193. ADHD and Ambition: Why Your Fast Brain Is Your Greatest Business Asset

Women with ADHD have been told their intensity, their fast brains, and their emotional depth are dysfunctional…but I truly believe ambition and neurodivergence can coexist in the healthiest way. The traits we have been taught to suppress (the hyperfocus, the pattern recognition, the emotional intelligence) are the exact things that create momentum, innovation, and success.

In this episode, we’ll explore what ADHD actually looks like in high-achieving women, how to build a life and business that works with your brain instead of against it, and why supporting your brain is not the same thing as trying to erase it.

TOPICS WE EXPLORE:

• ADHD in high-achieving women (the obvious signs and the ones nobody talks about)
• Why intensity, sensitivity, and emotional depth are assets, not dysfunction
• How I got my formal diagnosis and why
• Using cycle syncing, intentional scheduling, and pressure as a tool
• Medication as one tool in the toolbox (not the whole toolbox)
• The link between ADHD and high-functioning burnout
• How to stop pathologizing the parts of you that make you, you

THE POINT:

There is a difference between intensity and dysfunction. The goal is to understand yourself so deeply that you can support yourself properly and use your most powerful traits as the assets they actually are.

MENTIONED:

• Episode 192. Regulation Isn’t the Zen Bullshit You’ve Been Sold
• Fit with Coco: (My go-to workout)
• Work with Ash

MORE ABOUT ASH
I am the definition of duality — I swear like a sailor and break rules like it’s my job, but I also hold incredible space for my clients and work my ass off to help them achieve the success they’re after. But I'm also here for the non-preneur woman, too. My background in counseling gives me a unique perspective on what it means to show up, serve, & create connection for those who feel like they've never belonged before.

LINKS:

• Become the Regulated Woman
• Get emails that feel like your best friend (if your best friend was a therapist and actually told you the truth).
• Use code BB20 to get The Burnout Breakthrough for only $7
• Follow me on IG (dropping in once a quarter for updates & gossip)
• Website: ashmcdonaldmentoring.com

Work with Ash

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Women really have been pathologizing themselves. We're being told that we're too much and we're too emotional and we're too intense. And we treat this like fast acting, fast moving response system as dysfunction. We treat ambition as yuck and like try to slow ourselves down, make it look less. We treat sensitivity as a weakness instead of a very high level of emotional intelligence. We frame emotional depth as instability. And therefore, women try to become quieter and softer and smaller instead of like truly understanding themselves. And I think that there's a difference between intensity and dysfunction. Hello, my love, and welcome back to the Shamelessly Ambitious Podcast. More specifically, welcome back to my car because today's episode is brought to you by the parking lot of my children's school. Because for some godforsaken reason, the month of May, or might I say the year of May, the one that is meant to be kind of like motherhood-based. Like we've got Mother's Day, we love moms, we're grateful for moms, is insane. And because this is officially the week that I'm recording, this is officially the last week of school. I feel like I'm spending more time at the school seeing the kids' projects and plays and band concerts and making sure I put the card in the office so everybody can sign for the teacher and last-minute meetings and ceremonies and all the things, which we love. We love it, we love it. So today I dropped my kids off and I have to be back in the school in 45 minutes. So I figured I'm gonna sit in the car on an hour photo podcast episode because what else would I do? Right. So if you are me, if I am you, if you are carrying all the things right now, I salute you. I salute you and we are killing it. Let's just leave it at that. Today I really wanted to talk to you about ADHD. And I want to talk to you about it because um, as you know, I am actually a trained therapist and I self-diagnosed ADHD in myself. Probably I started to recognize it when I was in grad school. So that was a very long time ago, and really, really decided like it's official, I have this when I had my private practice. So this is like think 2013-ish. So it's been a while. And I'm not anti-medication, but if you know me, you know I'm pretty crunchy. I'm pretty like, if we can go a different route than medication, let's do that. And so for the last, you know, 13 years, I have been self-medicating. I mean self-medicating, self-managing, not self-medicating, self-managing my ADHD symptoms. And I that has worked. That has worked not perfect, but beautifully. It has worked well for me. Up until maybe the last year, where I could see chunks of time get lost. And in terms of like, I was so mismanaged and misfocused, and you know, my brain just wasn't working the way it used to work. And I really started to notice this when what used to take, you know, 20, 30 minutes of a workout in the morning would get, I'd get so distracted because I had so many thoughts. My mind was racing. I would have to write so many things down. I would then, of course, as I write it down, I'd get distracted to want to follow that trail. Whatever. I started to notice, like, okay, what is going on? And then I did a few things. I, you know, I just recently finished my second 10-day parasite heavy metal cleanse because I do believe that some of these things can be exasperated by other sources. So I'm very natural-minded. Let's just say that. Okay. But I got to the point where I was like, okay, I've done everything and I'm I'm not great. And so a few weeks ago now, I actually went to a psychiatrist and I got formally diagnosed. She was like, Yeah, I have not seen a case of ADHD that this was this intense for a while. That is amazing that you have been able to self-manage for this long. I'm like, I guess that's the perk of actually being a therapist. But she did get me a couple of prescriptions to try out. This is also a perk of being a therapist. It was like, we're gonna give you like one of each of these different things that could work. And you just go ahead and you you do your own research, you test it, you see what's good, what's not good. I kind of giggled because I was like, good thing I'm not, you know, a college student who's gonna go sell all these drugs you just gave me. Oh, I digress. So many of my friends went in college would do Adderall and all sorts of stuff. And I never did. I was never interested in it. Not to say I wasn't interested in other drugs. I really was, but pills were never one of the things, okay. Anyways, I have been testing and experimenting and exploring over the past several weeks with these medications, and I definitely have found some things that work really well. I've also recognized some things that do not work well for me that make me feel really bad. They give me headaches and and don't help at all. The other thing I will mention is that some of the things I did even previously were like microdosing and nootropics and like other natural things. Okay. And all this worked for a long time. And I'm not necessarily on here just to tell you all these stories. I am on here just to speak to things can change. And it took me a little while to really admit to myself, like, okay, this is kind of out of hand. Like I feel nuts and I don't like this feeling, and nothing that I'm trying is working. And yeah. So that's what I'm doing now. And I also want to share a little bit of like what and how I consciously have built my life around this beautiful brain of mine. Because I think unfortunately we live in a world where women are constantly taught to mask and hide our symptoms, our issues, or just medicate. And I I'm not trying to be judgy here, but yeah, if you're just instantly medicating without ever trying to figure out like where does this come from? Is it trauma informed? Is there a route to this? Is it nutritionally informed? Like, are there other pieces? I do think you're doing a disservice to yourself, even though I can confidently say, like it I self-managed beautifully for years, and then I didn't, right? And my systems worked. My my life worked for so long in this way. And I'm not medicating every single day either. So I will say that. Like I am very consciously utilizing it as just another tool in my toolbox alongside my systems to make them work a little bit better. But previous to medication, I really recognized in me that like travel and newness and change kept me alive creatively. It kept me inspired, it kept me in momentum, hence why we built the kind of life that we built. I was actively looking at how I operate best and pursuing a life that fed that, right? Obviously, you know, the flexibility and autonomy of entrepreneurship is very much in line with how my brain operates and the kind of space that I need. And I've also been a very intentional scheduler. In fact, I would say even before I self-diagnosed with ADHD, I almost subconsciously knew because even as a little girl, like every day was mapped out. And this does not fit everybody. I get that. It does not fit everybody. But for me, if I know what I'm supposed to be doing when, if I take the time, the 10 to 15 minutes to look at my agenda for the next day and literally write down, like, I'll do this from this time, this to this time, that is what gives me the most brain freedom. It is what allows me to be as productive as I want to be. It allows me to rest. Yes, I schedule rest because if my brain knows I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing at this time, I'm able to be fully there. So structure has really helped me and my brain to stay focused. I also started using cycle syncing about eight years ago. And that was game-changing for my energy and my capacity. It was and still is something that I used to understand that even hormonally, I might have some shifts in my brain chemistry that impact what works and what doesn't work and what feels good and what doesn't feel good. Of course, that goes in line with my ADHD. I also realized pretty early on that pressure, like this, you know, the procrastination that we typically shame ourselves for is kind of funny if you look and recognize that you might be the kind of person, if you're similar to me, where pressure is activating. And so I learned to work with that, not to leave things to the last minute, but to like intentionally plan things closer to a deadline. And again, that might make people freak out, but the earlier I tried to do something, the more time it kind of sucked away from me because I could never be totally focused or motivated in that project. And all of this is just to say like I learned to honor my own timing instead of forcing what didn't work for me. And so I think this is ultimately an invitation to really witness yourself and to normalize if you, in fact, have any of the feelings that I have had or experienced things I've experienced, whether you've chosen to medicate or you've never even considered it, or you've always self-managed it. For me, I think that over the past year or so, especially not traveling anymore, it's really funny. Like my kids are no longer homeschooled and they're we're no longer traveling full-time, and I feel more overwhelmed than ever in my life. And it really says a lot about American culture, even though I'm really happy that my kids have they are happy. They want what they want. So I'm adjusting. But there's so much more on my plate. There's so much more. And therefore, I need this structure to support this like internal chaos, right? And it helps me to be the high-functioning woman I want to be without completely ignoring how I really feel. And I think at the end of the day, that women really have been pathologizing themselves. We're being told that we're too much and we're too emotional and we're too intense. And we treat this like fast acting, fast moving, like response system as dysfunction. We treat ambition as yuck and like try to slow ourselves down, make it look less. We treat sensitivity as a weakness instead of a very high level of emotional intelligence. We frame emotional depth as instability. And therefore, women try to become quieter and softer and smaller instead of like truly understanding themselves. And I think that there's a difference between intensity and dysfunction. Intensity creates innovation and creativity and momentum and aliveness. Sensitivity creates empathy and emotional intelligence. And when we hyperfocus, we become masters of our craft or whatever it is that we're working on. And a fast brain, which I can so relate to, my brain goes a million miles an hour, it creates pattern recognition that allows me. I mean, the reason why I have been as successful as I have been is because I never tried to dim the parts of me that make me who I am. Ambition and neurodivergence can absolutely coexist in the healthiest way. And I think that's probably why I avoided medication for so long. Like I didn't want to turn the volume down on the things that I thought were so beautiful. But eventually it did come to the point where the beautiful parts were also being suffocated. And that's okay too. So I think this is an invitation of support, like learning how to support yourself, how to even just support your colleagues and your friends and people that you see maybe experiencing this too, rather than suppress. Right. Because when we suppress the parts of us that make us us, and we try to do, you know, this is this is the yuck of like the coaching industry because there is constant like blanket statements of how things should be done and what's the best way without considering the human behind it. This is why I'm so passionate about what I do. But when we suppress those parts of us, we're betraying ourselves. And I don't think that medication is betrayal. So let me state that. I think that it's a tool. And I think it's important that we understand why we're using it and what parts of ourselves that we want to emphasize and what other parts that we want to quiet a little bit, like my overthinking, my rumination, my inability to focus at times, my really deep struggle with rejection, like those pieces I wanted support with. And supporting your brain isn't the same thing as trying to erase it or change it. And I think this is also why for me, regulation is not about becoming less intense. Regulation is about understanding yourself so deeply that you can support yourself properly, feeling the emotions that you need to feel rather than letting them kind of take over your brain chemistry. And so maybe the goal shouldn't be becoming less or quieter or softer or doing things in the perfect way. Maybe it's recognizing that our beautiful traits are the things that make us us. And the more that we align with them, the more that we use them as assets in our businesses and our pursuits, the more we become these like resourced, unstoppable women. And so, kind of an episode about ADHD, kind of also an episode about like whether you have that or you just have different features of intensity that maybe you thought aren't the best ones, maybe it's time we see them as the best ones. And if you are experiencing ADHD, or maybe think that you are, this is not a diagnosis, but I think the more obvious traits of ADHD are easily distracted or hyperfocus or forgetfulness, overwhelm, procrastination, time blindness. I could relate to 110% of these. The all-or-nothing behavior, oh my God, that is me to a T. But the less obvious, often unseen versions of ADHD are emotional intensity and rejection sensitivity. I know I mentioned that. And, you know, difficulty resting, overexplaining yourself, interrupting because your brain moves too fast and you want to say the thing before you forget the thing, binge and restrict patterns with habits. So I definitely struggle with this, particularly with food. Deep empathy and sensitivity. Like these can be signs of ADHD, even though they're beautiful parts of who we are. Creating elaborate systems just to function. So that is a symptom. This is this was like as much as it was a tool for me that helped me, it was also a sign that I had a pretty severe case of ADHD. Boredom intolerance. So obviously, when phones came around, that was really yuck for a lot of us because it became the thing that distracted us enough when our brains had a really hard time, almost intolerance to boredom, feeling like too much, talking fast, difficulty shutting your brain off, sensitivity to criticism. These, you know, these pieces, even burnout. I'm just gonna say even burnout. The majority of people I work with that are struggling with burnout are also struggling with ADHD. So I am not here to diagnose. I am not your medical professional, but I think there's a lot of things that I learned when I was in grad school when I was learning about ADHD that I remember being like, oh, whoa, I didn't know that's not what I imagined ADHD to be. I clearly have it. And so this is my invitation to be you, boo, and like love these parts of yourself. And if you haven't yet, really take a moment to digest this and then maybe look at like what are the awesome assets about me that that I can and ought to be using as assets and maybe have been labeling as issues. All right, my friend, I love you. It's time for me to go in to watch my son demonstrate his third grade project. I hope you have a beautiful day.