More Than Anxiety

Ep 110 - The Intersection of ADHD and Anxiety

• Megan Devito • Episode 110

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In episode 110 of the More Than Anxiety Podcast, I'm sharing my personal experience exploring the relationship between anxiety and ADHD, particularly in women over 40.

In this episode, you'll hear about:
- The increased symptoms of ADHD in midlife and its impact on managing anxiety
- Real-life examples of how ADHD affects daily tasks
- My account of diagnosis, treatment, and how social media played a roll
- Navigating the complexities of ADHD symptoms during perimenopause
- The influence of our digital world on mental health and attention spans
- Practical strategies for managing anxiety and ADHD

What You'll Learn:
- How ADHD and anxiety can interplay, especially for women in their 40s
- The importance of professional guidance in diagnosing and treating ADHD
- Personal experiences with ADHD medication and its effects
- Insights on productivity and focus challenges in a fast-paced world
- Strategies for coping with anxiety and ADHD in daily life
- The potential impact of social media on mental health perceptions
- Opportunities for coaching and personal development

Mentioned in this episode: Elle Key - Featured in Episode 95

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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it.

Speaker 2:

Hey there, welcome to episode 110 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. My name is Megan. I'm super excited to be back again talking with you this week about anxiety, adhd and how those two brain ways of thinking or ways of being can crisscross. To be clear, before I go anywhere with this, this is not medical advice. I am not a therapist. I am not a doctor. I am just somebody telling her story of how I'm figuring out how my brain works in real time on this podcast and, as I'm recording this podcast - hindsight, where I am now and in the future.

Speaker 2:

Please do not take anything I say as medical advice. Do not go on medication or off medication for any reason because of what I say. I am telling you what I am doing and telling you what it's been like for me to be somebody who had generalized anxiety disorder for a very, very long time, from third grade until I was about 40. And what my life is like now that I don't have generalized anxiety disorder anymore. But as someone who does experience anxiety that can get intense, just without the weeks long rumination and not being able to get out of it, I can shut it off now and potentially what my life will be like in the future. So this is really a story of me trying ADHD medicine and loving how I feel, but also noticing my resistance to that medication. So I thought I'd share my experience with you, because I know that a lot of women my age are in the same boat. I am 48. I am in perimenopause and if that sounds like you and you're like, what is going on in my brain and how long has this been going on, I'm your girl. I'm going to tell you all about it. So again, not medical advice, just my experience. If we've not met before, I am a life coach. I help women who struggle with overthinking, who struggle with overwhelm, who are stressed, who are feeling anxious, learn how to calm those feelings down so they can achieve the goals that they've been working so hard to achieve when sometimes their brains and sometimes their habits get in the way. So we change what you're thinking, we learn to calm your body and we create some new, amazing habits. That includes lots of fun, because in my opinion, fun is really the antidote to anxiety and overwhelm and all of the things that we don't want to experience in our lives.

Speaker 2:

What I want to tell you about today is about a month ago, I finally went to my doctor and said look, this is what's going on in my brain and in my life; I think I have ADHD. Here's how this started. If you have the same algorithm feeding you information that I do, first of all, part of me is really sorry for that, because mine is a little intense sometimes and I get very annoyed with some of it. But I do read the posts and, of course, when I read the posts I'm like does that apply to me? How do I feel about this? We can get really engaged with that.

Speaker 2:

But recently there have been a ton of posts on my social media articles from women who are in their forties who are being diagnosed with ADHD. There's also been a big process of learning, along with my teenager, about ADHD, about anxiety, about how those things crisscross and how medicine can help. We are figuring it out together, but it all got me thinking, or actually overthinking, which you'll hear about later on in this episode and how this is exactly what you don't want to do. The overthinking part, which is something that I've done my entire life and I never knew it, could also be a symptom of ADHD, and that's really where the rabbit hole begins. If we go back to my childhood, when I started feeling anxious and probably wasn't necessarily diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder because it was pretty early on, especially in Indiana where we weren't on the cutting edge maybe of mental health at that point. But that's when I remember feeling anxious. And if I think about what I was like as a kid, I was a fast mover. I didn't necessarily run fast, but I always was hurrying. And yes, hurrying can absolutely be part of an anxious reaction. It can be anxiousness that makes you hurry, but I talk fast, I move fast, like when I'm doing things I am here to here, to here to here, let's just get it done. I make tons of typos, over and over errors in almost every single post. Then I have to go back and fix them. It's totally annoying. Sometimes I don't even see them until days later, and then it's embarrassing. I rarely, rarely, rarely, if you follow me on social media make a post that isn't a mess, that doesn't get corrected, not because I want to, but because I just talk it and hit it and move on. And that's really been the way that my life has been.

Speaker 2:

I am a doer and I am a big picture person, because details are hard. I mean really hard. I was at brunch the other day with my parents. I was explaining to my mom how I am in charge of organizing this event for the high school swim team and she's like, oh, piece of cake, you've got this. I'm like, yes, I can do stroke technique, I can explain that I can do that so well, but these details it feels like bees buzzing in my head and I've always known this about me. But I think I realized truly how difficult it is for me to picture things that are not right in front of my face, or to stop and think through a process or create steps, because it was just go as fast as I can and get it done, so I don't think about it anymore. That still holds true to me. So I started wondering is that because I'm anxious and feel like I have to get it done, or is that because I can't do details and just want to get it out of the way so I never have to think about it again? Or is it both? So I started getting really confused and frustrated and stuck in my business and I remember feeling in school like I just want to get it out of the way so I don't have to think about it. Now

Speaker 2:

Now, to be fair, when I was in school elementary, middle school, high school and college I was living with a diagnosed anxiety disorder. I had generalized anxiety disorder. I focused mostly on my health and that was my experience, and it was 24-7, very intense. I mean, if I got some time off, it was a miracle and I just figured that's the way my life was going to be, which isn't true, because I don't feel that anyway anymore. But I lived by the whole C's get degrees thing. But I always knew I was really, really smart. I just couldn't do step-by-step. That meant slowing down and I was like screw it, I can't do it that long. My mind was preoccupied with a whole lot of anxious thoughts, but I also just was like, just get it done, I don't want to deal with it. So that was part of my story that got me thinking about again.

Speaker 2:

o back to these posts that I had seen on social media. The next part is about intrusive thoughts and overthinking and overfeeling. If you've heard me talk before, you know that what you think about creates your emotions or the feelings inside of your body, but also vice versa, because when that anxiousness is in your body. It can cause you to start overthinking. Now, was I overthinking and hyper-focused because of ADHD? Or was I hyper-focused because I was so anxious? Maybe it was just generalized anxiety disorder, maybe it was OCD, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I had lots of fears, starting from when I was a really little kid, about my parents dying, about me getting a disease - not germs, not all of the get a cold any of that kind of stuff big, catastrophic things where people would be really sad. I remember feeling like I would never be able to handle making my parents, or my kids, or my husband, or anyone sad about me. I didn't want them to be sad because of me and this turned into health anxiety, and the anxiety part is a long, long story that I've told frequently on this podcast and my blog posts and on social media. But I also started wondering if it was more that led me down this rabbit hole of trying to remember things that I don't really remember that clearly.

Speaker 2:

So when you are my age and you're looking back on, like what was I like when I was eight years old, nine years old, I don't know? I asked my mom and she says, no, Megan, you seemed like really normal. You were a good student, you were all these things. But in my head I'm like, yes, and I was also really anxious and focused only on really scary stuff and um, but I'm trying to remember, at At this point I'm like, okay, yes, obviously I was anxious, but what was my focus Like? Was I actually hyper-focused or am I imagining that now because of where I am? Am I making up these memories? Because we can, for sure, make up memories, and one of the most frustrating things that I ever learned was the more you think about something in the past, the more that memory changes. So am I accidentally changing the memories? Sometimes we know too much. This is a really important thing for us to understand in this podcast that you can absolutely know too much. Was this an actual thing?

Speaker 2:

t I was asking my mom, like, was she remembering correctly or was she remembering based off what she perceived and so remembering things that maybe suited what I was looking for, for example, remembering that more than once I got in trouble for interrupting in the second grade and I still interrupt, and I hate it. Is that an ADHD thing? Was that just me being a second grader? Was it one of those things where I just took it to heart because twice somebody, or three times or however often, somebody had to tell me to stop interrupting? I don't know, because there's no way for me to time travel back and figure it all out. That is also very annoying to me. I want no, I don't. I say I want live footage of that part of my life, but I'm not sure I actually do. I don't know that I need to travel back there.

Speaker 2:

That's a really important component of my anxiety recovery was realizing that that was the past and I don't have to travel back to that all the time. So a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of questioning that can get involved in that and make you feel more anxious. If you're struggling with anxiety, I highly recommend you don't. If you don't have anything that you need to necessarily work through in terms of anxiety, you don't necessarily have to go back and revisit those times to analyze them. You can say, yeah, this is the way it was and now we can create a new reality, moving forward, barring any trauma that's lodged in your system, in which case you should definitely talk to a therapist. So that was me looking at the past. So let's go to where I am now. Let's talk about my life currently.

Speaker 2:

I told you I'm 48. I told you I'm in perimenopause. But one of the symptoms of perimenopause is brain fog. So maybe that's the problem and maybe that's what led me to this episode and to asking about anxiety medicine. Maybe it's a normal thing for perimenopause to mimic ADHD, and after just one quick Google it's definitely a thing. But even though perimenopause can certainly make you feel more anxious which it absolutely does, because you get cortisol surges and all of that that feeling is something that I'm used to and I can work through it. Well, at this point it doesn't control my life or my thoughts anymore. But since brain fog and your brain not functioning the exact same way when you're in this phase of life is also a thing, what's up with the thinking part? Is it actually just because of my hormones being out of whack and my brain doing whatever it does when you're in this phase of life, or is it just exacerbated because it's always been there? There's really two arguments in this. I don't know what the actual answer is. I just know what my experience is that focus right now it is not happening.

Speaker 2:

With the rise of women being diagnosed with ADHD later on in life, around their 40s, my age, I started learning more about what that looks like because I can't focus, and I started reading an awful lot into some of those social media posts I was seeing. But I'm still kind of going back and questioning myself what was real and what is something that I imagined. Now, to be clear, I am no stranger to those psychosomatic symptoms, which means when you think of something and suddenly you feel it in your body. Whether you think about something and you suddenly feel anxious, or if you are like me and you struggled with health anxiety, reading about some horrible thing in the news and then suddenly you have a headache after you read about somebody who had said something wrong with their brain. Or you hear about somebody having a heart attack and suddenly you're paying attention to your heart rate. Those psychosomatic symptoms. Or, self-fulfilling prophecies, where you tell yourself that you can't focus and suddenly you can't focus even more. Or you tell yourself I'm always anxious and suddenly you're anxious even more, because both of those things are real and they actually happen. But I also know that some of the things I'm reading on social media right now in my life do make sense. I told you that I can't focus, so I want to give you an example of what this looks like for me.

Speaker 2:

It's not an odd thing for me to, let's say, it's like five o'clock in the afternoon and I'm trying to make dinner. The sink is running, the fridge is open, there is food on the grill and I'm typing on my computer, creating a post, and then someone walks in and I'm talking with them. So I go back to the computer which has 10 tabs open. It is also taking me sometimes more than four hours to edit a 30 minute podcast, podcast transcript, and I'm still not doing it well, because I'm still rushing when I do it. That kind of stuff. It is taking me hours to write an email because I am here, there and everywhere.

Speaker 2:

So when I say that I'm not focusing, that I'm sure I'm not making up. But is it because I can't, or because I just don't want to do it, or is it because of perimenopause brain? I don't know. But on the flip side of all of that not being able to focus, I can hyper focus still on anything to where I'm like, oh, I'm into it, and I know this has been a thing for me for years. I can get super obsessed with something and go 100% and only focus on that. Everything - it's very all or nothing for me. So I do definitely have some ADHD tendencies, yes, but are those from my age and from hormones or from actual ADHD? This has been the problem my entire life. And now I can't remember and I don't really know.

Speaker 2:

But because I do have some of those tendencies, I decided that I was going to follow up with my doctor. And I did not go, to be clear, I did not go to a psychiatrist, I just went to my GP. And this is how this happened. So I recorded a podcast episode with Elle Key a while back and I will post that link here. I don't think we actually talked about ADHD on this podcast episode, but we may have. So I'm going to go ahead and tag that post and I will tag Elle in the show notes so that you can connect with her. She's amazing. But she shared her experience and I still hesitated. So I said you know, I don't know, I think I have some of these ADHD tendencies. I'm laughing it off and I went down my usual path of researching and trying to figure out and I found myself finding more evidence for the ADHD but also feeling more anxious, trying to find the right answer. I wanted to know exactly. I wanted to be able to go back into the past and really get certain on. Am I making this up? Elle told me after talking with her, she's like listen, you should try it, it worked for me. Just reach out to your doctor and talk with them. Okay, so I end up. I told you that I took my teenager, and one of my teenagers was diagnosed with ADHD and I knew that I had to fill out this form, this Vanderbilt assessment, to take to his psychiatrist. He went to the psychiatrist so that he could be properly diagnosed and I knew that there was an adult form. So I found that form on the internet and I ended up taking the quiz that my teenager took, just the adult version, because there's a different version for adults and teenagers and I definitely have some strong markers. So I called my general doctor who prescribed me medicine. I had to go in, I had to go do the whole. You know, I took my little paper of my quiz results with me. talked with them and I said hey, this is what's going on. And they said you know what I really don't like to prescribe stimulants. And my answer to them was I really don't want to take them, so if you could just tell me that I don't need them, I would just get on with it. And they're like well, you know, if we're looking at this, you know I don't I don't necessarily use this form, but if we're looking at this and what you're telling me is happening in your life, you can try them, and you can try them and love them, and you can try them and hate them and you can decide what you want to do. So it gave me an open spot to be able to see what would happen. She prescribed me a quick acting medication that I can take, but she prescribed it for two pills a day and I was like that's never going to happen, like very resistant to trying this medicine, but also really wondering if it could make it not take four hours to edit a podcast transcript or to write an email or any of those things. So I took them home with me and she said I definitely know that.

Speaker 2:

When I was in med school, that these helped me, but I also knew that I didn't feel like myself when I took them. So I chose to figure out other ways to deal with ADHD myself. Give them a shot, see what you think. If you don't like them, just don't ever take them again. So I took them, but I waited, and when I started taking them, I only took a half of the pill that they prescribed because I was very leery. I think they prescribed 10 milligrams. I took five and guess what; it helped. Again, I want to circle back to the idea that I am not telling you you should take medication or that you should not take medication. I'm just telling you my story about my visit to my doctor. Do not use my symptoms of not being able to focus or being anxious or hyper-focusing, or anything I say on this podcast, to diagnose yourself or to make a decision, because social media is already trying to get us to do that. Just really talk to your doctor and get their suggestions about where to start.

Speaker 2:

So let's keep going with where I am now and what happens with the future, because, remember, I told you about my past. Now you know a little bit about where I am-ish in this moment of time, but let's talk about what happens next for me and what I think about this entire process. Technically, I don't have an ADHD diagnosis. I did not go to a psychiatrist. I got medication from my general practitioner, the doctor I spoke with. She absolutely gave me medicine and since I'm pretty sensitive which is why I chose to take a half a pill it worked for me. The first time I took the medication, I felt really relaxed and for one of the first times in my life, I didn't feel like I had to hurry, which maybe that's normal. It must be normal because I don't know, it wasn't like slow, like painfully slow. It was like, oh, I don't need to hurry, everything's fine. That feeling in my body wasn't there and apparently maybe this is what normal people feel like. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

So that day when I took the first five milligrams of the medicine that I was prescribed, I edited my podcast transcript, wrote a blog and an email in less time than it takes me to do one of those things without the medication. I did not flip over to social media. I didn't go onto Target or Amazon to start browsing for crap that I didn't need. I didn't get up to clean the kitchen or to go change over the laundry or to do anything else. I didn't randomly decide that I should probably reorganize a silverware drawer. None of it.

Speaker 2:

It lasted about five hours, that half. a pill, and when it started to wear off I was really, really hungry and I felt sort of, kind of like floaty or dizzy for a while Not in a bad way and as soon as I ate something and I started to like move around and had a drink of water, that feeling went away. I mean, probably in another hour. So that was my experience the first time I took the medication. I have taken it six or seven times. I do not take it every day. I one time took a full dose. It was fine it I didn't have any bad symptoms.

Speaker 2:

I was really worried that I would feel more anxious, because I know that can be a side effect of some anxiety medication or some ADHD medicine, and I didn't want to feel anxious and I didn't. I actually felt the opposite. I felt very calm inside my body. Um, instead of feeling like my heart was beating faster or everything felt sped up because I'm like wait, this is a stimulant, I'm going to feel like I'm like really wound up, and it was the exact opposite was true for me. So I don't know what that means in terms of anything. I'm just saying that that's a result for me.

Speaker 2:

So, in that short amount of time of using medication and seeing the results, I know it works. I'm still caught in that cycle of investigating my past, which is really worthless, and I realize that. It's not overwhelming; every once in a while, I'll be like I wonder if this happened. Who knows, who knows? However, I'm also leaning into accepting it as something that helps me for where I am in my life right now. I'm trying to run a business. I'm trying to navigate these wonky hormones. I'm trying to raise teenagers. I'm trying to figure out how to navigate my life once my kids graduate from high school. It's a lot to figure out and the medication definitely helps. Is this something that I will do forever? I don't know. I don't know. I just know that for right now, it does help and I'm not taking it every single day.

Speaker 2:

While I take this medication, I'm also doing some other things to help me get my act together, including taking a course on really how to make Notion work for me. My son told me about Notion. I'm using it to get myself organized. That's been great. I'm creating some other routines in my business. I'm making sure that I'm doing the things that I've always done, like getting up early to work out, making sure that I'm drinking lots of water, making sure that I'm being mindful of what I eat, doing all of those things. So I've always been very intentional about getting good sleep as well.

Speaker 2:

These have always been probably the foundations of what helped me move out of my anxiousness, especially the mindfulness and checking my thoughts. If you are in a cycle of feeling anxious and feeling overwhelmed and feeling stressed and feeling like your brain just will not create habits, I'm your girl. I get it and you can absolutely message me to talk about how I can help you with that. This is really something that has kept me in line through anxiety and through feeling like I have to rush a lot of the times to make sure that I am - I've never been a procrastinator because I always know what comes next and I've just created those routines in my life. For as long as I can remember, routines have always been very beneficial to me. Routines without being rigid, because I want to make sure that we're also fitting a lot of fun into your routine, because that helps your body relax as well. That's where I am in terms of what could be coming in the future.

Speaker 2:

So there's one more thing that I want to touch on before I go, and that's the rise of the ADHD prescriptions. I want to share my very non-medical thoughts with you about where we are and why I wonder if so many people are taking medication. Yes, certainly part of this increase is an awareness and people being diagnosed with ADHD. They're finally more conscious about the things that are happening in their lives. They're finally asking questions. There's so much taboo around mental health whether it's ADHD, anxiety, ocd or anything else that people are kind of to a point where they're like screw it, I need some help with this. Good, that is fantastic and that is definitely part of what I think this rise in medication use is, but I think there's more to it. Part of the increase is an awareness, but I wonder if popcorn brain from social media isn't part of it.

Speaker 2:

Our brains have been trained to go faster. We scroll at lightning speed with our thumb and so our brains are made to go faster. So trying to slow them down when they're addicted to going fast and we're addicted to more dopamine can mean that when we don't have that, the focus is less. Am I a doctor? Is this official? No, but it does have me wondering how much of that is part of it. What about that increased pressure for instant gratification that we all are living with? Everybody's eyes are watching us. It's huge, it's unrealistic. And we want things right now. Now, I mean, we stream things from outer space and back. Is it an expectation of perfection, an expectation of things being faster, of being on demand? I don't know, but it definitely has me wondering.

Speaker 2:

And then we can always look back at the education system which I spent a lot of time in before I was coaching, before I started my life coaching business I was a teacher. Certainly, the education system in the United States is not set up for anyone who is not a sit down and listen kid. There are some great options, but we still have a very traditional system in most schools that isn't helping kids, whose brains are going so much faster than they used to go.

Speaker 2:

And as far as anxiety, I will always go back to the thing I learned that helped me so much, and that is that less is more, the more that you focus on how anxious you feel and try to solve for that feeling, instead of accepting it as this is how I feel and learning how to feel uncomfortable emotions and do hard things, whether that means you're seeing a therapist who can help you release trauma from your nervous system, or you're talking to a coach like me who can help you create these new mindsets and habits to do the things that aren't so much based in trauma, we have to be cautious about how much time we spend falling down that rabbit hole of research which I admitted to you I am 100% guilty of and trying to figure out how I thought about math and doing research papers when I was a student. I don't remember. It's worthless, it's a waste of time.

Speaker 2:

I realize that, so, but this is absolutely a job for a professional, so you can get the right diagnosis and find what you need, because the intersection of ADHD, anxiety, ocd and autism and so many more mental health issues is enormous. So you deserve to feel healthy, you deserve to feel confident, you deserve to feel calm and to have a lot of fun, and if that is something that you are looking for and you need support and accountability to help you feel less anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, you can message me and talk to me about how I can help you through coaching. I help my clients learn how to calm those anxious feelings in their body so that they can stop overthinking, work through overwhelming situations one step at a time and also grow their confidence by creating new thoughts and new habits so that they see success and they feel successful. It is super fun, it is simple and it is crazy effective.

Speaker 2:

I hope that this episode gave you some peace of mind in knowing that you are not the only person that is trying to figure this all out, and maybe a little inspiration to be able to ask questions to your doctor and to do what you need to do to feel good. So if you have more questions for me about what this was like, please don't be shy in messaging me. There's a little button in Buzzsprout that says text me. You can send me messages through that website platform. This is a new thing for me. I would love to hear what you think about this. I would love to hear your thoughts on your own situation and, of course, if I don't talk to you on a consultation call, I will be back again next week. Take care.

Megan Devito:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.