Wrapping up 2024 + My ADHD Diagnosis

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to the very last solo episode of Crappy to Happy for twenty twenty five. We made it, you made it. Hopefully you're feeling festive. Hopefully you've got some nice plans to relax, spend time with people that you like, doing the things that you like, and not doing any of the things that you don't like. At this time of the year, I always kind of feel compelled to share ideas to help you manage, and I've done episodes on setting boundaries, and I've done episodes on emotional eating and how you can manage that. I just feel like this time I do want to share with you to remember to focus on the gain, not the gap. This is a phrase that I heard recently, and I believe there's a whole book written on the topic, so I should probably go and read it before I start talking about it. But in principle, all it is is that we are so quick to judge ourselves and judge our how we're going in life and how we're going with anything, based on

1:35 how far we still have to go. We are always pushing, striving, working towards the next goal, the next stage of life, the next milestone. And that's how human nature. I mean, you know, we are. We are driven to evolve, we are wired for growth. It's inherent, it's in our nature. But we really need to take a pause a casionally and stop and look back and look at how far we have come. Otherwise we are just constantly on this treadmill. We'll take five minute break over Christmas, over the holiday period, and then we'll be straight back into it. Go, go, go, pushing, pushing for the next whatever the next thing is in life.

2:20 At work, life is busy, there's always something to do, and there is always something that we're working towards. We can get into this trap of always looking for the next achievement and barely taking the time to even celebrate the successes when we do achieve them. What that does is you know, it just keeps us feeling constantly dissatisfied, feeling like there is constantly something more and bigger and better. And that's fine. Keep pushing, keep striving, but remember to stop and look back and reflect on how far you have come and what you have achieved this year. I would really encourage you over this break to stop and look back and think about what was the three most important things or the three things that make you feel most proud and most satisfied that you achieved in this last twelve months. And you might really have to struggle to remember what happened this last twelve months. It might feel like a bit of a blur. I mean, who knows what I was doing in March. God, But you know, we have to force ourselves to do this occasionally and really really acknowledge and celebrate those those things that we've achieved.

3:30 You know, there was a time in life where you wished for what you have now and what you have achieved now. There was a time in your life and your past life when your current life was the dream. And you know, for generally speaking, I understand you might have had a crappy year and all disclaimers aside, you know, what I'm saying to live where you live, have the people in your life, the house that you live in, the work that you're doing. You know, once you dreamed of that, and now here you are. You know, And then on a more micro level, you know, what were the goals you set for yourself and even if you didn't achieve them all one hundred percent, what did you learn? What did you gain from working towards them? It's the act of working towards them. But that's where the growth happens.

4:13 That's where the magic is. It's in the satisfaction of the journey. To be a little bit of a cliche, not necessarily in achieving the goal. And if you did achieve the goal, then celebrate, acknowledge and you know, really own that success and take the time to savor it instead of immediately moving on to the next thing. And I would encourage you to do that a little bit more. You know, that might be something that you want to put into your routine in twenty twenty five, is to spend a little more time reflecting on what you have done and achieved, whether that's a weekly thing, daily, monthly, just maybe incorporating some sort of habit or routine where you routinely check in and acknowledge the gains instead of always focusing on the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I have said many, many, many, many many times, the source of all of our suffering is the gap between where we are and where we want to be, or how things are and how we want them to be, how we wish things were different.

5:17 We cause ourselves a whole lot of angst, a whole lot of despair and distress when we fixate on what's not working, or where we think we should be, or where we would prefer to be, or what achievements we would like to gain and what successes we would like to have, or how we would like to fix or change or improve ourselves. If we could just stop for a minute and focus on the gain and instead of constantly focusing on the gap. Okay, so enough about that. The other thing I said in the hopefully I said it at the beginning of this episode. If the technology is all working, I would have said at the beginning of this episode that I am working on a brand new subscriber version of Crappy or Happy. For twenty twenty five I have been thinking about this and talking about this for at least a year and a half. You probably don't love getting lots of programmatic ads interrupting your podcast, and I don't love having them in there, but todate that's been the only way I've been able to fund this show. I would prefer to move towards a podcast where you can support me, and I will support you by offering more content, bonus content, Q and as whatever it is that you want, we can come up with this together. I do have some plans for bonus content and exclusive subscriber content for twenty twenty five, and that way you're getting more of what you love. I'm getting the support that I need to continue to produce and run this show, and we get to create a community together.

6:46 And as far as advertising goes, I will be looking for sponsors, but what I'm looking for is really aligned partners that can sponsor a series of the show, you know, a like a full season of the show, instead of just dropping in ads here and there, different ads every week. So if you are a brand, or if you know of a brand that would be a good fit with the Crappy to Happy philosophy and ethos mental health, wellbeing, mindfulness psychology. Then I would love to hear from you and work out how we can work together. Now, the only other thing that is on my mind today that I would like to share before wrapping up for the end of the year is that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. Now, this is a very very early situation, like I probably don't even haven't really processed it enough to be able to be talking about it in any great detail, But I did want to share it for a couple of reasons. One is that I just think it's helpful to share. I think it's helpful for other people to know. I know every time I see somebody share on social media that they've had an ADHD diagnosis. Yes, there is a part of me that goes, oh my god.

7:57 Another one like, gosh, every other person seems like is getting a diagnosis of ADHD, like it really does. I have to admit, feels like everybody's just jumping on the bandwagon a bit. But it's also kind of heartening when you see people who are successful and doing things in life and who you maybe would never have suspected struggled with some of the symptoms of ADHD. At the same time, I've been kind of hesitant to talk about it. I saw somebody the other day posting that she had been diagnosed with ADHD, and she started she prefaced this thing by saying, this is really vulnerable. I feel really vulnerable sharing this. And my response was, this is before I was diagnosed. And my response was, in my own mind, why is that vulnerable? Like that's nothing to be feel ashamed about. Gosh, so many people are being diagnosed, like it's so widely accepted now that women have been underdiagnosed, we're just catching up when it comes to ADHD in women, and particularly perimenopausal and menopausal women. Women. I have the age of forty. This is not a flaw, Like, this is not something that you should feel like is embarrassing or there should be any stigma around it. Fast forward to you know, a few weeks later and me getting a diagnosis and I can relate. The truth is I feel like if I say which I'm saying, I have ADHD, then somehow people will see me as less competent, yeah,

9:29 less capable, somehow that they will doubt my capability to do the things that I'm capable of doing and I have been doing effectively for my whole life. And that's the flip side that people will go, oh, come on, People will say, well, it hasn't really held you back in life like it's supposed to cause you problems. You only get a diagnosis if it causes you problems. And the only way that I can share the problems that it has created for me is to probably share things that I'm not comfortable with sharing. But if I don't share it, then people say, well, how is this a problem for you? Like, you've got two master's degrees'. I mean I have got two master's degrees, I've written three books, an audible original, I've achieved things. All I can say is that in hindsight, I probably could have achieved those things with a lot less stress and overwhelm and blind panic, had I been able to organize myself and do those things in a much more planned and logical and sequential manner without leaving everything to the last minute, with being able to create a plan, follow a plan, instead of everything being ad hoc all over the place, and this procrastination and then perfectionism that kicks in. So yeah, it feels like I'm either saying either people will think I'm not competent or they will think, well, you're competent, so you're having a lend, you know, and it doesn't feel like there's any in between. So there's that. Therefore, very

11:00 happy that other women and high profile women in Australia and around the world have been coming out and saying that they also have ADHD, because it certainly makes it much easier when somebody has gone before. And therefore I hope that by doing that that men, by sharing that it makes it easier for you as well. So the question has also come up, why now and will They actually asked me that that was a question in the diagnostic interview, was why now? And I would say, and I think this is probably the experience of a lot of women that what we know now is that ADHD symptoms are impacted by hormones. This means that often girls will not show symptoms until puberty and it's just written off as puberty, whereas you know, technically speaking, symptoms have to be present at the age of seven for a diagnosis to be made. A lot of women have less problems during pregnancy because of the increased estrogen, and women start to really struggle during perimenopause and menopause. When estrogen levels drop, all of these coping mechanisms and all of these systems that you've got in place, and all of the ways that you've managed life up until that point, suddenly it becomes unmanageable because of the impact of hormones. Thankfully, now there's also a whole lot more acceptance of HRT, and so women are able to go and get estrogen patches and whatever other hormones are going to help them out.

12:24 But regardless, some of these symptoms of ADHD are still very present, and they're much more present and much more noticeable at this time in my life certainly, and I know that that's the experience of a lot of other women as well. I'm in a position where I have many clients who have ADHD, are going through a diagnosis, or have had a diagnosis for quite a long time. And what I began to notice since I started doing some more a lot more one on one coaching, is that I could spot it a mile away. I would have a client come to me, or somebody a prospective client come to me tell me what they were struggling with, and I could tell immediately, you need to go and get an ADHD diagnosis. I could see it a mile away, and those women took me up on that, and they did go and get an ADHD diagnosis, and then they didn't need to come and see me because they had it sorted. All of these issues that they were struggling with, and the overwhelm and the stress and the anxiety and the difficulty managing their priorities and getting things done and juggling work and life, and all of the stuff that they thought they needed coaching for they realized was ADHD, and then they were able to get effective treatment for that, and that sorted things. So it's kind of interesting that it took me, perhaps a little longer to be able to see those same things in myself. I guess when you're standing outside and looking at somebody else and they're telling you, somebody's blatantly telling you what they're experiencing, very easy to then make a kind of a provisional diagnosis about that. But with ourselves, because we have all of

13:55 these I guess, compensatory strategies, like the way that we operate in the world, the way we set up our life, and the things that we consider to be just personality traits which are actually kind of side effects of undiagnosed ADHD. It's much harder to spot it in ourselves, I think. And when I say the side effects, I mean things like perfectionism, feeling chronically overwhelmed, but attributing that to just excessive workload, just juggling too many things, which which many women are this is a thing. Then there's the frazzled, completely fried at the end of the day and going home and having a couple of glasses of wine because that's what you need to do to take the edge off.

14:41 Like all of these things, there's a reason that they say people with ADHD are more at risk of addiction. It's that it's getting to the end of the day and feeling completely fried by having to cope with the demands of the day. Then there are the people who just opt out. Yeah, like I did. I opted out of the workforce twenty years ago and went to work for myself and went back to UNI and set myself up in business so that I didn't have to deal with endless meetings all day and people writing me and deadlines, And I created my own structure, set my own hours, set how many hours a day I see people, I'm in front of people, and it never occurred to me that all of that was my way of making sure my life was manageable within the constraints of this condition.

15:34 Even so, even with all of that, I mean, there is obviously lots of things that I really struggled with. I mean, when I wrote books, I had deadlines, when I was doing work for other companies, writing all of the blogs and things that I have done for online fitness communities, like, there were deadlines I had to meet, and I constantly failed to meet them. Fortunately, I work with some lovely people who were very accommodating of me, and I would say, oh my god, I'm so busy. I'm sorry, I'm just so much. I'm juggling bullshit. I just was completely disorganized, and I just really struggle with deadlines, and I just really really found it difficult to sit down and find the will to do work if I did not find it particularly interesting, Like it takes a deadline in those circumstances for me to get my bum into gear and to actually do the thing I'm being paid to do. And so therefore you just feel like you're just a lazy person, like everybody else just sits down and gets the work done, like what's wrong with me?

16:36 That's why it leads to such low self esteem lack of confidence. I suspect also that just by virtue of my professional training, I have also developed a lot of skills that have helped me to manage I've been meditating for years. I've been practicing mindfulness meditation, and perhaps that's not an accident. Perhaps I was drawn to that and I found it so beneficial because it helped me to quiet my mind. I also, as you know, I'm always on about self compassion. I had a very, very harsh inner critic. I was always so judgmental of myself, and I have intentionally worked to change that. I have changed how I set up my work day, not just working from home and working for myself, but organizing when I do particular tasks around when I have the most energy.

17:25 Just intuitively, I have done that. That's the point of being self employed, is being able to manage your own hours to optimize your efficiency. Now it's not always that effective, but what I'm saying is that I think that again, one of the reasons why it took me so long is because I have been implementing these things. I have the skills and tools that an ADHD psychologist or an ADHD coach is going to teach. Somebody going to teach them mindfulness, teach them self compassion obviously, as well teaching them organizational things, how to break down tasks, how to reward yourself for small gains, all of those things. But in terms of the emotional and cognitive aspects of it, then I think, you know, I've been doing that, and I have been reaping the benefits of that, which again made it probably take a little longer to realize what was actually going on. I tell people all the time, I adopted the mantra let it be easy, because I would over complicate everything. I was overwhelmed all the time, and take one small job and make it into some massive big task, go down a rabbit hole like of research, make it much bigger than it needed to be. And I knew that I was burning myself out. I've been burnt out more than once, and I knew that, and so I have intentionally wound back my expectations of myself.

18:50 Let it be easy. You know, I know the stuff in my head, deliver what I know. I don't have to overcomplicate it like these are strategies that I have adopted just because they were helpful to me, and I've shared them with my clients and with you guys with listeners because it's helpful. And I now realize, oh, actually, that also was a way of me managing undiagnosed ADHD. Chronic overwhelm, perfectionism, and anxiety, like they're all classic symptoms of ADHD. Little did I know? You see the light bulbs start going on when you start to and they're still going on for me, to be honest, When you start to see some of these behaviors and just the way you operate in the world and the way you cope and have coped, you start seeing them through this other lens, and it's a revelation, let me tell you.

19:45 It is a revelation. And partly it is a massive relief to know that, Okay, this is what it is. I mean partly there is still a bit of imposter syndrome, like I still feel like, oh, surely not. I think I'm making this up. She obviously didn't take enough time with the assessment, because I think that she's I filled this assessor into giving me a diagnosis when I don't deserve one. I mean, it's ridiculous. So there is relief to know that potentially there is something that can help. There's also kind of a bit of like, there's a lot of what if too, you know, and I think that's probably common. If I'd had this diagnosis when I was a teenager, when I was in my twenties, how different could things have been, and how much less might I have struggled? How much less pressure might I have put on myself unnecessarily if I had known and if it had been treated effectively. You know, I see people and women in their thirties getting diagnosed and going, oh my god, how have I gone this long in my life and not known and trying over fifty However, going back to my earlier message, we focus on the gains, not the gap. Put a positive spin on this focus on the gains not the gap. So it is a relief to have a diagnosis. It is twenty twenty five is going to be a whole new year. I possibly am a little concerned that I'm putting too much faith in the medication being life changing. I've heard too many

21:15 people say that medication changed their life, like literally, and I'll be deeply disappointed if I try medication and it makes no difference. But anyway, that is my news for today. I'm not sure if there was anything else I wanted to say on that. Like I said, I haven't had an appointment for medication yet. All I have had is the official diagnosis and so we'll see. We'll see in January. I'll be back to talk more about that process. If anybody is interested, by all means, hit me up if you would like to ask a question about that. For now, that's where I'm at. If that helps you to shed some light on what you're experiencing, then prompts you perhaps to seek a diagnosis if you've been wondering. If you want to ask me some more questions, I'm happy to answer them. So it's been a you guys, thank you so much for being here this year. I can't wait to be with you even more in twenty twenty five.

22:06 Look after yourself over the break, take care, travel safely. If you're traveling, rest, relax, and I will be back next year with more Crappy to Happy. Crappy to Happy is created and produced by me cas Done. If you enjoy the show, please hit the follow button wherever you listen to ensure you never miss an episode. Share with a friend to get me into the ears of more lovely listeners, and I would love for you to leave a five star rating and review to hear more about how to join the Beyond Happy community in twenty twenty five, make sure you subscribe to the show or to my email list. You can find a link on my website cast done dot com. Thank you so much for being here and I cannot wait to catch you next week for another fabulous episode of Crappy to Happy