Kristen Carder
Hey, what’s up? This is Kristen Carter, and you are tuning into the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, I am caffeinated, I am regulated, ish, and I’m ready to roll. I’m so glad that you’re here with me today. This is the first solo episode in studio, and if you’re watching on YouTube, you are going to see this set evolve over the next couple weeks, and I’m so excited about it. I hope you love it. Today, we are going to be talking about, what does adult ADHD look like? What how do we know if we have it, and what are the symptoms? How are you going to be able to determine whether or not adult ADHD is something that is affecting you.

The reason why we need to have this conversation is because there’s a lot of misinformation out there. ADHD is a trending topic now, if you haven’t noticed, and while that can be really good, because information is getting spread, and more and more people are realizing that they have ADHD. But on the other hand, there are some bad actors out there kind of capitalizing on this ADHD trend and spreading information that is not research based. It’s not founded in any sort of fact. And so we’re going to talk today about what is adult ADHD look like most of the time. When people think about ADHD, they think about it in terms of children, mostly little white boys in the classroom, bouncing off the walls. And while it’s really annoying, because ADHD is so much more than that, I can understand why that’s a thing, because up until 1994 ADHD was exclusively a childhood diagnosis, so we didn’t even know that ADHD affected adults until that time period, which is only 30 years ago. It’s not very long, so people are still catching up with the idea that ADHD can affect adults.

But here’s a little tidbit that might be a little bit annoying for you, the diagnostic criteria that clinicians use to diagnose people. It was created for children. We currently do not have diagnostic criteria for adults. We are going to talk about today, what does ADHD look like in adults. And I have a link in the show notes to the diagnostic criteria that you can read and kind of go through, and you will notice that it is geared toward children. It’s kind of disappointing, because so many adults are kind of waking up to the fact that they have ADHD, and as clinicians are diagnosing them. Were being asked questions that were really geared for children, but it is what it is. This is where we’re at right now. Hopefully the DSM five will be revamped. We’ll have a new addition coming out, I don’t know, soon, maybe, and we can get diagnostic criteria for adults. So we’re going to talk about today What does ADHD look like in adults. Let’s go so I’m going to go through as quickly as I can 12 symptoms of adult ADHD, and we’re going to talk about how they show up in your everyday life.

The first one is impulsivity. There’s no stop and think moment before you take action, before you make a decision. Dr Ned Hallowell describes it as having a Ferrari engine for a brain with bicycle brakes. We’re Go, go, go. We’re really fast, but we really struggle to slow down, stop and think. We think too fast. We drive too fast. We make decisions too fast. We’re interrupting all the time. Somebody with ADHD is going to have a very impulsive way of interacting in the world. The next symptom we’re going to talk about is distractibility. And it’s not necessarily that you can’t pay attention. There’s a common misconception that we can’t focus. Well, that’s not necessarily true. It’s that we can’t regulate our attention. We can’t make ourselves pay attention to the right thing for the right amount of time. So it’s really hard for us to block out irrelevant noises. It’s really hard for us to block out irrelevant thoughts. It’s really hard for us to stay on task for long periods of time, because we’re very distractible. It’s not that we can’t pay attention, it’s that we struggle to regulate our attention and keep it on the right thing for the right amount of time.

This can also mean that we’re jumping from task to task and really struggling to finish so if you find yourself starting projects and not finishing them, one of the reasons why is because of your distractible brain, an adult with ADHD is really going to struggle to resist short term pleasure in exchange for long term gain. That’s a really boring way of saying that we’re kind of gratification junkies. We’re hopping from dopamine inducing task to dopamine inducing task. We are chasing the high we get really bored. So easily, and if a task is mundane, if it’s monotonous, if it’s the same, think about dishes or laundry or spreadsheets or expense reports at the end of the month, those things are going to feel like death to you. So if you don’t see the value in something, it’s very likely that it won’t get done because we have less amounts of dopamine, and actually it’s we have fewer dopamine receptors in our brain, and that means that our reward system is broken.

We can’t just do like the boring things of life that everyone else can do. So if you feel like you can accomplish a lot at work, but your home life is like hot mess, express because it’s all so boring and you just don’t want to do it. That’s very common for someone with ADHD. The feeling of restlessness or agitation is a common experience for adults with ADHD. It’s kind of like there’s this engine running inside and no satisfaction for it. And you may have been really hyperactive as a kid and kind of bouncing off the walls, but now that hyperactivity is probably internal, with a lot of racing thoughts, and maybe you’re just feeling like you always have to be doing something, and you can’t really sit and rest and relax and like vacations are kind of excruciating for you, and you never really want to stop working at the end of the Day. That restlessness, that agitation. That’s something you can and should expect when it comes to adult ADHD,

let’s talk about time blindness. This is this is everything. If you have ADHD, you struggle with time. And it’s not necessarily time management. It’s just the concept of time in general. We don’t understand the passage of time. We can’t really keep track of time. We’re constantly overbooking, double booking, showing up late, not getting to things on time. It is horrible. This is one of the most shame inducing symptoms of adult ADHD, because why can everyone else just show up. Be a normal human, be a typical not feel rushed, not feel like they’re kind of driving down the road like Cruella de Vil trying to get to the place. Why can everyone else do that? But we can’t now. This is directly related to our non verbal working memory, and we’re going to have other episodes on on executive functions and nonverbal working memory is one of those executive functions that just doesn’t allow us to understand and process and manage our time. And so time blindness is something that you should expect with adult ADHD, you’re going to put things off.

You’re going to think you have more time than you actually do. You’re probably going to be running late all of the time and getting anywhere in a calm and timely fashion. It’s not really a thing. One of the little known symptoms of ADHD is emotional dysregulation. Now this is not actually in the diagnostic criteria, but it is a very common experience for adults with ADHD that we struggle to identify, name, process and soothe our big, giant emotions. This has a big impact on our lives. This often means that we’re emotionally explosive. We’re really reactive. Our emotional experience just seems so much more intense than that of our peers. And sometimes it can kind of seem that we’re a little erratic, that we can’t we’re not in control of our behavior. It’s important to understand that ADHD is a disorder of self regulation we ADHD ers struggle to regulate our attention, which we already talked about, and also our emotions.

We haven’t fully completed the developmental process of identifying our emotions and processing them and soothing them, learning how to self soothe. And so we kind of wear our hearts on our sleeve, which is beautiful, but we also wear our anger on our sleeve and our impatience on our sleeve. And if you’ve ever said anything out of a reaction, maybe you’ve yelled at your boss, or maybe you’ve screamed at your kids, or maybe you’ve broken up with a partner impulsively because you’re so overwhelmed with your emotions that is because of emotional dysregulation. Are you an adult with ADHD who’s tired of feeling stuck, but you just don’t know where to start? If so you’ve got to join my coaching program, focused. Focused is a monthly coaching membership that gives you access to ADHD support that actually works. You’ll learn from bingeable courses like time management, emotional regulation, relationships and even how to trust yourself.

Plus, 
we’ve got three to five live calls every week where I will coach you on how to go from feeling like the hot. Express to someone who’s actually functioning and maybe even thriving with adult ADHD. The best part about focus is that you’re surrounded by a community of adults with ADHD from around the world who really get you and understand what you’re going through. Dr Ned Hallowell says healing happens in community and through connection. And I really believe him, focus is the place to connect with like minded ADHD ers, and we would love for you to join us. Head to the episode description to find the link for focus. And I really hope to see you in our community soon.

The next symptom that we’re going to talk about is poor working memory. Now working memory is kind of like a bulletin board in your brain. Neurotypical people are able to just pin things on that bulletin board and hold it there just long enough to use it. So for example, your spouse calls you and they say, Hey, can you pick up milk on the way home from work? And you’re like, sure, I would love to get the milk, but you don’t write it down. You don’t ask Siri to remind you. And guess what, you’re definitely not going to remember the milk, and that’s because you don’t have good working memory. Working memory is that bulletin board where you can just pin something really quick, just hold it there for an hour or two, long enough to accomplish the task that you want to accomplish. And unfortunately, this is a very deficient skill for adults with ADHD so often you’re going to forget to do the things that you say that you’re willing to do.

You say, Sure, I’ll get that done for you. And then you forget. You’ll leave projects unfinished, because you just forget that the project exists. It’s kind of like this out of sight, out of mind situation. If it’s not right there in front of you, you forget it exists. Unfortunately, that also has to do with people. Sometimes we can forget that people exist too. And so you may go weeks or even months without texting someone that you actually really care about, without reaching out, without connecting, and it’s not because you don’t love them. It’s not because you don’t care about them, it’s because you kind of forget that they are a human in the world.

And this is just another shame inducing aspect of having ADHD. It can make it difficult to accomplish the things we want to accomplish, but also to have healthy relationships, because we have to work so much harder to remember the people in our lives and to connect with them. Next up, we’ve got self reflection adults with ADHD really, really struggle with it. This is related to the executive function called metacognition. We struggle to think about our own thinking. Are you already bored? You’ve probably moved on, because that’s just like a boring phrase. But listen, we struggle to self reflect. We struggle to look at our past mistakes and change our behavior so that we can be different.

Moving forward, how many times have you heard from someone that you make the same mistake over and over, and they think you don’t care about them because you keep making that same mistake over and over, and you have no ill will toward this person, and you would love to change your behavior, but you have no idea how you don’t even remember the mistake that you made weeks or months ago. You didn’t even remember agreeing to change your behavior.

Hello, working memory, and now you’re struggling to self reflect because you struggle with metacognition. So this is this is difficult. A lot of people with ADHD feel stuck. They feel like they’re just not reaching their potential. They feel like they’re just not able to get where they want to go, because they’re not able to self reflect. Look at their behavior, look at their thoughts, evaluate their emotions, self soothe, move forward, change their behavior. It’s all interconnected. All of these symptoms work together. None of them are silos. None of them work in isolation. They’re all kind of working against us to make it so that we often don’t reach our potential. We are often kind of stuck in this repetitive behavior of making the same mistakes over and over.

And a lot of people with ADHD feel like a failure. I wonder if that’s how you feel like Will I ever get to my goal? Will I ever be able to do the thing I want to do? Will I ever be able to reach my potential? This is one of the most defeating aspects of the disorder, is just realizing I don’t know how to change my behavior. I don’t even see that I’m making the same mistakes, and people are pointing it out to me, but I don’t know how to change it. Next up, we’ve got prioritization and organization. This is kind of like a cluster of symptoms that go together. Adults with ADHD, we struggle to prioritize, and this impacts our ability to organize. Think about all. The things that you need to get done in a day, there’s just kind of like a mush, just like a big pile of things that you need to get done. A neurotypical brain is naturally going to place those tasks in priority order, from top to bottom.

They’re just going to magically, it’s so annoying, magically know what to do. First, what to do, second, what to do. Third, there’s no drama in their brain. They’re able to think it through, prioritize, make a list, and know exactly what order to go in. Unfortunately, the ADHD brain struggles to prioritize, and this means that all of the tasks that an ADHD needs to do is on a horizontal plane. They all seem to be the same level of importance. They’re all just there screaming at you, asking to be done, and you’re not sure where to start, where to go, what to do first, what to do next, what what doesn’t matter, what can be pushed off for tomorrow. And you struggle to prioritize so often you’re going to spend your time, your effort, your energy, on things that don’t really matter and the things that do matter, the deadlines, the bills, the things that your boss has asked you to get done immediately, the things that do really matter accidentally get pushed to the back burner

Just because you’re not good at holding the priority items in front of you and making sure that you complete the tasks on time. And a lot of us will go into the state of overwhelm when we have so many to do’s to get done. We don’t know where to start. We don’t know how to organize them. We don’t know what should go first, what should go last? We just don’t know. And so this is where analysis paralysis comes in. This is where we get stuck. This is where we get paralyzed. This is where we’re like, you know what I could do? I could watch Netflix. You know what I could do? I could go on my phone.

That sounds a lot better, a lot easier than trying to figure out where to start and probably picking the wrong thing. And so if you notice that you avoid your to do list, it might be because of your inability to prioritize and your struggle with organization. You can also think about like maybe your closet, or maybe your car or your garage, like the places where you’re like, I should really clean that, but you don’t know where to start. You don’t know what to throw out, you don’t know what to keep you don’t know what you should save, because maybe you’ll need it down the road. And so the junk just kind of piles up, and you don’t clear any of that clutter because you just don’t know where to start or what to do with it. So that organization piece, it’s absolutely going to impact your daily life. Think about also like your money management. If you have money, what should you do with it?

Where are the priorities? Should you invest? Should you save? Should you spend? It’s hard to know. If you don’t have money, where can you cut expenses? It’s hard to know. A lot of people with ADHD really struggle with money management because of the prioritization deficiency and organization deficiency. It’s just really, really hard to know what to do with our stuff. The last cluster of symptoms that we’re going to talk about are task initiation and task completion.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but getting started on a task can be really, really difficult for a bunch of different reasons. Remember, all of these symptoms were kind of together to debilitate us, and so it can be hard to start a task because you’re not sure where to start. It can be hard to start because you can’t manage your emotions around the task. It can be hard to start because it’s a low dopamine task, and we suck at dopamine anyway. And so doing something that’s boring or we know is going to be hard is excruciating. It’s very, very difficult. And so task initiation is a common deficiency with adults with ADHD. But then, not only that, once we get started, it’s hard for us to finish. Like, what the heck we’re getting it from both sides. It’s hard to start and it’s hard to finish. Why is it hard to finish? Because we struggle to regulate our attention. We struggle to stay on task. We struggle to manage our emotions when we’re getting frustrated, when we’re getting impatient. We forget that the task exists. We forget what’s important about it, all of these symptoms, all of these impairments, go into making it really difficult to finish. And so I wonder, I wonder, how many projects have you started that you haven’t finished? How many things, how many ideas have you gotten, like 10% into and haven’t finished, or maybe 20% or maybe 30% a lot of the people that I coach in my program have.

Shame and self judgment and self blame about a graveyard of ideas and projects and tasks that they’ve started but not finished. And part of our work as we evolve as adults with ADHD is to let go of some of that. Like, yeah, I’m just going to start things and I’m not going to finish them. But can I make sure that I’m finishing? What’s most important? Can I make sure that I know that I want to follow through on this one thing, following through, finishing, that is the work of our lives, learning. What is the most important thing learning? What is a values based task, being able to prioritize, being able to commit to it, and then starting getting over that wall of awful and starting the task, and then following through to finish this. This is the work.

This is the work of our lives. I want to acknowledge that ADHD has absolutely no impact on intelligence, and many of you watching have been able to accomplish incredible things, and maybe you’ve even heard from a doctor. And I have sat face to face with people who have said, Kristen, my doctor said, I can’t have ADHD because I went to Harvard. Let me tell you, that’s BS. ADHD does not impact your intelligence, and so you can be highly intelligent, highly creative, highly motivated, and still have ADHD. Some of you have gone to Harvard, some of you have passed the bar exam. Some of you are working in incredible companies, and you’ve accomplished so much.

But what I want to ask you is, what is the behind the scenes like? What’s it like behind the scenes? Is it similar to your peers, or are you having to work twice as hard? Is it the same as your peers? Or are you pulling all nighters? Are you having to scramble behind the scenes? Are you having to work twice as hard as everyone else to accomplish what you know you are meant to do? It’s important for clinicians and for just humans out in the world to truly understand that even people who have accomplished so much might still struggle with ADHD. And the important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t have to work twice as hard as everyone else.

It should not be twice as hard for you as it is for everyone else, whether you are high achieving or not, I want you to know that even the basics of life should not be twice as hard for you as it is for everyone else. And you know, we’ve talked about in previous episodes, the way that ADHD is a spectrum disorder. Some people are very high functioning. Some are on the lower functioning level, and ADHD has a lot of comorbidities, depression and anxiety are the top two, and then also learning disabilities. And so some of you are a little bit lower functioning because you haven’t been blessed with a high intelligence or with all of the creativity and ingenuity and motivation, but you should also not have to be working twice as hard as everyone, and you deserve support, and you deserve to be validated by a doctor and diagnosed if you have ADHD, and you deserve to treat this ADHD medically if you choose to, I want you to know that wherever you fall on The spectrum of ADHD, you are entitled to a diagnosis and you are entitled to support. If you need a permission slip for like, medication, support, spending money on yourself for coaching or therapy or doctor’s appointments, like I will write that permission slip for you. My mission is to educate you and to really give you the audacity to get a diagnosis, to give you the audacity to reach out for help, to give you the empowerment that you need to get what you deserve.

So in the show notes of this episode, I have the diagnostic criteria for you so you can kind of check it out and see if you resonate with the symptoms. And also, I have the symptoms list from my website, which you can just download if you want to. You can circle the symptoms that you resonate with, and you can take it with you to a doctor’s appointment if you feel like. That would be helpful. It’s important to know that a clinician is going to want to make sure that you’re experiencing these symptoms in multiple areas of your life, and that you’ve had symptoms since prior to age 12. So keep that in mind, but continue to do your research. Reach out for any help or support that you want. Just have the audacity to take care of yourself. You deserve it. I’m gonna talk to you next week. I’ll see you then, bye, bye. You.