was that emotionally, I was a mess. Socially, I was falling apart. I was like, all of a sudden, every level of me was not at a good place. And I was like, what is happening with my life because I had such a different concept of myself of being a very put together and organized person until that moment when all of a sudden I was very not organized and I was not put together. And it's like I lost part of my identity as well.
Laura Key [00:07:01]:
So I'm noticing some similar threads between your story and mine. One of them being that I didn't realize you were from Ohio. I'm from Ohio too. That's so exciting. Where in Ohio are you from?
Patricia Sung [00:07:10]:
I grew up in Brecksville, which is a tiny town between Cleveland and Akron.
Laura Key [00:07:14]:
We grew up about 15 minutes away from each other Where? Tricia. That is so funny. I'm from Copley.
Patricia Sung [00:07:20]:
No way. That's crazy.
Laura Key [00:07:21]:
Yeah. So there we are, 2 little girls growing up in in Ohio in between the city and the country, and I remember having a similar experience when I got to college. Now I didn't have someone who spotted ADHD symptoms in me, but I had gotten straight a's all through high school, whatnot. I continued to white knuckle through college. I somehow managed to continue to get good grades, but, like, I was struggling. Yeah. Were you able to reflect back even on your high school years, your middle school years, and be like, oh, yeah. I was struggling with this stuff back then.
Patricia Sung [00:07:52]:
No. I didn't fully understand what it meant to have ADHD. Pieces of it made sense, but really just in the sense of school. Like, for example, my sophomore year biology class, the teacher was very much a lecturer. Like, when he would say something, I would write it down. But whatever he said while I was writing, I missed. So it's like I was getting, like, half the information that I could reflect back and see why that made sense and why that was a struggle. But, like, I couldn't have put into words, like, oh, that's because I struggle with audio processing and blah blah.
Patricia Sung [00:08:22]:
Like, I didn't do, like, oh, okay. I have ADHD, so that meant biology was hard when it was a lecture format.
Laura Key [00:08:27]:
When did you start to put it together that this isn't just about school?
Patricia Sung [00:08:32]:
I would say it really kicked in when I became a mom. So my oldest is 9, and I had a really rough transition into motherhood. I had awful postpartum anxiety. I had DMIR, which I most people have never heard of, but it's when you're breastfeeding and your milk lets down. The hormone surge causes feelings of anywhere from, like, despair all the way to, like, suicidal thoughts for some people. Hormones are crazy. But, like, that time period was just so hard. And all of a sudden, I realized, like, all the strategies that I had worked really hard to set up in the last trying to think, like, how probably, like, 15 years between when I got diagnosed when I had my first kid.
Patricia Sung [00:09:12]:
All those strategies suddenly didn't work well because I wasn't driving my schedule. I wasn't the one deciding when I go to sleep or when I eat lunch. Like, sleep deprivation is a torture tactic for a reason. Like, not getting enough sleep is really hard on everyone. It is especially hard for people with ADHD. But it really wasn't until my oldest was out of the newborn stage, I was able to kind of get my wits about me and be like, Okay, this isn't working. What do I need to do? And that's where I like double down. I was like, Okay, this is serious.
Patricia Sung [00:09:43]:
I can't function as a mom with ADHD with what I've been doing. What am I gonna do differently?
Laura Key [00:09:50]:
Was it something that you thought about
Patricia Sung [00:09:51]:
a lot, the fact that
Laura Key [00:09:52]:
you had ADHD up until then? Or was it something that in this fog of sleep deprivation and, like, all of the hormones and everything that goes along with being a new mom that popped back into your mind?
Patricia Sung [00:10:03]:
Well, that's a good question. When I think about the time from when I got diagnosed till I had my son, the way I looked at my ADHD was like a thing that I had to bandage up and cover up and support as much as possible, but like try to hide. I didn't tell people about it. It was a hide this information about yourself because it's a defect and figure out how to do everything so that nobody knows that you have it. So you can try to live the most normal life and pretend like everything's fine. It's like it was like if I was like sum it up in a general feeling of what I was trying to do. As I was researching, like, how do I support myself as a mom? I don't know where but the thought came into my head of like, hey, maybe this has something to do with it. And that's when I started down the rabbit hole and realizing there really wasn't much information out there.
Patricia Sung [00:10:53]:
There are some wonderful women who have been pioneering. My Google search did not find them, unfortunately, because I sure wish it did. But I really couldn't find much then. So that's even like, that's how I ended up starting my podcast. Like, I was probably, like, 3 years after that because I wanted moms to know that there are resources available and you don't have to struggle like this. It's not necessary.
Laura Key [00:11:20]:
What ADHD challenges do you feel like you struggle the most with as a mom with ADHD?
Patricia Sung [00:11:25]:
D, all of the above.
Laura Key [00:11:27]:
If I had
Patricia Sung [00:11:28]:
to name a few, one would be the concept of time. I don't know I don't know anything about time. If you stuck me in a room with no clock and, like, no windows, like, I couldn't see the passage of time and you came back a few minutes later and like, how long have you been in I would have no idea if I was there 15 minutes or 4 hours. It is really hard when that affects your kids. It was hard before, but it only affected me. Then, like, when I got married, then it affected my partner, which is a problem. But when I had kids and all of a sudden you're running late to swim lessons or you're running late to school, there's a whole another level of guilt and shame that gets layered on. And then I'd say the second part would be the energy regulation of just knowing, like, when I can go hard and when I have to rest and knowing that, like, I can't expect myself to be a unicorn that does all the things all the time.
Patricia Sung [00:12:14]:
I have to manage my energy levels, especially as someone who's recovering from a chronic illness that, like, thankfully, I'm doing much better. I'm in remission at this point. And then the third thing would be emotional regulation is that I'm a yeller when I'm not in a good place. When I'm not taking care of me, I'm a yeller. And I don't want my kids to grow up with an angry mom who yells all the time. So I've had to do a lot of work for myself to be able to keep myself out of chaos and overwhelm and burnout and take care of me so that I can show up well. Like, I don't expect to be perfect, but those are the 3 that I think are the hardest for me.
Laura Key [00:12:51]:
Can we stay with the emotional regulation and in particular the I'm a yeller? You might even hear a change in the tone of my voice because this is something that I've struggled with for a while with my kids. We have our kids are the same age, by the way, so we're living mirrored lives. We're both from Ohio. We're both podcast hosts, moms with ADHD, and we both yell a lot, it sounds like. And we're laughing, but my god. It is so painful in that moment right after you yell. Mhmm. And you realize that all of your irritability and all of the things that you're personally struggling with then have transferred onto your family and onto your kids.
Laura Key [00:13:27]:
God, the guilt and the shame. Tell me more what's happening in your brain and maybe what you've heard from people you've talked to on your show.
Patricia Sung [00:13:35]:
So when we look at emotional regulation, this is one of the things that's not talked about enough in my opinion because a lot of the symptoms that we are looked at when you're looking at like the DSM 5, there's a lot of quantitative things. So they have to be able to measure it. What is not as clear is this idea of emotional regulation and being able to adjust your actions and feelings based on the situation and the input coming in. And when you have ADHD, we just struggle so much with filtering out a lot of the things that are coming in. Like, to me, I'm like, I don't have an attention deficit. I have too much attention and I struggle putting it in the right place. And things that I don't want to enter in, enter in, and I need to keep them out. I do a lot of that work with my clients too of, like, how do we keep other people's emotions out? Because we tend to be emotional sponges.
Patricia Sung [00:14:27]:
And so somebody comes in in a bad mood, and all of a sudden we're in a bad mood, and we have no idea why. But when we are struggling, if you think about like your stress level as level 1 to 10, at the top, everything's great. And as you start to struggle, you move down the ladder and you're at level 5, as my therapist always says, nothing good happens after 5, When you start moving down and all of a sudden you're at a 10, that's when the explosion comes. And I call her Medusa mom because, like, all the snakes come out and she starts yelling at everybody. Like, if anyone looks at her, they're dead. Like, that kind of level of explosion is down at the bottom at 10. And when we are underground and we are underwater at 10, we're not functioning in the way that we want to. We are full on.
Patricia Sung [00:15:09]:
We are past fight or flight. We are in the depths of stress response. And in that moment, we aren't able to use all the tools that you have accumulated. You forget that you read all the books and you listen to all the podcasts and you went to all the therapies. All these tools are out the window because at that point, your brain is not sending the resources to your logical thinking part of your brain. It's in survival mode. So as moms, when we have ADHD, it's like all day long, there's input coming in. Your toddler gets mad because you gave him the purple cup and they wanted the orange cup.
Patricia Sung [00:15:43]:
And there was traffic and your shirt's kinda itchy and you need to cut the tag out, but you forgot, but you can't do it now that you're wearing the shirt. And then somebody side eyes you and you're like, well, are they mad at me? They might be mad at me. I think they're mad at me. What are all the things that I said to them in the last 6 months? Maybe they're mad at me. And we all of a sudden get to the level of this Medusa mom level explosion is because all day long, all these things were coming in. And they were bringing our stress level to the point where we weren't able to control it. Anxiety can be debilitating. And oftentimes, it's obvious, stage fright, heights, claustrophobia, panic attacks.
Patricia Sung [00:16:23]:
But anxiety can also be subtle when you can't fall asleep at night thinking about your sick parent or your teen who's struggling making friends. It can be helicoptering around your toddler at the playground or not listening to your partner because you're in your mind spiraling about your kids' school struggles. People with ADHD can hyperfocus on these worries to the point where your worry takes center stage. But what you really want to be is present in the moment, more carefree, feeling lighter, having that space and the freedom to be the fun mom that you thought you would be. If you're ready to feel more relaxed and calm every day, join me in my upcoming event, the ADHD Anti anxiety Workshop. In less than an hour, I will teach you 3 ways to stop anxiety in its tracks. It's time to let go of the grip anxiety has on your happiness, and for you to step into the main character role of your everyday life. Cherry on top, it's free for now.
Patricia Sung [00:17:18]:
It will be a paid course shortly after, so sign up while there's still no charge. Head over to patriciasung.com/workshop, and sign up for this event. Now, if it is after the event, still head over to that link. It'll have the information on how to get the workshop, and see whatever new workshop I have coming for free. Again, that's patriciasung.com/workshop. It's time to say no to worry. The workshop is taking place on January 23rd, that's a Thursday, at 11 AM CST, which is noon EST. So often we hear with people with ADHD, it's like, oh, well, they went from 0 to a100.
Patricia Sung [00:17:55]:
I don't know why. Wrong. You just watched 99 to a100. But all day long, that 0 to 99 was happening. And a lot of us aren't aware of the signals that we're getting from ourselves, whether that's somatically, like a feelings in your body, whether it's your thoughts, we don't realize that 0 to 99 change. And it's not till 99 to a 100 the explosion happens. And then we're like, I don't get it. Why did I yell at my kid? Because he spilled the water.
Patricia Sung [00:18:19]:
It's just water. Well, that's because 0 to 99 already happened. So how do we deal with the 0 to 99 before it gets to 100? We have to be able to work with our stress levels. Like if you feel like oh my gosh, I think I'm at a level 7. I'm already getting really irritated. Like how do we get ourselves to a 6 or 3 so that we have the capacity to make it all the way through the day? Because no, you know, spoiler alert here. For moms, the hardest part of the day is usually homework bedtime. That end of the day, like, gotta get all the care in before we go to bed.
Patricia Sung [00:18:54]:
And that is also the time we are the most stressed. We are the most worn out. We have the least amount of energy. So a lot of the work that I do with moms is figuring out how do we know that we're getting stressed? How do we alleviate that so that we don't hit 100 and explode with everybody? Because we can't control the fact that there was traffic and we can't control the fact that our toddler wanted a different color cup, but we can control how we react to it. But when we don't know that we are extra susceptible to those swings, then we start to blame ourselves thinking that, like, oh, this is my fault. I'm an awful mom. How can you be so, like, insensitive? What's wrong with you? But that just makes us more stressed and, like, adds to the problem. Yeah.
Patricia Sung [00:19:35]:
So it's like this, like, vicious cycle that doesn't Totally. Improve.
Laura Key [00:19:40]:
Patricia, that might be the most insightful, thoughtful, empathetic explanation of that 0 to a 100, which is actually no. You're just saying 99 to a 100 that I've ever heard. So first, I just wanna say thank you for that.
Patricia Sung [00:19:53]:
Thank you. I worked hard on that analogy.
Laura Key [00:19:56]:
Well, I really appreciate it. It's extremely resonant in my life even right now. Can be hard to explain to people and your partner. They're like, what just happened? I'm like, it's not what just happened. It's what's been happening all day, and I just wanna sit down and go experience analysis paralysis on the couch by myself
Patricia Sung [00:20:15]:
before. Yeah.
Laura Key [00:20:16]:
Have have you ever have you or your guest ever used the term, raging?
Patricia Sung [00:20:20]:
I mean, it's not a frequent word of mine, but I know what you mean.
Laura Key [00:20:24]:
Yeah. What do you think I mean when I say that? I think maybe I'm looking for someone else to explain it to me.
Patricia Sung [00:20:28]:
The way that I would think of raging is when you hit that level 10 stress or you went from 99 to a100, in that moment, your body is looking for a release of that stress. And just like we think back to, like I'm sure a lot of us have heard that saying of, like, well, you're you know, when there's a tiger chasing you in the jungle, you're, you know, you're in that level of stress. It's like, yeah. Unfortunately, mine was caused by my 9 year old rolling his eyes when I said it's time to practice piano. But, like so I don't have tiger, but I got a lot of eye rolls. Like like, when you hit that point, I like to think this is kinda like an out of body experience. Like, I'm watching myself go totally off the rails, and it's like my body's like, I have to get this stress out of my body. I cannot contain this anymore.
Patricia Sung [00:21:16]:
I cannot hold it anymore. I cannot carry anymore. And it's like this runaway train just takes off.
Laura Key [00:21:22]:
Yeah. Like, the watching yourself really resonates.
Patricia Sung [00:21:25]:
It feels very out of control until that stress gets out of your body. And then you're able to go back through and, like, get back to, like, a normal homeostasis. But, like, the thing I always tell my clients is, like, if you're in this really overcharged state and you go down to go back to, like, I call, like, the green level, like, you were at red, it was terrible. To get back to green, you have to pass through yellow. And that is a very uncomfortable place to be because, you know, you just yelled at everybody and you're embarrassed and you feel guilty, and you have to come back through and your body has to reset down. If you're able to not everyone can. And that uncomfortableness is where all that guilt and shame gets stirred up. That's the part where, like, it starts to get more into your control, but that's the when you're like, oh my goodness.
Patricia Sung [00:22:13]:
What is wrong with me? And, also, how do I stop this?
Laura Key [00:22:16]:
That is the painful part because now you are aware you're not just on autopilot anymore. And sometimes, I don't know if if you relate to this, but sometimes I will, subconsciously, I don't know, stay in that out of my body place or that raging place because I don't wanna go through that yellow
Patricia Sung [00:22:32]:
Mhmm.
Laura Key [00:22:32]:
Because it's too painful. Yes. Especially because and maybe this is me. You can tell me if if this is an experience you have. When you get to green, you have had that release. And even though, emotionally, you may feel like crap because of what just happened, physically, I feel better. I feel more regulated, but everybody around me is reeling Yes. From me.
Laura Key [00:22:53]:
It it might be one of the most, like, painful things that I personally experience as a mom with ADHD.
Patricia Sung [00:22:59]:
My goal is how do I get moms the skills to be able to get that released feeling before Yeah. We hit the overload.
Laura Key [00:23:09]:
Let's talk about that. What have you figured out?
Patricia Sung [00:23:13]:
I mean, it's different for everyone. Everyone has their own preferred ways of regulation. I think one of the harder parts is right now, a lot of our culture moves to, like, technology and devices to try to avoid hitting that red zone. And, usually, the technology just delays it. It doesn't repair. It doesn't get you to a less stressed state. It just helps you, like, zone out so that you're not still moving up, but it doesn't actually solve anything. You just get to, like, step off the ladder for a second and be like, I'm gonna distract myself, which sometimes we need.
Patricia Sung [00:23:50]:
Like, not the it's not to say that's a problem. But we're not actually repairing anything. We're not resolving anything. And so everyone's gonna be different. I mean, obviously, there's for some people, it's do you wanna throw your kids in the stroller and tick go on a walk for a little bit? Just being in nature, is that gonna help you moving your body? Is that gonna help you? Like, if you're a musician, can you go play a song? If you're an artist, can you go paint? But, you know, most moms are gonna be like, I don't have time to paint. Totally. But these ways that we take care of ourselves, sometimes it's like, oh, look. It's 3 PM, and I never eat breakfast or lunch.
Patricia Sung [00:24:26]:
I just had 3 soggy goldfish that my toddler handed me. Like, sometimes it's just eating a meal.
Laura Key [00:24:33]:
Oh, you just said a mouthful. No pun intended. That's, like, one of the first things that goes for me is, like, oh, no. I can't eat right now. What do you mean eat right now? I I I have to go do all the things. Right? I gotta go do the laundry or whatever, maybe. I gotta get the purple cup for my toddler.
Patricia Sung [00:24:49]:
There's that saying, halt, hungry, angry, lonely, thirsty. Just those simple things that we as moms put on the back burner for ourselves. Every time, if we're looking at what needs to be done, our whatever we need is never at the top of the list. It's not even in the middle of the list. It's usually at the bottom or we forgot about it. It didn't even get on the list. Like, these little things that we do to take care of ourselves are not luxury item. You can't ignore your basic needs and then expect that things are going to go well as much as we've tried as moms.
Patricia Sung [00:25:25]:
Yeah. It's like, it doesn't work.
Laura Key [00:25:36]:
Why don't we talk about some more realistic wins for women with ADHD, for moms with ADHD? Like, I'm trying. I'm trying so hard. Often failing, but trying. I'm getting there to acknowledge the wins that I do have. Yeah. Like, here's an example from yesterday. I've been having a crappy week. I'm just gonna say it.
Laura Key [00:25:58]:
And I've been wanting to crawl under the covers so that I don't go raging on my family, frankly. And I got home from work the other day, and I just wanted to go be alone for, like, an hour. And sometimes I disappear, and then I feel guilty because I disappear. I disappeared for, like, 15 minutes, and then I came back, and I sat down at the table with my kids. And rather than turn on the TV with them and just, like, sit there and zone out, I got out this giant atlas that we got because I love maps, and I want my kids to see, like, maps and look at, like, what's the state flower of Arkansas or whatever it may be. And they were really interested, and that was 10 minutes that we spent together, and it was over really fast. It's not a big deal, but it felt like a huge damn win for me. Yeah.
Laura Key [00:26:43]:
So that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.
Patricia Sung [00:26:45]:
I think it's really important that we celebrate those tiny things. Sometimes, I've heard someone call them, like, the glimmers.
Laura Key [00:26:53]:
I like that.
Patricia Sung [00:26:53]:
The little moments in time that, like, really shine. That's what we're looking for. We're not looking for this giant difference. I think a lot of times when we have ADHD, we think, like, tomorrow's the day. Tomorrow's the day I'm gonna be a new person, and I'm gonna wake up at 5 AM, and I'm gonna do sunrise yoga, and I'm gonna do some quiet time, and I'm gonna journal, and then I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna go to the gym, and I'm gonna go to bed early, and, like, I'm gonna spend quality time with my kids. Like, we think we're gonna wake up and be another person tomorrow. We could get there eventually, but for us to wake up and expect to do something utterly and entirely different from what we've always done is a really unrealistic burden to put on ourselves. So we wanna make these changes and really tiny ways.
Patricia Sung [00:27:33]:
I call them baby steps, like just one little thing that will make tomorrow easier. So it can be something like if you want your morning to be better tomorrow, can you do one thing? Like, can you just like, can you pack one lunch? Can you make sure the backpacks are ready to go? Or you actually looked at the calendar tomorrow to see what's going on. Be like, oh, look, there's a field trip tomorrow. Let me make sure that you've got what you need. Like, one thing that makes tomorrow better. Let's celebrate that. If you wanna work out, can you just get your yoga pants on instead of your pajama pants? Like, even if you don't even exit the house, if you made the change from pajamas to yoga pants, you made one step in the direction so that a week from now or a month from now, you see the difference. When we celebrate those tiny things, then we see the progress we're making, and our brain start to notice that.
Patricia Sung [00:28:22]:
Like, it's confirmation bias is the neuroscience term for it. Like, when you see the little things happening in the direction that you want, your brain continues to look for confirmation that that's where you're going. Whereas if you're looking for, like, this is so hard. I really suck. I never do anything, like, right in the world. Like, then your brain keeps looking for examples of that. So we have to do something tiny that's doable and start moving in the right direction.
Laura Key [00:28:44]:
Tell me an example of a a glimmer that you've had recently.
Patricia Sung [00:28:47]:
I have worked really hard on apologizing to my kids when I mess up and going through that repair process. And it is a lot. I gotta eat crow a lot, man. It's hard. I feel you. But the other day, my oldest, he had gone upstairs to get ready for bed and started reading a book instead. And I got upstairs with his younger brother thinking that he was already gonna be, like, 2 or 3 steps in. And here he is on his bed reading his book, which, you know, is lovely because I know a lot of kids don't like to read.
Patricia Sung [00:29:19]:
And yet still, my child is not ready for bed. My husband's out of town. I'm like, can you please just help me out? And I didn't yell. And I was like, you you got it. You got put the book away. We gotta get moving here. It was like, it was still my grumpy voice, but I wasn't yelling. I'm like, okay.
Patricia Sung [00:29:34]:
And I put the younger one to bed first. I show up in his room and he goes, mom, I'm really sorry that I read my book instead of getting ready for bed. I it was everything I could to, like, hold it together of, like, not only did I hold it together, but, like, he recognized his mistake and apologized for it. Oh, these little babies. And it's, like, so innocent of, like, I'm sorry I read my book.
Laura Key [00:29:59]:
I know. I'm like, oh, I don't even know.
Patricia Sung [00:30:01]:
I'm not even reading the book like, but that moment of like, oh my gosh, how far have I come that I was able to hold it together on a rough day, the all the things are like stacked against me yesterday, and I still figured out how to use my skills, how to hold it together, and then to know my kid learned from, like, this huge work that I've been doing in trying to apologize for things, which is, like, not my strong point. Like, that was a really awesome parenting win.
Laura Key [00:30:28]:
That's beautiful. Patricia, what's coming up for you? What's going on with your with your show and and everything else?
Patricia Sung [00:30:35]:
So I am like first of all, I don't know if you're gonna be able to see me, but I have my 1,000,000 balloons behind me. My podcast just hit a 1000000 downloads this summer, which was a huge celebration. When I first started, people told me there weren't enough ADHD moms out there for this to make a difference and I should change what I was talking about. So, like, woo hoo. We are out here and strong and that makes me really happy. And then I have my annual retreat coming up in October. It's a weekend for ADHD moms to get away, and I take care of everything. And my group coaching is kicking back up for the semester.
Patricia Sung [00:31:06]:
So helping moms learn how to emotionally regulate and all the stuff that we've talked about today, how do we gain those skills so that we can be the moms that we wanna be. And then I have a community where we meet every Wednesday. So if you want that community support, that's there too. So I have so many resources available. You can go to my website. It's my podcast name for everything, motherhood and ADHD. There's an awesome toolkit on there where you can download a bazillion things for free and check it out. But please come join something, like, do something.
Patricia Sung [00:31:38]:
You don't have to do this alone. You don't have to be by yourself. You don't have to struggle on your own. There is coaching available. There's community available. There are check sheets. If you're like, all I can do is a check sheet right now. Cool.
Patricia Sung [00:31:49]:
That's there too. Do something for yourself that moves you in the right direction because you don't have to suffer by yourself.
Laura Key [00:31:57]:
Patricia, thank you so much. This conversation was really meaningful to me. I'm gonna carry it with me today and beyond. Maybe I'll listen back to it when I need to be reminded of some things. So thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you.
Patricia Sung [00:32:09]:
You are so welcome. Thank you for having me.
Laura Key [00:32:19]:
Thanks for listening. As always, if you wanna share your own moment, email us at adhdahatunderstood.org. I'd love to hear from you. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode. We have more resources and links to anything we mentioned. This show is brought to you by understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org / give.
Laura Key [00:32:52]:
ADHD is produced and edited by Jessamine Molly. Jessamine, are you there? Hi, everyone. I'm still here. And Margie DeSantis.
Patricia Sung [00:33:01]:
Hey. Hey.
Laura Key [00:33:02]:
Our theme music was written by Justin d Wright, who also mixes the show. Elana Milner is our supervise and producer. Breanna Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Creative and production leadership from Scott Kosher and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.
Patricia Sung [00:33:31]:
For more resources, classes, and community, head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com.