22: ADHD Isn’t a Flaw: How to Work With Your Brain, Not Against It

If you’ve ever felt like your brain just works differently and wondered why you’re constantly exhausted, forgetful, or overwhelmed despite “doing all the things”, this conversation is for you. In this episode, Jessica Covington, master-certified coach in life, health, and neuroscience (and a fellow mom with a fancy ADHD brain), joins me to talk about the realities of executive dysfunction, late diagnoses in women, and how shame and internalized messages keep us stuck. We unpack her Four Elements of ADHD Alchemy™, discuss what burnout looks like for high-functioning women, and explore real-life ways to work with your brain instead of against it. Whether or not you have an official diagnosis, you’ll walk away feeling seen and supported.

Connect with Jessica:

→ Website: www.fit-ology.com

→ Freebie: Decision Filters

→ Social Media Accounts

→ Books/Resources Mentioned: Driven to Distraction by Dr. Edward Hallowell & Dr. John Ratey

This episode includes a paid partnership with BetterHelp. Click the link, betterhelp.com/drdowney, to get 10% off your first month.

Click below to purchase the 365 day journal I created called Enough As I Grow. I am a proud affiliate partner with Amazon and will receive a commission from purchases at no extra cost to you.

🖋️ Enough as I Grow 365 day Guided Journal on Amazon

Email: drangeladowney@gmail.com
Social Media links: Here
🎵 Music: Upbeat Strings by Evan MacDonald

Transcript

Meet Jessica Covington

SPEAKER_01 0:45

If you've ever wondered why the simplest task is going to feel like climbing a mountain, or why you're exhausted even though you didn't do that much, this episode's for you. I'm sitting down with Jessica Covington, a master certified coach who helps women work with their brains, not against them. We're talking all about ADHD, executive dysfunction, and why the systems that we've been handed just don't work for everyone, and whether or not you have a diagnosis, you're gonna be walking away with tools and validation. There might even be a few oh wow, that is me moments. So stick around. I've got a great episode for you. Hey, hey, I'm Dr. Angela Downey, and this is Paging Dr. Mom, the podcast for women who are juggling careers, kids, chaos, and cold cups of coffee. We're talking about the real life behind the resumes, the messy moments, big feelings, and how to stay human when you're doing all the things. If you've ever felt like the only one trying to keep it together, you're not. We're gonna laugh, cry, vent, and thrive together. So here we go. Hello to all my busy mamas. I'm Dr. Angela Downey, and I'm so glad that you're hanging out with me on Paging Doctor Mom. This podcast is for all of us who are just trying to keep it all together while juggling kids, careers, and whatever else life throws our way. We're gonna be exploring all of those moments that we definitely wouldn't put on our resumes. I want to introduce you to today's guest. Jessica Covington is a mom, wife, and a master certified coach in life, health, and neuroscience with an ADHD fancy brain all of her own. Over ten years of coaching, she's developed the four elements of ADHD alchemy. It's a holistic way to work with our mind-body connection instead of against it. I'm so excited to have her on the show because she brings a compassionate, body-based approach to something that so many professional women struggle with in silence. Feeling like they're constantly behind, scattered, or just maybe not good enough. Her work is honest, it's empowering, and incredibly practical. As a coach with lived experience and real tools, she doesn't just talk about ADHD. She helps women feel seen and supported. And I cannot wait for you to hear this interview. Hi Jessica, it's great to have you on Paging Doctor Mom today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Glad that you made it. I know you've had a very busy morning already. I appreciate you being here. So maybe we can start by having you introduce yourself and tell us about your journey to becoming a coach with a focus on ADHD and neuroscience.

Origin Story And Late Diagnosis

The Four Elements Of ADHD Alchemy

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Absolutely. Yeah, I sometimes tell people that I didn't necessarily choose coaching. It sort of chose me. And I say that because this whole journey began with my son's diagnosis a little over a decade ago. I jumped in all the research I could find trying to understand his mind and how to help him, how to help him thrive. And pretty quickly noticed a number of things. Number one was how familiar it all sounded, which is what led to my own diagnosis about a year later. Next, I noticed that everybody else in the ADHD field was going about the whole thing brain first or focused only on the brain. And probably because of my background in dance and exercise science, I knew that there was another way. I knew the brain and the body are always deeply connected. And I knew we could access the body first to support the brain. Next thing I noticed was all of the shame and stigma that was heaped on to people with ADHD, especially people like me, who didn't come to their diagnosis until later in life. We got all these messages through childhood about, you know, you're so smart if only you would focus, or you have so much potential, if only you would be different than you actually are. And all that negative messaging really seeps in. It gets internalized. And so because of all that and because of my desire to help my son, I started experimenting and playing around with different mind-body techniques, a lot of them focused only on the body sometimes. And through this series of experiments, I guess fast-forwarding several years later to now, hundreds of clients later, tons of research, more certifications than I care to count, I have come up with a way to support people in a holistic way that accesses the power and the wisdom of the body in order to support the brain and help us work with our minds instead of against them.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

So you've now developed something called the four elements of ADHD alchemy. Is that what you're referring to?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Walk us through what that is and how it's different from how most people approach ADHD.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Sure. So the four elements are movement, nutrition, metacognition, and mindfulness, and then systems, habits, and tools. The main reason it's different is because most of the other people out there who are supporting ADHD, they start and end with that final pillar, with the systems, habits, and tools. In other words, just get the right planner and everything will be fine. Or just develop a system for setting timers and alarms, and you'll be able to be on time no matter where you go. Or color code your folders and you'll never lose anything again. That kind of thing. So what I want to do is address the entire person in the scope of their entire lives. So we start with movement, we get the body moving in order to get the brain moving. We support that with proper nutrition, which is in some ways very basic. I mean, we we subscribe to the ideas that macronutrients are important and we all need basically the same things, but there are a few things specific to ADHD. One example is just the idea that people with ADHD typically are a little bit low in magnesium. And then the stimulants that some people use to support ADHD make that deficiency even greater. They lower our magnesium levels even more. So somebody with ADHD may need a little bit more magnesium in their diet than a typical person. The third part is metacognition and mindfulness. And that is equally important to the others because once we learn to understand how our minds really work, and once we learn that the system we're living in, the world around us, isn't built for the way that our minds work, then we can start to make adaptations and we can begin to shift the systems around us to be more supportive of the way that we naturally think and the things that we're naturally strong at. Then there are the systems, habits, and tools. They're almost, in my four elements at least, they're almost like an I don't want to say afterthought, but they may be the least important piece of what we do because they're very practical, very logistical, and many of us already are familiar with some of those things from having gotten so much advice over the years already.

Why Girls And Women Get Missed

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Why do you think you weren't diagnosed when you were younger? Why do you think you got missed?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, I've spent a lot of time thinking about that, and it's I'm not sure that I'll ever really know the answer, and I and I have done a lot of work to release the regret, the guilt, the shame about that. I think part of it probably is because number one, it it just wasn't a conversation that we were having back in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. Number two, um, I was a girl, and so to the extent that ADHD was discussed, it was discussed in the scope of young white males. That's who most of the research is about. There is a a a terrible shortage of research about ADHD in girls and women.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

You have these boys who are climbing the walls, driving their teachers crazy, and they're the ones who got the attention, not necessarily girls who were just flighty or their heads were up in the clouds, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

That's right. A lot of times a girl with ADHD is called chatty or distracted or um a social butterfly. It wasn't necessarily me, but but a lot of girls are, and so they they get blamed for that as if it's a choice of theirs, when really it's it's not necessarily a choice at all. And it's not as disruptive as the boys bouncing off the walls. I also had a um the a gift, if you will. I had the gift of anxiety. So I was just anxious enough that I would get my stuff turned in to school on time, I would, I would get my homework done and get it in on time. Mind you, I was doing it late the night before. I had waited just up until the deadline to do it. But I was able to slide under the radar, I think, because I had a a perfectionistic drive and I had that anxiety telling me I better get this right or else. So I don't know. The the the reasons I wasn't diagnosed are probably so many more than that. But that's where it comes down for me.

Perfectionism, Anxiety, And Masking

Burnout Signs In High Achievers

SPEAKER_01 11:41

For myself, I I didn't suspect I had ADHD until I was much older. But I feel like I've got like 25 tabs open on my computer at any given time. I bounce back and forth non-stop, and and I don't always know where to focus my energy, and then sometimes I just oh yeah, I'm just gonna go play on my phone or something, because sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming. But it was interesting. My mom gave me an envelope with all of my report cards from when I was younger, which was very interesting because all of the teachers' comments were things like very smart but needs to focus more, is um always has her head up in the clouds, needs constant redirection, should be able to finish these tasks in class, but like I just thought I had homework and I thought everybody else had homework. But from these notes that the teachers were writing, these are all things that I should have been able to complete in class, and the other kids were completing in class, but I need to bring them home at night. So it was very interesting to see these these report cards and how a lot of the signs were there. But you're right, these are not conversations that were happening at that time, and luckily I I also had some anxiety. I was I'm a perfectionist. So I did manage to get these things completed um eventually and um and well and I was smart and I had that going for me. But I wish I don't know, I don't know if that was a conversation. I I I don't know if that's something I wanted to know back then because it really didn't start becoming a problem for me until I got into medicine, started a practice, and all of a sudden all the coping skills that I had developed as a child to get me through just weren't enough to support me anymore. And it created this like perfect storm for burnout and just executive dysfunction. So, what are some of the signs that a woman might be dealing with burnout because of undiagnosed ADHD, even though she's very high functioning on the outside?

Reframing Shame And Seeking Support

SPEAKER_00 13:52

That's a great question. Uh the first thing that comes to mind for me is a feeling of chronic overwhelm and exhaustion. No matter how much sleep you get, no matter how much rest or me time you get, a feeling of drain and exhaustion that just doesn't go away. And or a wild cycle of energy, maybe a whole lot of energy at a certain time of day, and then a dramatic crash, especially often in the afternoons. And in here I'm not talking about the typical postprandial slump that a lot of people see around 3 p.m. after they've eaten a big lunch and and done their thing. I'm talking about something that is impossible to work through and impossible to ignore. Um a lot of forgetfulness, a feeling of my my brain used to be capable of doing this thing or remembering these things, and now it's not anymore. Um and and a similar feeling in the emotional realm. Um a sense that the things that didn't used to really bother you or or throw you off track or send you into a shame spiral now are almost impossible to bear. They're incredibly painful. Difficulties with starting tasks or and or finishing them, that's that's kind of a typical ADHD trait anyway, but especially if you have found it ramping up over time, that might signal some burnout. And and a big one is the shame and self-blame, the notion that that there is something wrong inside of you versus something wrong with the system that and the expectations that we have to live in in modern society.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, my partner keeps saying that um I'm not paying attention. So, you know, they'll say something like, Oh, I told you that yesterday, and I'm like, I have no recollection of that conversation. I mean, it might have just been to pick up some milk or something small, and I'm like, I don't remember that happening. And you know, my partner says, you know, I I just you're not paying attention, you're not focusing. But I I don't know, like I I and and I do blame myself. I do feel like there's something wrong with my brain. Like, what's wrong with me? Am I do I have early dementia? What's going on? And um yeah, so I I do I do sometimes feel like my brain needs to be fixed, like there's something wrong. And um maybe I just need to develop better systems that work for me. So what do what does this sometimes look like in everyday life for busy moms who just have so many things on the go?

From Excuses To Adaptive Systems

SPEAKER_00 16:53

First of all, I I feel for you. And it's uh I want to reassure you that your brain isn't broken. Your brain is is doing too much right now in a system that it was never made for. We we live in a a version of life that our brains were never designed for. There's career pressure, there's parenting, there's mental load, there's overstimulation from the dopamine machines that we all carry around in our pockets. And it's not, it's just not a moral failure. Everybody is doing the best that they can. But, you know, to that point, I think one of the first things that we can do or should do to help alleviate some of that guilt is to accept that our brains really are wired differently. There's a physiological, a biological difference in the way that ADHD minds think. Um and so beginning to accept that, I think, is the first, I think that's the first step to healing and finding a new way. The next thing I think um is probably to understand that needing support and needing to do things differently than a partner, perhaps, or a best friend or a coworker, needing support isn't a weakness. It's actually a sign that your system is working exactly the way it's designed to. It's just designed differently than everybody else's. You know, our brains were evolved to thrive in community with shared responsibility and built-in collaboration. So I firmly believe that when we're able to recognize that everybody has different kinds of strengths, and then we can bring those strengths together, it just makes everybody better. It lifts the whole um it lifts the whole society, the whole community. I would also encourage people when they're when they're feeling that guilt and shame, I would encourage them to think about where that message comes from. In other words, who said that you have to do it a certain way? A lot of times that voice is from someone in our past. Maybe it's a teacher who was especially hard on us, maybe it's a parent, maybe it's our own expectations of the way that things should be. But anytime we hear should in that internal critic's voice, it almost always is somebody else's voice. So I help women tap into what their own intuition really says and what and to honor what really works for them once they find it. Next, I would say choose evidence over shame. You know, look at look at the proof of your resilience. No matter how many times you've gotten knocked down, you've always come back. A lot of times you've come back smarter and stronger because you've learned from that experience of getting knocked down. You know, the the inner critic is a notorious liar, but our track record isn't. And that that part is easy to misconstrue, so I want to be really clear what I mean when I say track record is the track record of doing your best, having the best intention, trying everything that you possibly can. Not necessarily the track record of I tried something and it didn't work. That just means you're working on it. That means you are persisting, you are coming back and giving your best self. Does that answer the question that you asked?

Turning Challenges Into Strengths

SPEAKER_01 20:36

It does. It does. And it's it's interesting. So you took we talked about um you talked about acceptance, and I think, okay, I accept that my brain is like this. But then if somebody asks me to pick up milk and I forget and I don't do it, and they're like, but I asked you to pick up milk, and I'm like, wow, I remember saying yes that I would do it, but I feel like it left my brain ten seconds later. If I were to say something like, Oh, that's that's just my ADHD brain, I almost feel like I'm making an excuse as to something to excuse my behavior and like I should have tried harder. Well, that's not accepted. That's not really me accepting where I was, and it's still another way for me to just beat myself up uh for not having done something correctly. So it's sometimes I think I've accepted what's going on, but deep down it's not. And I think you know, I I think deep down we're always our worst critics, and um you know, it's in in a way I can accept responsibility for for what's going on because that gives me a little bit of control in being able to fix things. But I think I've heard you refer to it as fancy brain. Oh, I've got this fancy brain. Um and and maybe maybe that that is easier, but uh yeah, I think I am although I might say that I'm an acceptance phase, I don't think I am because I I still see myself as doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah. That's painful. And it's you know, acceptance, I think, is really only the the first piece. Once you once you begin to understand that that you're wired differently and that being wired differently is okay, then the next step is what can I do about that? How can I find or build or create systems that are more supportive for the different way that I think? So in the case of forgetting milk, the next step may be, hmm, okay, I forgot the milk this time. What do I what do I know about myself? What can I change about what's around me so that the next time I'm asked to get milk, I can actually remember? Does that mean I need to take the empty milk carton and put it inside my handbag so that I can't forget to get it when I go out? Does it mean using some piece of technology to remind myself? Or does it mean taking advantage of modern conveniences like the the grocery delivery services and ordering it up right now and fixing what didn't go the way you planned before? Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah. How did you come up with the term fancy brain?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

I can't take credit for that. That was that was from my friend Jennifer. We were having a great conversation about uh about exactly what you referenced, how it feels to have 25 or 2,500 tabs open in our minds at one time, to have that feeling of five radio stations playing at once. All at top volume. And we were talking also about the notion of accepting what that's like, and and she came up with uh with the idea that I don't have a regular brain, I have a fancy brain. It's really extra.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

It does feel like extra when you got 25 tests. So how do you help people reconcile with the fact that they can't do things the way that everybody else does?

Body-First Practices For Regulation

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah. I think it's a I think it's a great opportunity. Um similar to to what we talked about before, it's a great opportunity to think about what our brains really are good at, even though they're different from the next person and the next person and the next. What are we really good at and how do we bring those strengths to bear in any situation? Um one of the one of the things I really love to do in coaching is to dig into a topic with somebody, a complaint, a thing that they feel is really going wrong. We find the mirror trait in that. We find the the strength hidden in the challenge. And then we take that strength and apply it right back to the same challenge. So one that comes up often is creativity. People will tell me, I have so many projects at home. I've I start these hobbies and then I never finish them. I have knitting over here and I have um scrapbooking over there, and you know, on and on and on. The mirror trait in there to me is number one, creativity. Number two, endless energy for starting new things. And so we take those two qualities, the endless energy for starting new things and the creativity, and we talk through how how can we get creative about man at least managing the materials for these projects? Maybe you don't want to get rid of them right away, maybe you want to come back to them later. But how can we get creative and apply some energy to keeping that those things organized so that they're not constant visual clutter, they're not a constant distraction to your brain that wants to do or needs to do other things. So I think that's one way.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Um It's funny that you bring that up because I'm I'm laughing here because I'm looking at this thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that um is half finished on the on the living room table, and my feet is currently resting on my box of like macrame cord. That is a hobby I started about a year ago, did it for two months, did did well, and now it's still sitting here tangled up in my feet by my in my podcast booth. So I feel like that's that's exactly what you're talking about. These these projects and these half-finished projects that are just kind of like lying around.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

You're not alone.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

That's pretty funny. Um, what are some simple ways that we can maybe start reconnecting with our bodies in a way that supports our focus and our energy and our regulation?

Myths About Adult ADHD

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Love that question. Uh one is morning light, getting getting sunlight in your eyes in the morning. And I, of course, I don't mean staring right at the sun, but I do mean that if you are somebody who wakes up typically around sunrise, as many working women and and and moms do, just go outside for a few minutes and observe the sunrise. Um number one, that will give you an experience of being in your body and paying attention to your senses. Number two, it will help you sleep later on because doing that will automatically reset the clock that's ticking to release melatonin at just the right time to get you to bed at an appropriate time. And it gives you an opportunity to to check in and practice what I what I call the six senses exercise. Everybody knows we have five senses. There's actually a sixth that I like to use. So, and this comes straight from DBT. So we we find five things we can see, four things we can hear, three things we can feel inside, or excuse me, outside our bodies, um, you know, outside our skin. Maybe we feel the cool air on our skin, maybe we feel the waistband of our pants or our socks that are a little too tight. And then here's the sixth one: three things you can feel inside your body. Because people with ADHD are notoriously challenged in interoception, we have a hard time feeling the sensations of our body. This is a great time to practice it. So find three things that are going on inside your body. Is your stomach grumbling because you're hungry? Do you feel your heart beating faster than usual? Um experiencing a little uh tinnitus, a little ringing in the ears. Do you have a headache? Do your muscles feel tight? Or do your muscles feel especially loose? Have you had a great workout the day before and you feel nice and limber? Then, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste. So the sixth senses exercise, especially if you can do it early in the morning, especially if you can do it outside, there's movement. Any kind of movement that feels good to your body is a great way to reconnect and to discharge some of the cortisol that gets built up from chronic stress and improve dopamine levels. A lot of times folks will tell me they have a hard time moving because they they have an idea that there's a right way to do it. And a lot of times their right way involves spending an hour at the gym or doing a class in a certain particular perfect way. And it doesn't have to be any of that. Movement can be anything that feels good to you. Maybe it's gardening, maybe it's walking, maybe it's um dancing with your partner or your child. It can be anything. And a lot of times I'll ask folks what kind of movement they enjoyed doing when they were six years old, because that's an important clue to what our nervous system really needs to re-regulate in the present. So if you were somebody who really loved the merry-go-round when you were six, that is a clue that the vestibular sense is really important for you. So, what can you do now as an adult that gives you that sense of spinning or that that vestibular input? Um, so yes, all of those things, plus strength work or heavy work. So that might involve going to the gym and picking up heavy weights, but it doesn't have to. It could be uh again gardening. I think as I think I said that before. So maybe pushing a heavy wheelbarrow, or it could be as simple as push-ups against the wall or your desk. And another practice I really love is called heart math. And that is the practice of just tuning into the heart, finding a heart-centered breath, paying attention to that, and then regenerating a positive, heart-centered feeling. So things like gratitude, appreciation, love, joy, any of those positive emotions, trying to feel those again in the moment, just like you did in the past, is a great way to reconnect body and mind together and shift an emotional state almost immediately.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

I like how you go back to when you're a child and what are some of the things you like doing when you're a child. Because that's when you were doing things without having society's input on what you should be doing. That's when you were doing things that you truly enjoyed.

Diagnosis, Self‑Education, And Community

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yes, exactly. Oh gosh, have you got the rest of the day? Um I think probably the biggest and the most pervasive one is this idea that you you've lived into adulthood without being bothered by ADHD, so you can't possibly have it now. If if there were really a problem, somebody would have known, somebody would have noticed, uh, you would have you would be much more impaired than you seem to be. And that's really just a way of people saying, you have learned such strategies and such skills for coping that you seem to the rest of us, you seem to the outside world not to be challenged by this at all. Inside, we know that's not necessarily true. It's absolutely possible to live well into adulthood, maybe live a whole entire life without ever knowing that you have an interest-based nervous system or a fancy brain. If we're lucky, we find out. Because and I say lucky because then we get to change things. We get to adapt the systems around us to make them more conducive to living and thriving and having a happy life with ADHD. But I I I think that's the biggest one. You that you you can't possibly have ADHD because A, you don't look like you do, and B, you've lived this long. Why why even bring it up now?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

So let's say that's the case. And um, so what do you do now? What do you what do you do now? Like I for my like for myself, I feel exhausted all the time. Like I said, 25 tabs going on at the same time. And sometimes I just need to retreat into my shell and do my my little jigsaw puzzle for hours sometimes just to be focused on this one thing. Um yeah, so so what what do you do now?

Decision Filters And Priority Flow

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah. I love that you found a way to to re-regulate and bring your brain back into focus. Uh to anybody who's wondering what to do now, the first thing I would say is that knowledge really is power. The more you can find out about your own mind, the more you'll be able to work with it instead of against it. So so many people tell me that they're afraid of diagnosis. And when we dig into that a little bit, and and I ask them, what does that mean? What is it exactly that you're afraid of? They tend to believe a couple of things. Number one, that having a diagnosis means they have to use medicine for the rest of their lives. And that's not the case at all. That's that's always a personal decision and something you should discuss with your own healthcare provider. Medicines can be very supportive for some people, they're absolutely critical and crucial for other people. And for some, they can skate by without medicine. It really just depends. But I don't want people to think that finding out what kind of thinking style they have and learning that they have ADHD means that they have to do any certain thing. A diagnosis is not a label and it's not a curse. The next thing I would say is if you whether you choose diagnosis or not, and and not everybody can, because it is um expensive. It's a process, it's it can be an intensive process depending on the provider that you choose to evaluate you. Whether or not you choose diagnosis, just start reading a little bit and and see what resonates for you. Read reliable, evidence-based information. Um there is a lot of good stuff on social media, and there's also a lot of contradictory information on social media and a lot of stuff that's just plain wrong. So try to find sources that are evidence-based. Places like um understood.org, authors like Dr. Edward Haliwell, Dr. John Rady, um Attitude Magazine has some good, reliable information. And see what works. If it starts to feel more and more and more familiar, then you might be comfortable identifying yourself as somebody with at least executive function challenges, if not ADHD. Self-diagnosis is becoming more and more acceptable. It doesn't mean that every time a person is self-diagnosed, they can automatically go to their doctor and say, okay, I know I have ADHD. I would like to use pharmaceutical support. It may or may not work that way. But when it comes to supporting yourself and finding your people, finding your birds of a feather, finding community, self-diagnosis is increasingly acceptable. Within the learning and the reading that you do, try some of the strategies that are suggested. Try out a few things and see if they help, see if they support you. If they do, wonderful. Then you found something that works. And if they don't, that's okay. Go on and try the next thing. I think it's super important to find that community. Um, again, even if it is through just self-identifying. Again, our brains really were evolved to live and thrive and grow in community. So it's super important to find other people who think in a similar way to you and who can be supportive and offer you grace and help you remember that you are doing the best you can. And people who won't judge you for an occasional misstep. Maybe even people who can uh help you by offering new and different ideas for coping. I guess what it all comes down to is just starting where you are and knowing that you don't have to necessarily see the whole path ahead of you just yet. Start where you are and take one step at a time at the pace that feels right for you, and use what works, discard the rest.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Jessica, where can listeners find you?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Uh my website is probably the easiest place, and that is fitology.com. So it's f-i-then-ol-g-y.com.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

I love it. And you've got a freebie for the listeners, um decision filters. Tell me about that.

Closing, Resources, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Ah, sure. So I came up with a tool called Decision Filters, because so many people with ADHD have trouble prioritizing, deciding what needs to be done first, because when we look at our to-do list, it all feels urgent. It all feels like it has to be done right now. So we need a way, we need a system that works for our own minds to help us sort out what really needs to be done first and what doesn't. Um this is available to your listeners for free on my website. Um it starts out. I'll just I'll tell you the first step and and we can talk from there. The first step to it is whether the task at hand has a deadline or a specifically timed event. And from there it works a little bit like a flow chart. So if it does, then we need to make plans to get it done by the date. If it doesn't, then we can go on to the next filter.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Okay. And then you just go on and on from there.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yep. It's um like one of these like little filter trees. Right, right. Nice and easy five steps.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Perfect. And I'm gonna make sure that all of those links are in the show notes so that anybody can access them. I'll put all your social media and your website in there as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Jessica, uh thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom with so much warmth and clarity. I love your perspective. Um it's gonna be a real game changer for me. And I know that a lot of women listening are gonna feel a little bit less alone and more empowered because of this conversation. So thank you for thank you for being here. And thanks to all of you who are hanging out with us. If you enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss what's coming up next. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find me over on Instagram at DRAngela Downey. I would love to hear from you. So take care for now, you're doing better than you think. That is it for today's episode of Paging Dr. Mom. If it made you smile, nod along, or feel just a little more seen, then go ahead and hit that follow button and share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Take care for now, you are doing better than you think.