Balance & Beyond Podcast

Do you struggle to focus and have found yourself wondering if you have ADHD?

Join us on Balance and Beyond as we explore this question with our insightful cohost and Mindset Coach Sabina. This episode addresses the rising concerns about ADHD in women and whether societal pressures of multitasking and heavy mental loads might be contributing to the same symptoms. Gain valuable insights into how managing mental clutter can significantly boost your focus and productivity, potentially without the need for a diagnosis. Sabina shares her expertise on how our brains can be overwhelmed by too many tasks and open tabs, leading to mental fatigue.

Embark on a journey to discover the transformative power of pausing and reflecting, creating a mental 'white space' that fosters well-being. We delve into how empowering questions and proactive actions can break the cycle of a chaotic mind. Understand the importance of slowing down to manage stress and enhance cognitive function and creativity. By understanding how our brain works and taking control, we can improve our presence and efficiency, leading to a more grounded and joyful life. Join us on this engaging journey to reclaim your mental clarity and confidence, positively impacting everything from your work to personal relationships.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Jo Host

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, and today, we are talking about a four-letter acronym that we are hearing more and more, and this is ADHD. And you may be asking yourself the question, “Do I have ADHD?” And I'm joined by the lovely Sabina, one of the newest members of our team. We're going to talk about what this means and, importantly, what are some other ways that you can actually control your brain, without worrying about a diagnosis. Welcome, Sabina. 

Sabina Guest

Hello, hello! Jo, lovely to be here with you all. 

Jo Host

It's a hot topic, isn't it? And obviously, with the increase in neurodivergence and diagnosis, it's a really important conversation that we need to be having. But, before we dive in a really, really important disclaimer that I want to make sure we put up front, this is that we are not diminishing for a second anybody who has diagnosed ADHD, who is suffering with the symptoms, who is living with somebody, or impacted by somebody in their lives, who has neurological challenges. 

So we do not want to, in any way, have anybody jumping down our throats and saying, “Oh my gosh, you're saying that this isn't a thing?” We're not saying it's not a thing. We are saying that, as women, there are many symptoms of what may sometimes be perceived to be ADHD. In actual fact, there are a wider range of factors that we believe are at play, particularly for women's brains. 

So, we want to put that out there. We want to reassure you that this is a really important conversation to be having, because it's knocking in our community all the time. It's a bit crazy what we're seeing, isn't it, sabina? This broader trend of women ultimately not being able to focus would be one of the main challenges that we're seeing. 

Sabina Guest

Yeah, absolutely, it's very common. Not only in our community, but also in my previous corporate career, as a global HR manager. This was a conversation that was being bandied around the office a lot, not just with women. But, obviously, our community here is with women, and the reason why we're saying maybe it's not, is because we see the results of unpacking what is getting in the way of women's ability to focus. 

And over the course of the time that we work with women, we see dramatic shifts and improvement in clarity and focus and productivity. And it's really important that we don't resort to this label, or thinking that there's something wrong with us, when there are steps that we can take to turn things around and improve. 

Jo Host

Absolutely. And whether people end up going down this diagnosis path, and choosing a medication path, there are still huge amounts of things that are actually within our control, that don't involve taking a pill, that actually get us what we're looking for. 

On the other side of that, I heard someone say recently that attention has become the greatest currency of our time. Because, particularly anyone who has a teenager knows, they last about four seconds on something, before they flick it away. 

And so, we are breeding a generation who have even shorter attention spans than us. So, Sabina, why don't we talk through some of the reasons that we see women really struggle to focus, and then they start going down this path of Googling “Maybe I have ADHD?” Because that is what they're experiencing. Why don't you kick us off with what you think is one of the big issues that we see? 

Sabina Guest

Yeah, well, you just touched on it. It's the fact that we are living in a time in society where we are expected to multitask. And, typically, women have been said to be able to multitask better than men, and our plates are just becoming fuller and fuller and fuller. The fact is that our mental load of what we're carrying has increased. 

And so, there's the mental load at work, there's a mental load at home, there's the emotional load of caring for people, the emotional load of caring for people. So, no doubt, our bandwidth is being stretched beyond what we were experiencing five years ago, ten years ago, and certainly who we were in childhood. 

So, this superpower of being able to multitask, it is actually, I think you know, causing huge issues. And, you know, if you think about the analogy of your computer and your web, you know, web browser tabs. We've effectively got too many tabs open. And what we do, we tend to shut down the tabs at night, or we just put our computer to sleep, and then in the morning, we add more tabs on, and so our brains are like this. 

We are adding instead of strategically subtracting, and closing down, and completing tasks. And having that sense of a dopamine hit to be able to move on, to start a new task with a fresh bandwidth. So we have tabs open on our computers, we have tabs open on our phones and effectively we have all these tabs open in our brains and we're not designed to hold that much information incomplete at one time. 

Jo Host

And the crazy thing is that so many women attach their sense of self-worth to, “Well, I've got to get it all done, and I can't rest, I can't close down those tabs, because who's going to book the dog into the vet and who's going to book in that dentist appointment?” Nevermind the fact that every time you remember to call the dentist, it's at 2am, and they're not open right now. So, you keep that tab open until 10 o'clock the next night, when you actually then remember “Oh, I've got to call the dentist!” But, you've been holding it the entire time. 

And what's interesting is that the more we know about our brain and neuroscience, we realise that our brain almost gets used to all these tabs being open. It's incredibly fatigued, but it starts flitting between them. So, it's almost like your brain goes, “Don't forget the dentist”, “Don't forget the dog”, “Don't forget this report that's due.” “Oh, don't forget…” You know it's, “Blah, blah, blah.” 

On Friday it's, “This weekend is coming up.” And so, we don't actually learn how to control our brain. It's like this runaway, crazy train. Often we say that it's like “ants in our head” that we haven't actually trained properly, have we? 

Sabina Guest

Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. We have not been given the tools to be able to know how to drive our brains most effectively to deal with the demands of today. And, you know, something else that we hear from women a lot is that they're starting to almost gaslight themselves and think, “What's wrong with me?” “I'm broken.” “Why can't I manage this?” “How come she's able to do this?” “Oh my God, Sue over there, you know, in finance, is able to juggle all the things, and I'm not coping.” 

And so, instead of asking more empowering questions, we're hearing a lot of women are spiralling into this questioning, as you say, of their self-worth and their ability to cope. And no doubt our plates are full and we are stretched, but making yourself wrong, instead of learning how to drive your brain, learning how to put yourself in environments with the tools to make yourself thrive, are what's really important. 

Jo Host

And this is how we get our focus back, isn't it? You know, with everything we talk about here, it’s about mindset and strategy. And so, we beat ourselves up for our behaviour of switching, and holding all the tabs, but so few women are actually willing to do the work to say, “All right, well, what am I making it mean?” “If I don't get to the dentist today, heaven forbid, I might have to say no to someone, and not say yes to everything.” 

Because imagine, if my self-worth is not based on being a “yes” person, I can actually start not only closing down some of these tabs, but also stop creating new ones. When you say “yes” to the school fete, and “yes” to the netball thing, and “yes” to doing this, and “yes” to helping this person, it's like, we've got to get these women back on their own radars, don't we? I promise you, in all those tabs that are open, none of them are for them, right?

Sabina Guest

Well, that's right. Where are you, in and amongst all of that? And we see regularly the cascade of issues that comes from that. When you've got all these tabs open, and you're doing all these things for everybody else, then you get this creeping sense of resentment, and you can see where your people-pleasing comes in, or your perfectionism comes in. 

So, there is so much to this topic. It’s all about thinking about your brain differently, and giving yourself a chance to be able to turn things around so that you're in control not just in productivity and efficiency, which is, given the volumes of stuff, work and home that everybody is holding. 

Jo Host

We need to be more efficient, we need to stop the procrastination or the crazy self-sabotage programs. But we see changes in other areas of life too, don't we, when you actually learn to be present and learn to hold your attention, say I don't know, at dinner with the family, or at bedtime, or with your partner? 

Sabina Guest

Yeah, that's right. And again, this comes back to, you know, the antidote to multitasking is really zeroing in, and being fully present for a much shorter time than you think you need to on one task. You know, being fully present with perhaps doing the washing up sounds very boring. 

But feeling the water on your hands, or being fully present with the mouthful that you're taking, that you're eating, being with your children you know five minutes of presence with your children fills up their cup. You don't have to spend an hour of your time, which sometimes feels impossible. So these little pockets of focus on one task or with one person are really, really powerful and potent and they are the antidote to feeling like your brain is about to literally burn out. 

Jo Host

Absolutely, and there's one other topic that is related to this and probably warrants an entire episode in itself. But given the ages of where many women who come to us are, I think it's also really important to mention the impact of hormones and menopause, or perimenopause, on our brain, and this is no surprise, often the age that women are thinking, “Oh, you know, I've got brain fog; and I can't pay attention”, and so they start giving labels to it. When, in fact, it may be something completely different, mightn't it? 

Sabina Guest

It can be a challenge. But yes, speaking to perimenopause, it's interesting, in the workplace. You know, in the UK, legislation has come in to support women in the workplace going through perimenopause and menopause, because it's understood that there are challenges that happen in the brain, and in your physiology. And so, again, it's important not to make yourself “wrong” and to question yourself. You know, “Am I good enough?” “Am I up to this?” “Should I just give up?” And to, you know, really take stock. 

So the invitation with all of this, no matter what phase of life you're in, whether you think perimenopause may be at play, is to stop and take stock, and to ask a more empowering question, “Have I actually put myself in the right environment, to have a chance of thriving?” “Have I stopped to think about what I need, to be able to clear the mental clutter and create space for myself?” “Do I need to book an appointment with a healthcare practitioner?” “Do I need to lean into support from my friends, my partner, at work?” 

So, it's about changing the question, and the inner critic, and the limiting beliefs, to ask a question that allows you to seek a solution, and solutions are possible. But you do have to stop, pause, reflect and then take empowering action to be able to break this, you know, spinning cycle of feeling like your brain is this runaway train. 

Jo Host

And the irony is, when your brain's a runaway train, that can be really hard to do, can't it? Sometimes, it's just easy to Google, “Do I have ADHD?” And find yourself at three in the morning taking a “Do I have an ADHD quiz?” Because there are a plethora of things. And then, suddenly, “Oh my gosh”, you recognize all the symptoms and “Oh my gosh”, this is my problem. And that can feel like an easy solution. “All right, that's it.” “I need to get diagnosed.” And then, suddenly, because I have a diagnosis, everything's going to be better. 

Well, whether you have a diagnosis or not, whether you technically have ADHD or not, what matters is how you show up in your life. What matters is how you get done what you want to get done. It matters how you're present for what you are actually achieving and accomplishing, because there's no point. What we see is when these brains have completely run away. Is this level of franticness and cortisol that people live life with, like, there's so many tabs, don't have time, got to do this, got to do this. You know, they were doing the dishes, and rather than going, “All right, well, I can't speed up doing the dishes.” Well, maybe they feel like a Tassie Devil, kind of like a hurricane going everywhere. But, “All right, well, let me do the dishes really quickly”, “Let me clean my teeth, let me clean them really quickly.”

But while I'm cleaning them really quickly, I'm going to think about tomorrow. First up, right, this, this, this, this, this, it's such. Slowing down is one of the hardest things to do. Isn't it ironic, sabina, that we've always heard this mantra slow down to speed up, you know, get back control of your brain. But we've got to break through this cycle of thinking that I'll just get on top of it all. Let me get through the list, I'll get through this, I'll get through this season, and then I'll deal with it, or then it will be okay, because it never gets better, does it it? It's a pathway to burnout. 

Sabina Guest

It's never ending. Your to-do list is never ending, the demands on your time at work, at home are never ending, so it is absolutely critical to find ways. There are simple tools. If you are shown, there are simple tools that you can use to literally create what I refer to as white space. It's like clearing something off the whiteboard just to create this white space, so that your nervous system can relax, your brain can come back online. Your prefrontal cortex, where you get, you know, ideas and inspiration, will have the space to be able to go. “Oh!” 

You know, creativity comes in. Have you ever had the experience where you're standing in the shower, and you're just so relaxed that you get all this amazing inspiration coming through? That's just taking five, ten minutes to be present, and it's amazing what can open up. 

So, you don't need a lot of time or a diagnosis to be able to start training your brain to relax, create space, and other ways of showing up in your life. And we absolutely love seeing this become a possibility with the women that we work with, people who sometimes come into our community and they genuinely say, “I think I'm broken.” “My brain is just not working.” “I just don't think I'm up to the job.” And seeing who they become throughout the journey, and gaining that confidence and clarity back is just, it's just wonderful. 

Jo Host

And we love it when we do get to see women actually get control of their brain. Cause, one of my favourite sayings, you know, we have entire modules on the brain. Because it's so important for us to understand how our brain works, how a female brain is different from a male  brain. 

All this neuroscience is critical for our very intellectual and intelligent selves to go “Oh, that's what it's doing!” And the moment we realise that our brain is like any other organ in our body, one of my favourite sayings is that “You have a brain.” “You are not your brain.” It's like you're letting your hand run the show. Well, no, your hand isn't the one typing, your hand is just the series of muscles that are doing the thing. 

So, when we learn to transcend our brain, and have it actually work for us, not against us, gosh, life becomes so much simpler, doesn't it, Sabina? We've spoken about increasing efficiency. We've spoken about being present. What are some of the other benefits? Regardless again, of diagnosis, when you can start controlling your brain, and it's working for you? What do we see as some of the beautiful upsides here? 

Sabina Guest

Well, it ripples out into every aspect of life. If your brain isn't constantly going at 200 kilometers an hour and you're able to just regulate your entire nervous system. Your brain is part of your nervous system, your entire being, energy, presence switches, and so you bring that to whatever situation you're in, whether it's at work, feeling like you're more grounded, more influential, calmer in meetings your children will feel it and calm and joy, those, those elusive emotions which, you know, we used to have, you know, that's, that's the power of taming, uh, your brain, is that you, you show up differently and you, you could, you know, have fun with your girlfriends or socially. It's. This is not just about being more productive or efficient at work. That is not the point of life. We want to be having wonderful impact at work, but we also want to be, you know, creating memories and impact and connections and joy in our own lives. 

Jo Host

And so, yeah, the ripple effect is is throughout not to mention there's just this beautiful sense of peace that you get to live with in your own being. That's one of the biggest transformations for me I'd say I had over the last 10 years is I was constantly rushed. I was running, literally, I'd run to the bus, I'd run home, I'd run to a meeting, I'd be on the bus, quickly get out the phone. Like my mantra for life would have been to hurry up. Like everything was in a hurry up. Hurry up, get into bed. Hurry up, eat your dinner. Hurry up, put the dishes in the dishwater. Hurry up. “Where the hell am I going?” “What the hell is the rush?” Because you can never get it all done to your point. 

So, I know you experienced this, too. This beautiful sense of internal peace and calm. When the franticness goes away, and the ripple effects in my family, my kids, are that much calmer. All my relationships are better, because I've now got the space. It doesn’t mean I'm probably busier now than I was five years ago. My business has tripled in its size. Everything is bigger. My kids are now older, I've got more activities, and yet on the inside, I am calmer. I'm more regulated, my nervous system is under control. I've got greater immunity. It takes a lot to rock me. 

These are things that this is why we live. Like, yes, it's about everything outside of us, but you have to live in your body, 24 hours a day. We can't go, “Oh, I'd like to live in that body for a little while.” “So, to me, I think that is one of the absolute gems that were so used to living in this cesspool of resentment, and guilt and franticness, that I only got glimpses.” Maybe on holidays. There was a joke in my family that there was “Holiday Jo.” And “Holiday Jo” was chill, and a lot more fun and relaxed, and then I'd come back, and zip right up. Imagine if you could be on holiday more often. 

Sabina Guest

It's, yeah, and it's this sense that there's something else we hear. It’s that women are just living with this sense of urgency the whole time, and just feeling hypervigilant the whole time, and catastrophizing. And when you're operating at this constant level of stress, everything feels like a threat. Everything feels urgent and you're worried that something's going to go wrong, and we should not be living our lives just for one or two holidays a year. 

There is something fundamentally wrong, if you're saying to yourself “Oh, I just need to get through the next quarter, or I just need to get through until you know, the holiday.” No, because your body, your brain, your life, your family, is far more important. And it's the day-to-day living that makes a difference. It's not one or two holidays a year. 

Jo Host

Absolutely, and this is why we want you to tame your brain. And whether you believe you have ADHD or not, what I hope we have done in this episode is give you some greater context to what actually could be going on, what actually is causing some of your challenges or your symptoms. You could call it, and give you hope that there is another alternative, that there's another way to live, that you can find that peace you're looking for. You can control your brain. Yes, as we've said, you can be productive. But let's get you back to living in your life again. Thank you for joining me, Sabina. It's been an awesome discussion, and one I know. Many, many women will hopefully start Googling different things now.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond.Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.