Kristen Carder 0:05
Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast, where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with ADHD. I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have ADHD. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain. Unlock your potential and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristen Carter and you’re listening to the I have ADHD Podcast, episode number 119. I am medicated, I am caffeinated. And I’m ready to roll. What a treat what a treat what a treat I have for you today, you guys. The esteemed Dr. Russell Barkley is here with us and what a privilege it was to interview him and spend some quality time chatting about ADHD, which is his life’s work. It took me over a year to work up the nerve to reach out to Dr. Barkley to invite him on the podcast. And when I finally had summon the courage to do it, he agreed quickly, and it was all so much easier than I had expected it to be. So let it be known that the things that we make big and scary in our heads are often not that big and not that scary. Now I want to take a moment in this episode to introduce Dr. Barkley who by the way, scientists emails Russ which is incredible, like what I just so much endearment coming from me to him. Love, love, love. If you’re new to the ADHD space and you haven’t listened to my podcast before. You may not know what a legend this man is. Dr. Russell Barkley is an internationally recognized authority on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and in adults. And He’s dedicated his career to widely disseminating science based information about ADHD. Dr. Barkley retired as a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and later worked as a professor of psychiatry and Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. He’s currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. And he’s in semi retirement right now, which he talks a little bit about during our conversation. And I want to read for you what he’s doing in semi retirement because his version of semi retirement is very different from most people’s. Here we go, here’s what he’s doing. He continues to lecture widely and develop continuing education courses for professionals on ADHD and related disorders, as well as consult on research projects, edit the ADHD report and write books, reviews and research articles. So really, he’s just being very, very lazy in his semi retirement. Just kidding. That was that was like a legitimate joke. Okay, so you can find my absolute favorite book on adult ADHD, which is called taking charge of adult ADHD on Amazon. And I read on his Wikipedia that He’s authored 27 books in total. So you can look for those on Amazon or visit his website, Russell barkley.org, to grab all of the adult ADHD resources. And disclaimer, he didn’t ask me to share any of this. I just think that he is the best, best best and that you should be reading all of his work because he clearly lays out adult ADHD in a way that is easy to process science based. And he knows you’re just talking about I absolutely adore him. I split up this interview into two episodes this week. And next week. In this week’s episode, you’ll get to hear me totally gush about how much I love him because that’s the kind of person I am I’m a Gusher. And then we talk about all things ADHD, it was a conversation that totally blew my mind. I could have continued it for hours. I really wish we could have but we did it. And next week’s episode is focused exclusively on ADHD medications, which I know a lot of you have been asking me for. So your dreams are coming true. It’s an entire episode dedicated to ADHD medications, like what types of medications are out there? What kinds of people should be taking medication, et cetera? So you’ll want to tune into that one for sure. So, you guys buckle up and please enjoy this conversation with the esteemed Dr. Russell Barkley. Oh my goodness. I’m not sure if clinical psychologists are used to having fan girls or

Dr. Russell Barkley 4:59
not you Usually, but it’s some cases.

Kristen Carder 5:02
Well, I am definitely one of yours I, I really don’t think that anyone else on the planet has impacted the ADHD community, the way that you have and thank you my work would not even be possible this podcast, all everything that I’m putting out into the world is informed by your work. And it’s just so like, my heart is pounding because this is a big deal to me. Well, you’re

Dr. Russell Barkley 5:33
too kind. Well, thank you, thank you very much. i It’s nice to know, particularly at my age as I move into semi retirement that one’s life’s work has been of use to other people. And it’s extraordinarily reassuring to me that, you know, my life meant something. So it’s great. Thank you for saying that. That’s, I was I was on Reddit on Wednesday for about five hours answering questions on the adult ADHD, Reddit threads, so and very similar people and talking about how they discovered ADHD, through podcasts, like yours videos and other things. And that’s, it’s nice to see it. Inflammation spreading so rapidly now that that’s a good thing. So

Kristen Carder 6:18
it is a good thing we are so privileged to live right now, especially those of us with ADHD, especially women with ADHD, to be able to have a diagnosis. You know, I’m 40, I was diagnosed at 21. And even that is kind of an early diagnosis for a woman and I just feel so privileged that information is out there. For all of us, it’s just so amazing. And your book, taking charge of adult ADHD is the best book on ADHD, adult ADHD, by far, I have read them all. And I love your book, and the way that you easily lay things out. Even the format of the book is very ADHD friendly. And your no nonsense approach. I know it doesn’t resonate with everybody, but it totally resonates with me, I love how you’re just like, very straightforward. Give the facts without apologies. And like, listen, it is what it is now what now? What are we going to do about it?

Dr. Russell Barkley 7:22
That’s right, as opposed to soft selling? No, I, I really appreciate your comments on that, because we worked very hard. On the Format. Chris Benton was my editor and co author, Chris is a writer. And she’s worked with me, I know, they’re trade books, but we tested this on adults with ADHD, and came up with that format that, you know, it’s, it seems a little distracting to the average reader to they’re sort of neurotypical. But the adults have liked it, because it’s broken up into so many little chunks, and you can, you know, visit and leave and visit and leave, and you don’t feel like you have this huge flow of narrative text that you have to hold in mind, you know, the working memory problems that we know, can be difficult for people with ADHD. So So you know, kudos to Chris for helping me to shape that and get it right. And I’m so pleased to hear that, that it works that people have found the format. The new edition, by the way, will be out next month. Yeah, I just read the proofs, the printers proof. So it’s off to the printer, and they’re telling me sometime in September. So it’s entirely updated lots of new information, new chapters dealing with health and wellness and things that have come up in the last decade that were not on the radar screen back 10 years ago when that addition was put together. So I’m very pleased and proud that we took a lot of time during the pandemic, what else were we going to do, and, and updated that. So along with my parents book by the same name, you know, taking charge for parents. And it’s great, because so much new science has been happening Kristin, I mean, there are 35 to 50 articles a week published in the journals, I know I follow them, I read them every Friday. And then I compile them and send them out to about 40 of my closest colleagues to keep them up to date. And they have sort of a daisy chain, like in Holland and Spain, and here in the US, and they have 30 to 40 people, Holland has probably more than 100 experts. And and they forward them. So you know, there’s this ripple Friday afternoon. Of here’s everything that happened this week. Oh, you know what that is? 1000 To 1200 articles a year on that. So you know, it’s no wonder that people find it hard to keep up with this. It’s a very fast moving field. Yeah,

Kristen Carder 9:44
that makes a lot of sense. And it’s so fascinating to me, that people now just the general public are saying things like, oh, ADHD is overly diagnosed. We’re really it’s like, No, we’re just now learning about We’re now diagnosing the people who deserve to be diagnosed decades ago.

Dr. Russell Barkley 10:05
Yes, yeah, that’s so true. And I think what they’re reacting to is that more and more stories on ADHD are appearing in the various media. As you know, just this past week, there were three articles on girls and women with ADHD. And I’m working with a New York Times writer who’s going to do yet another story on ADHD and women because as you said, that is one of the several under diagnosed groups. And although that’s changing rapidly, thanks to you, and others who are putting these stories out there. In addition, you know, we’ve seen a rise in teenagers that was an overlooked group as well. And adults in general were overlooked, but particularly adult women. And now just in the last year, we’re focusing on ADHD in the elderly. And there’s a great article that’s Sandra Kui, from Holland, who’s an expert on adult ADHD, particularly in aging population, she wrote a nice review, and that came out about a year ago. So I had three requests yesterday, just you know, for that article, because there’s almost nothing out there on what do you do with people my age, who are ADHD and probably getting worse, because aging is taking a toll on the executive brain. And, you know, if you didn’t start out with a lot of neural reserve to begin with, as we think of and then you hit, you know, either perimenopause or late life aging. I mean, you can become symptomatic, and even more impaired during those stages, even if you were kind of a marginal ADHD case, earlier. So it’s fascinating. And just last month, I hope you don’t mind me going on and on. I love it. I’ve passion. But speaking of women, there’s a great article coming out this in August, in my newsletter that summarizes what we know about female hormones affecting ADHD. And we’re beginning to see a lot more research on that. But what we have is suggesting that women were not wrong when they were telling us that, you know, during their monthly menses, or at perimenopause, or even at the onset of menses in adolescents, there were striking changes in their symptoms, and particularly in their emotional lability. As you know, emotion regulation is part of this disorder. It’s not some add on comorbid thing. And so, you know, people were thinking it can’t happen. This is a chronic disorder. And, and it turns out, well, yes, it does happen. And, you know, we found that for girls, girls have two ages of onset, which we only just discovered in the last year, they, some girls have the typical earlier onset like the guys do. But others don’t have their onset until menses until puberty. And now we have a second wave. So guess what we’re finally understanding why ADHD is three to one males to females in children. by adulthood, it’s 1.5 to one. Now, how does that gap close, and why? And this is one explanation for that females show kind of a second wave onset, if they were marginal, in childhood look out in adolescence, because that could start to trigger some of the symptoms, even if only more episodically. And then of course, late life, I can’t tell you how many women are coming into clinics in their 50s. Now, saying, you know, I really was able to scrape by with all of these accommodations I made for myself. But man, when I hit perimenopause, none of it worked anymore. And you know, I’m impaired, I’m disabled. And of course, clinicians are kind of Yeah, blow in this office. You know, it’s just, it’s just you, when in fact, it’s true. So we’re just learning how to manage that now. Because it requires additional management than what we would say, say a guy with ADHD. So lots going on out there. I’m so glad you asked.

Kristen Carder 13:56
Oh, my goodness, I could talk about this all day long. Because it is shocking to me how many women especially over 50, I hear from thinking, you know, they spent their whole lives thinking that they were lazy, that they just couldn’t get it together that we use the term, like a hot mess. I’ve just been a hot mess my whole life. Right?

Dr. Russell Barkley 14:24
I saw that read it. Yeah, yes.

Kristen Carder 14:26
And clinicians, like you said, confirm that they’re like, Yeah, you really should start making lists. Yeah, you probably do, like need to be more attentive to your tasks, rather than saying, Okay, what’s going on here? Is there something that we can look into, that doesn’t maybe have to do that that’s outside of the scope of what they’re normally looking at? And I think there’s just this uprising of people coming to just such a deeper understanding of themselves of their brain and of how they have been dismissed by the medical community for decades.

Dr. Russell Barkley 15:03
Well, that’s the cruelty of it. And it really bothers me, I understand that these things take time to change any field. But it reminds me of back in the 40s and 50s, when mothers were blamed for autistic children, you know, for children with autism spectrum, there was a level of cruelty about that, that is, to me, unmatched in mental health, I mean, what these people were subjected to as parents, based on these outdated, almost quasi Freudian analytic views, that it’s all your parents, and, you know, they didn’t love you enough. And, you know, you go back and read the book a different T, which has a history of autism. And it just, you know, it, it makes you angry, that the field got it so wrong. And, you know, ADHD is now going through that maybe not to that level of cruelty but, but close. And by the way, I don’t mean intentional cruelty, but it’s still wrong. You know, if you don’t understand the disorder, don’t be so quick to blame the person or the environment. And yet they do. The other problem we have as an adult clinicians don’t get training in this at least. Now the younger generation is, but if you were in practice, 20 years already, you probably in your residency didn’t get anything on adult ADHD. If you’re an adult psychiatry or adult social work or psychology, it took the child clinicians like Joe Biederman, and myself and many others, and Steve Rowan and people like that to make people aware that there are adults with ADHD Ned Halliwell helped tremendously with that first book Driven to Distraction back in 1991. But we’re the ones who opened clinics for adults, because nobody else would see them. And our kids were growing up, and we had to have a place to send them. And so we all got up to speed real quick, on, you know, the adult issues and did our research. And, as you said, Then we started working with the adult mental health providers to get them up to speed. But we still got a long way to go, I hear weekly, of women like yourself who go in talk about all these classic ADHD symptoms, time management, emotion regulation, hot mess, all this. And they get diagnosis, either borderline personality, or bipolar disorder, or if they happen to have prominent anxiety or depression, which 50% of them, by adulthood have an anxiety disorder. Now that wasn’t so prevalent in childhood, we can talk about that if you want to this, this growing risk for anxiety disorders, the longer adult ADHD goes untreated. And so you know, the women are being labeled by these more obvious and coexisting disorders. But nobody pulls back the curtain to see that the Wizard of Oz back there. And the disorder that started before all of them is this disorder of self regulation. And by the way, that is, as you know, what this is, this is not an attention disorder, specifically, that’s just a throwaway. Superficial symptom. There’s a real problem here with people’s you know, self regulation, executive functioning, it’s a, it’s a serious difficulty. So, yeah, I mean, I get it, I hear this all the time, about, you know, Miss diagnoses. And, you know, if somebody had only seen this earlier, are not, you know, just blown it off as a figment of my imagination. And the other story I hear is that, it’s like a lifestyle choice, if you just get some more sleep and stop using screen time and go to Starbucks and get that extra cup of caffeine and, you know, maybe take a little Omega three, six, you know, that’s all you need. And I sit there and I go, you’re dealing with one of the most impairing disorders we see at outpatient clinics that affects virtually every domain of life. And, and you you’re dismissing it as this trivial little concentration problem, I know we got more serious fish to fry and, you know, just get over it, you know, Wake up and smell the coffee and, and get on with your life. And that’s just wrong. I mean, it really, it bothers me so much when I hear these stories of people and what they’ve had to put up with it during this time. Now I get it. When my when I was growing up, I had my fraternal twin, as you know, had ADHD as two other family members. There was nothing you know it my parents were blamed my father was in the military, we moved too often. Blah, blah, blah, you know, which didn’t explain the fact that other siblings were thriving just fine. You know, when brother and it was a very difficult time for families, there were no meds, no help, no recognition. blame them on. Boy, are we good at Mother bashing in this country? Let me tell you. Anything goes wrong with kids. It’s mom’s fault. You know, and that’s part of the cruelty to me that we see sometimes. So we got to stop that but I could go on and on. You’ve gotten me off on a rant that I need to rein in here. So We couldn’t get to your questions. But I am so blessed that you chose to focus on this because you’re helping me with my life’s work, which is disseminating the science, get it out there. So

Kristen Carder 20:11
fun to be a part of that I feel so just charged up, like I’ve got this fire in my belly. I want everyone to have a common understanding, a very like layman’s conversational ability to just understand what we’re dealing with so that it is not so stigmatized. So that is not just, let’s put a bandaid over these other more understandable symptoms and not get to the root cause of the issue. I had a conversation the other night, just casual social conversation with someone whose daughter is diagnosed with ADHD. She’s seven and he’s like, the father I was speaking with, said, You know, I really, I don’t want to label my daughter as having a disorder. And it was such a neat opportunity, just conversationally, to talk about what if you don’t label her as having a disorder? What would happen then will show grow up your whole life thinking, I just suck at time management. I’m just really selfish, because I’m late all the time. I just can’t get my stuff together. Like, if it’s not a disorder, then it’s a personality issue, then it’s then it’s this like, there’s something wrong with me personally, rather than like, No, I actually, like I’m great, I’m flawed. But I’m also great. And I have this disorder that I’m dealing with which can be managed, you

Dr. Russell Barkley 21:39
know, Ned Halliwell, put this beautifully. Years ago, when he said, use of the label as concerning as it is for parents, I get that, you know, I raised two kids, I understand that you don’t want to miss label or, you know, erroneously label people. But the label moves this disorder out of that realm of moral judgment, as he said, into the realm of medical science, there really is a difference here. And whether you want to call it a personality or a syndrome or a disorder, I don’t care. But until we move over and begin to use that diagnosis, you will not get access to the hard one, entitlements and services and medications and all the other things that that label opens the door to. And if you’re not going to use that label, that door slammed shut. You can’t get that prescription, you can’t get ADA accommodations in your workplace, you’re not going to get them in college, Id EA and special ed is not available. If you keep running away from this label. And as you know, it’s becoming less and less stigmatized. Anyway. It’s almost becoming what passe. Oh, that’s my ADHD, everybody’s using it. And even if they don’t have it, they’re tossing that little throwaway line out there also annoying.

Kristen Carder 22:56
Yeah, on the other on the flip side of it, but that’s okay. We will allow Yeah, well, I’ll put up with that.

Dr. Russell Barkley 23:01
It trivializes it, but I’d rather go there than, you know, oh, they’re simply deeply disturbed about you. And, and it’s your fault. See, that’s that’s the point here, people are growing up like you and others, believing that I could have been different if I just had the willpower and the self discipline to, to do that. But that’s what ADHD robs you of are the very things that people and you’re telling yourself, if I could only do that, well, there’s a reason why you can’t do that. And it’s biological, not social, not parental, you know, and certainly not due to your diet. So, you know, we got a long way to go to make that point. But that’s what I would have said to this guy, look at what you’ve done, look at, you’ve disenfranchised your child from all of the services. And by the way, this is the most treatable disorder in psychiatry. No disorder has as many treatments that work for as many people and achieve the degree of improvement that we get. They’re not perfect. We got out there side effects for these things and other issues. And not everybody gets access to care. We got to work on that too. You know, all those issues, I get it. But if you compare ADHD treatments, to anxiety treatments, depression treatments, which we are giving away like candy out there, even in primary care, those guys are treating depression and anxiety. Our medicines and our therapies are three times better than what is happening over in those fields and nobody questions, treating anxiety with an anti anxiety medicine or an anti depressant. But you know, boy, you drag out the ADHD medications and we’re turning everybody into drug addicts, you know, and it’s just wrong. So, so you know, it’s just so great that you and I can work to keep this information flowing out there and change minds and hearts and let’s get these kids and especially these young adults, the services that they need, you know,

Kristen Carder 24:58
100% Well, that was just a delight. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed that conversation and make sure that you tune into the next Episode Episode 120 on ADHD medication where Dr. Russell Barkley and I continue our conversation about this very important topic. I will see you then. Bye bye. A few years ago I went looking for help. I wanted to find someone to teach me how to feel better about myself and to help me improve my organization productivity time management, emotional regulation. You know, all the things that we adults with ADHD struggle with. It couldn’t find anything. So I researched and I studied and I hired coaches and I figured it out. Then I created focused for you. Focus is my monthly coaching membership where I teach educated professional adults how to accept their ADHD brain and hijack their ability to get stuff done. Hundreds of people from all over the world are already benefiting from this program and I’m confident that you will to go to Ihaveadhd.com/focused for all details