Late Diagnosis, Masking, and Making ADHD Work for You with Dr. Jennifer Dall
My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Dall, a grief-informed neurodivergence specialist, ADHD coach, and educator with more than 25 years of experience. She’s the founder of ADHD Holistically, and blends her expertise in education, yoga, and grief work to build a focus on the whole person to create personalized, sustainable approaches for neurodivergent brains.
In our conversation today, we dig into how societal expectations and outdated research have kept so many women from being recognized as having ADHD. We explore the ways ADHD symptoms often present differently in women, the impact of masking, and the hidden toll of trying to “just keep up.” Dr. Dall also shares quick, real-world strategies for tackling the everyday hurdles that come with ADHD, from taming your to-do list to breaking free of shame around getting help.
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: So I'm so glad to have you on the show with me here today. I'm really excited to talk about this topic because it's something that's been popping up into my general ideas sphere a lot recently, and this is the idea of why women are just not being diagnosed with ADHD for so long, and it's something that I've been hearing other podcasts about and things that've been just having general conversations with other people about because it seems wild that there's this giant portion of the population that just isn't being included in this conversation, although that is really starting to get correct now.
Jennifer Dall: It is a big question and it's a big topic now, and I think that there's a lot of different reasons why women have been missed, if you want to say. First of all, so much when we say ADHD still, we think about eight-year-old boys who are all over the place, and that's kind of what the general public thinks. I was an educator for a long time, and that's what my fellow teachers thought. Even school psychologists, people I worked with, even my doctors, therapists, people like that, they just don't have the knowledge, and the research hasn't been done, and the research that has been done, it takes a while for those things to kind of fall out into the population and get to be known. When it goes, I think, up against such a conception of what ADHD is, people don't see it. With women, and I can speak for myself, when you think about the hyperactivity in it, it's often more in their minds.
This also happens to boys and men, but with girls and women, it's more often their brains are hyperactive, and so they have learned, because they have been taught to be good girls, to sit there and mask and put the face on, but it's their minds that are going faster and faster and all over the place. I think that it just isn't something that people thought about. I know with myself for a long time, I really wondered. I mean, I have a background in special education and ADHD and educational psychology, and I would say things to people, even people who should know, and I would say, you know, I wonder if I have ADHD, and the typical response, well, no, you couldn't possibly, you have done all these things. Look at you, you have a job, you hold down a job, you have a doctorate, you have a master's degree, how could you have ADHD?
And so I think a lot of women come up against that, and so they don't even bring it up, or they don't even think about it. And I had some more knowledge, so there were things that I would do or that would happen that I would start to wonder about, but I had more experience and more knowledge about this. So even me having, knowing these things, it still took a long time before I started really leaving in myself, trusting myself what I thought, and then going to the doctor and talking to the doctor and really getting the doctor to listen to me. I think that one of the reasons it's come out, and I know that there's a lot of writing and podcasts about this is the pandemic. We all slow down, everything got quiet, and you had more time, and then with the rise of social media, TikTok, all of that, there were so many people talking about it, some of them accurate, some of them not.
And so I think that there just became a time where it kind of reached like a tipping point where more people knew about it. Now with the research and the actual findings, that takes a long time to catch up. And I think it's different with girls, young girls, I think they're being diagnosed a lot more. One of the first times when I really started thinking about, like, I don't believe these people who tell me no, there was one girl in particular, I was teaching middle school at the time, and I would look at her, I would say, oh my goodness, you're me, or I'm you, a long time ago. Because I think girls are getting, younger girls are getting diagnosed more. And so that's going to take time to come through when you have 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. We haven't been diagnosed, we haven't, it hasn't been part of the conversation.
A lot of the times, and you probably know this, adults find out when their own kids are diagnosed or looked at, there's that hereditary component, and you start to put those pieces together. I think there's just so many reasons why women aren't represented, but are starting to. And when you look at some of the 30, 40, 50 year old women, they're speaking up about it a lot more. So there is kind of like a snowball effect, I think that we're going to find that there's a lot more, a lot more information, a lot more research, a lot more findings. The other thing is that even with the boys from before, it tended to be like put into one little category.
If you had ADHD, you did X. Whereas I think that we find more, that we're all different, that there's varieties, that the way it turns out, the way we act, all of that is different, mine from somebody else's.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. And it's also this like, people now kind of have this like redefinition of what ADHD was. We had this very pop culture definition of, you know, the, yeah, the eight year old hyperactive boy that I know some of those in my real life. I'm like, that is very clearly a child with ADHD. But yeah, it's different when you have societal expectations that are different about how girls are to behave. Although I do know a lot of very hyperactive little girls too.
But it's, even then, it's still different because it's one of the things I've found about ADHD diagnosis is it's often based on how you're affecting other people rather than how you're affecting yourself. Oftentimes, what I've seen in the diagnosis from women is they're saying, hey, I am struggling. And then going like, okay, what's going on here? They're having information about what ADHD is and going, that's me. Oh, I haven't been hurting other people with my or bothering them with my ADHD, but it is affecting me a lot and I need help.
Jennifer Dall: And that's if they've gone on a lucky path. Often like if they're struggling, they're tired, they go to a doctor and say, oh, well, you're depressed, which does not solve the problem. They may also, you know, there's the co-morbidity, all of that. They could also bet. Yes, women are getting that more, which is good. But like you say, they've kept it all in. They've masked it all they've done it all. And so, yeah, that's very much, very true.
William Curb: I know before my diagnosis that it was often, yeah, like I'm having these symptoms that are making it really hard to do things. And my assumption is not that there is something going on. The assumption is just I am broken somehow or bad doing things. You know, I'm like, oh, well, I'm just not good at X, you know, like that's just something that I'm bad at and not realizing that, oh, there's some stuff I can do about that.
Like when I have that click in my head of, because even after my diagnosis, I didn't really like think about like, oh, there's a lot more I can do about this other than just taking pills. I'm like, oh, there's skills and stuff I can do. And I have that click like, oh, there's something else I can do. Oh, there's something else I can do. And like that is, makes it a lot easier to deal with the diagnosis.
Jennifer Dall: And I think in certain ways, the diagnosis, if you can get one helps girls in particular, it tends to be personality or behavioural issues. Like, like what you've done is checked up to that, not something else. So, you know, all those things, why didn't you do this? Or why are you making impulsive decisions? It's not checked up to maybe you have neurodivergent mind or you have ADHD, it's, oh, you're that kind of a person, or you're like that, or you always do that.
William Curb: Because it gets very easy to label symptoms as just something else. Like you're like, oh, that person's just very chatty. They're not, they're not impulsively saying everything that's going into their head, they're just chatty. Or any number of things where it's like, oh, you know, like they're spacey or, you know, and it's like, I mean, that's one of the things where I'm like, don't worry about getting a label of ADHD. You already have plenty of other labels that are less accurate.
Jennifer Dall: Yes. Taking the time, giving yourself that permission and guidance if you needed, or just space to think about lots of things like what do you do well, and how to do that better. What are the stories you're telling yourself or that you've been told, you know, you always forget to do this or you're lazy or you're that, but what's really behind that? Because it's when I think you start to look at those things, you can see that there are things you do well, and that maybe some of those stories were wrong and you've just internalised them for a really long time. And like you say, whether you have the diagnosis or not, you can start taking steps to work with that.
William Curb: Yeah, I think lazy is a great example of like, often, so many people with ADHD feel like they're lazy because they're not doing the things that they want to do. And then like, well, there you go. That's clearly not lazy because you have that word, I want to be doing these other things, but I can't get myself to do them. That's not laziness. That's executive dysfunction or somewhere in there.
Jennifer Dall: Yes. And it's so much interest based and often what people are calling you lazy about is things that you have no interest in, they want you to do. And so that makes it hard also. They say, well, how come you can hyper focus and you can dive in and you earn this degree or you created this great project or you did this thing, but then your clothes are still sitting on your bed.
William Curb: It is really funny to like the dichotomy of like, yo, yeah, I can put together this great project, but my car is a complete pit. And I'm, you know, it's like, I should be able to do both, but I'm sure it is doing a lot of work in that phrase.
Jennifer Dall: Yes. And the steps that go into doing things, even if your car is a master doing laundry, I've seen, and I know examples of this, it's not just, oh, just do it. Just go put the laundry in and turn it on. It's, okay, I have to plan when I'm going to do it. And I have to sort it. And then I have to put the load in at the right temperature. Then I have to remember to take it and put it in the dryer. And then I had to take it out. And then I have to sort it and fold it.
And so some of those things where there's so many steps, especially for things that aren't high interest, where I could sit down and I could plan out a book or a course or something and just, it would all be great. You know, there's just that difference that's in our brains that neurotypical people, especially if they're frustrated with us, just look at us and don't appreciate it.
William Curb: Laundry is one of those things. It's like, it's this never ending thing that, yeah, it has a ton of steps and it takes, even though the individual steps don't take that long, it's like, okay, yeah, washing it takes a certain amount of time, drying it takes a certain amount of time. Then, you know, do I have time to immediately fold them when they're done? Maybe, maybe I didn't plan that far ahead to be like, oh, well, when it's done, now I have time to go do this other task that's going to take another 20 minutes that I don't really want to do.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah. And so those are some of the ways that I think that we're seeing that our brains work and we're working on trying to have a little more kindness, self-compassion about it. Maybe there's people in your life you can explain it to. Maybe there's people who will be a little bit more accepting and helpful or pointed out, you know, in a kind way. You know, I have a friend who has been learning more and more about it and she says, more and more, she's been saying, I don't know how to explain this, but like she'll say, oh, I recognise that you're having trouble with this because of the ADHD. And this is somebody who's fairly new in my life. And it's just astounding because, you know, parents, teachers, spouses, other people would not say that. I think they were just with me for so long and they didn't know enough that they would just get frustrated where she is able to say, oh, I see what's going on here. And that's huge for me.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, it's one of the like things I find really important with dealing with my kids who have ADHD and being knowing, being like, they're not trying to misbehave right now. You know, my son going up to his room to get socks and then spending 10 minutes looking at Pokemon cards instead. That was not his intention. Like, that's not what he wanted to be doing.
Jennifer Dall: No, it wasn't. And then he probably feels shame or I've said, or depending on how you other people respond to it, you know, for that instead of like, oh, shoot. Yeah, socks. Let me get those.
William Curb: Still working on trying to find out the exact way to communicate with him because he doesn't like reminders either right now.
Jennifer Dall: Oh, right. Yes. It's like, I need structure, but don't tell me what to do.
William Curb: Yeah. I was like, oh, okay, well, we're just reminding you because like, well, I forgot. Like, yes, that's why we're reminding you.
Jennifer Dall: And with kids knowing that you want them to then grow up and be able to do some of that also.
William Curb: How can I instill in them the skills that they're going to want to use and what are the, you know, being like, you can checklists and time timers and all the things that are like, okay, what skills can we learn how to do so that we can keep track of these things and, you know, or yeah, all sorts of things.
Jennifer Dall: That's really important.
William Curb: One of the questions I wanted to ask to hear that I think would be great is to just kind of talk a little bit about how the symptoms differ between men and women. That's something that a lot of people kind of miss that they, they're like, yeah, it's just ADHD. But even though impulsivity can be, we can be both impulsive in many different ways.
Jennifer Dall: Right. So there's inattentive, there's impulsive, there's combined. And within that, you know, if you want to look at it on the spectrum sort of way or vendiagram or however, you want to look at it visually and organize it in your mind. I mean, people fall all over the place. I think that we may find that maybe it's less broken down between men and women. If we can move away from what we've traditionally thought back to that eight year old boy, this is what the eight year old boy, and I would say even from being an education, the girl who was, you know, even 20 years ago diagnosed or identified as ADHD was a different kind of person.
So kind of like there's introverts and extroverts and in the middle, maybe there's people with ADHD who are more inattentive and more hyperactive and more kind of combined. We start to look at things more like that. I know that then that takes all the gender roles and all those discussions, which is like another whole podcast. But I think that women at least traditionally tend to be more the inattentive or combined or they present like that. If our brains are impulsive, if our decisions are impulsive, they're more likely happening up here than, you know, that your boy who might just go up and like smack somebody or just decide to do something. My impulsive may be going on a website and buying stuff I don't need, planning a trip, buying airfare, signing up for another course.
But most people would not say that I was hyperactive, especially people who don't know me really, really well, because I come across in a different way. And even within the inattentive for men or for women, we can look like we're inattentive, but still be very attentive or attentive enough to pass in situations. I think if they really do research and really get into it, I think that it's going to be really interesting to see what kind of differences actually are between men and women. Because as I said, like you've got these cultural things, you've got these systemic ways of how girls are and how boys are. And even some of the boys being boys, you know, some of that ADHD behavior can kind of be kind of classified as that. Whereas girls being boys, you know, girls acting up like that, it's taken in a different way.
They often would get into more trouble for doing something like that. I do know that most of the women that I know and I work with and I talk to, because they've been through so much of their life, not knowing or not formally knowing, we're not really understanding, so much of it is more internalised. Whether, had it been known earlier, more of it would have come out and they just learned to internalise all of it, or not. So we can say there's these differences and I know that there are. But what I really find more interesting is if we could find a way to dive deeper into that and look and see.
William Curb: I absolutely get this idea, like the, how we're defining these words makes a big issue. Like if we're saying just little kid running around, bouncing off the walls, that's impulsive, hyperactive. But we know, like, yeah, there's a ton, like, yeah, opening, if I have 15 tabs open, that's because I've been impulsively opening new tabs. I can't just stay on the one thing. I'm like, oh, I want to also look at this and also want to look at this. And it's like, oh, that's mental hyperactivity.
And that's, yeah, also impulsive. And then there's, doing all the inattentive things, is that just being me staring off into space doing something? I guess so example of this, I find it is, if I am driving and my wife is telling me a story, there will be at some point I will go, oh no, she's been talking and I haven't been listening for like the last minute I've been paying attention to driving and thinking about something else. And it's like, okay, is that me being inattentive or is I just my attention focused somewhere else?
Jennifer Dall: And to add a little wrinkle to that, me being a woman who has trained to listen, if I'm driving and I'm trying to drive and somebody's telling me something, my intention is very much split. Because on the one hand, I'm really trying to listen to what you're saying to me, because that's polite. On the other hand, I'm really trying to drive because that's safe.
William Curb: Yeah, fortunately, I have a discuss this with my wife and been like, hey, this is something I do sometimes I don't mean to do it. And I'll just let her know, hey, I just missed everything you just said, I will do a better job trying to listen to this time.
Jennifer Dall: And I need you to tell me later, I'm driving or even if it's not a driving thing, can you say that again? And the other thing, and you probably may notice this sometimes when you're really quiet, you shut down, you're just over stimulated. Everything is too much. I've retreated and I need some sort of wall and quiet around me. And so that can be some of the inattentive with the ADHD also just shutting down over stimulated. Too many ideas, too many thoughts, too many noises, too many things going on.
William Curb: Yeah, it's definitely something where, yeah, when I have trouble not focusing on all the stimulation that's coming in. And so then when there's too much, it's just like, I let system reboot.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah. Yeah. And in really busy times, someone will walk in, why are you just sitting on the couch? What are you doing? I don't know. I'm just sitting on the couch.
William Curb: Yeah. It's so much fun when you're like, I need to be doing something and I can't get myself to do anything.
Jennifer Dall: Yes. Yes. Like if I sit down on the couch and I take off my shoes, we're in trouble.
William Curb: Yesterday I had that where I was like, I finished with one meeting and I was like, okay, I have an hour before to go get my kids from the bus and I'm going to do this stuff. And then I'm like, I didn't do anything for that entire hour. I was just like, if I didn't have to go to the bus stop, I would have just been there for a while.
Jennifer Dall: I was just writing something about it. Like I would remember especially when I was an administrator, so there's a lot of meetings, but then for all sorts of reasons, they're put off, canceled at the last minute or they're put off and other people would be like, okay, so I have an hour, I'm going to go work on this project or I'm going to go make some phone calls. And I wouldn't know what to do with myself. Wait, I have an hour that I didn't know I had. What am I supposed to do with that hour or that time? Because this is what was supposed to happen. And I was ready for that. But going, starting something else, figuring out how long that's going to take, finding something that I could do in that hour, it's not going to take more than that hour.
William Curb: Being like, okay, I have to-do-list here. Can I pick something on it? Maybe, but I'm probably not going to. I'm probably going to just do nothing.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, or pick up my phone and the infamous, at least for me, to-do-lists that are 500 items long and then nothing gets to me.
William Curb: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's an interesting conversation too about like, you know, we have all these productivity tools that we have seen that just don't work for ADHD. Because, yeah, well before my diagnosis, that was something as like, I was like, I'm going to be productive. I'm going to read all these productivity books. And I'm like, why doesn't this stuff work for me?
Jennifer Dall: I agree. I think some of them do, some of them do sometimes, some of them do for some people, some of them, maybe they don't work for anybody. Maybe they are highly neurotypical. There's a few things that I find consistently work for me under the right circumstances. But those require the right circumstances.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, then there's, yeah, definitely, like, I know in college, I was like, oh, I just really had this idea that the way you got things done with that, you'd like buckle down and just like, I sit here until I get the work done. And that consistently did not work. But I did try it a lot. And I was just like, it'll work this time. I think that's one of the frustrating things too, is that it's not, is the lack of consistency on a lot of what does work. Because it'll work, you're like, oh, I found something. I found the tool. And then I start using it. And then I'm like, oh, this doesn't work for me anymore. Or I don't want to use this tool right now.
Jennifer Dall: And other people don't get it, or they have their system and that works. And they've always done that. And like, okay, but your brain doesn't work like mine does. So I think if we can figure out what those things are and then give ourselves permission to change it up, you know, some of the things that work for me are doing body double with somebody else who gets it, who understands what that's about. I like the Pomodoro method because it keeps me from getting too tired. And one thing I found that when I do have a really big list or when I have a lot of things to go through, if I can get somebody to sit down with me and prioritise, like, I go over my list with you, and we talk about it. And we start getting rid of stuff, we start delegating stuff, you help me figure out, and I do this for other people, like, what is really important? Because this list of 50 things that I'm supposed to do this weekend, it's not...
William Curb: Definitely work with coaches and they're like going through the to-do list and they're like, and do you really have to do this? And I'm like, I want to. They're like, yes, but you want to, it's just something you're going to actually do. It's something you want, like, how, where do you mean by want? Yeah. Because it's just like a general desire. Is this something you want to actually prioritise doing?
Jennifer Dall: Or you want to want to do? I want to want to do that. But...
William Curb: Oh, yeah, those are the worst. It's like, oh, what does it mean to want to want something? Does it mean that that is a value of mine? Or does that mean that I think that that is something that societally I think I'm supposed to do?
Jennifer Dall: I think both, because I think there's even things that I want to, there's a value of mine, but still I'm not doing it.
William Curb: Yeah. Well, I mean, yes, what I mean, like, it can be one, it can be the other. There's like, yeah, because there's some things like, oh, I want to want that. And I'm like, and then if I like, kind of dive deeper and I'm like, oh, that's actually not what I want. That's what I think I should want. And then those are definitely things I could be like, okay, I think I want that. Why? Why? And then sometimes it's like, oh, you know what? I don't really want that. I just thought I should.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah. And that's progress. I think that's letting yourself do that, which takes a lot of effort, a lot of unlearning.
William Curb: I mean, I think this is one of the great things with like, especially with like all these like housework tasks, like laundry, you know, being like, I feel like I should be able to keep up with all the laundry and, you know, making sure the house is clean and all of those things. And then I'm like, how important, how much does this actually match my values? Like in the end, what, what do am I getting out of this other than a lot of stress?
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, important questions and what else could I be doing? I finally, finally hired a housekeeper and this was, this was hard. But it's also great. It's really great. And she, she changes my sheets for me, which sounds like the stupidest thing. But wow, somebody making my bed is just huge.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, it's, and yeah, it's, and I think that's like a big thing with ADHD is there's where, where am I struggling that I can get help? Yes. You know, and sometimes that's, you know, through financial needs, sometimes that's just like working with someone else that can help you where you struggle the most. And like, I've started working with an assistant producer and he has made my life so much easier.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, I'm sure I've, I finally hired someone to do my Instagram for me because I would say, oh, I'm gonna do it every day. I've got this great plan. And like three days later, it's not happening. And it's just, I can talk to her and she does it and it's done. And it leaves me more time to do something else. And I'm sure there's people who think, why are you paying somebody to do that? Because I feel better because it lets me do these other things. But I think, I don't know about you, but I think a lot of people then, and maybe more women, you know, you've felt shame, like, oh, you're hiring somebody to do this. And you know what, I'm hiring them. So I'm helping them. I'm giving them some money. I'm giving them work. They're helping me. It works out.
William Curb: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of shame with the things that we feel where we make that mistake of equating things that are simple with things that are easy because because if I go, oh, answering my email, well, it's simple, but it gives me a lot of anxiety and I have trouble actually doing it. That makes it's not actually easy. It's just simple. And I, if I had just left it as, oh, this is an easy thing that I can't do. Yeah, that's shame inducing. But if it's, oh, this is something that's hard for me. Even if it's simple, this is still hard for me. That's a lot easier to deal with the idea that like, oh, yeah, I need help here.
Jennifer Dall: And I try to remind myself there's things that I know and I know how to do well or I know a lot about that other people don't. And I don't judge them for that if they don't know. And because then there's something they know that I don't know they're good at or they like, but that's taking a lot of work a lot of time.
William Curb: Yeah, we mentioned this earlier, but you did about giving yourself grace about these things because it is something where it is so easy to be judgmental about ourselves, especially as with women where you have store a lot of your ADHD in your head. That's going to be a place where when you ask for that help, I can do this. I was just thinking about this earlier today where I was like, if I could just work as much as my head thinks I can, I get so much done.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, if daytime me could cash what night time me thinks I'm gonna do. Yeah. Yeah.
William Curb: I'd be like, okay, let's just try and brain things in, be a little bit more in line with reality and except that, yeah, I'm not going to do everything and that's okay. I mean, I do enough. I can do what's good enough for me right now.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, and I've really been working on both for me and for helping other people, breaking things into really small components, small goals, small components of bigger ones and being okay with that because I'm not going to do this whole thing today. I know I'd like to think that tomorrow I'm going to get up and I'm going to write these three chapters and I'm going to do this and it's going to be great, but I'm not. So what is one reasonable thing? And that's hard, that's trial and error and yeah, working on, I think, especially in our culture, we try to put too many things on ourselves.
I mean, even me when I worked, when I taught, when I was administrator, it was all day, although my day was very, very structured and I've talked to, I have one of my best friends also used to be a teacher and is now coaching and we talk about how well, okay, so my life ran on bells. I knew when to pee, I knew when to eat, I knew when to go home. Every five weeks we did grades, like all these things and then when I quit to do my own thing, all of a sudden there's all this time. So one of the things I'm working on is, okay, I do better in the morning and I'm really trying to make myself stop at say one o'clock. Anything you try to do after that is going to be useless and it's going to take five times as long. So I'm, it's a struggle, but I'm learning how to, this is my work time and this is enough because it'll take as long as I let it, you know, it goes back to get a pump or things like that. It will take all week if I let it or I'm working Monday morning on this.
William Curb: Yeah, I find the same thing where it's like, if I, I need to make sure that I focus on doing the most important things for myself in the morning, because if I let them go too long, it won't happen and I'll get mad at myself for not doing stuff and I'll try and force myself to do it anyways and then it turns out badly.
Jennifer Dall: And there's actually things I don't want to do like paying bells. I was texting my friend the other night, I've got to stop saying I'm going to do it later.
William Curb: I'm amazed sometimes too when I just kind of like, don't actually use any real techniques for getting through those kinds of things. I just kind of like let myself blank and just do a task and I'm like, oh, this works so well. Why can't I do this all the time? I don't know exactly what it is, but sometimes I can just check, yeah, I'm just going to do these things and I just, all the through and I'm done and I'm like, that was amazing. I'm going to do that again next time and then takes another six weeks until I can get my brain into that state again.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, I also believe that I and other people have probably been trained quite well that we can do things at the last minute and we just...
William Curb: Yes, I have thought about that quite a bit where you have this like, having a deadline is fantastic for getting things done, but it also is training me to require that stimulation of being up to the last minute.
Jennifer Dall: But I think that's also, I mean, I have found in some ways that that's good. I need a solid, real, I can't say, okay, so why don't I say I'll have this done by Friday because that's not a real deadline. Yeah. You'd like a solid deadline and then I need you to end me, everybody to leave me alone because it will get done, at least for me.
William Curb: There needs to be a, it has to be more than just a made up deadline. There needs to be something real behind it.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah. This credit card is do the 10th. Why don't you pay it the first? Okay, here I am on the ninth, maybe the 10th.
William Curb: Yeah. I had a proposal thing I had sent in and I realized I sent it in three hours before the deadline was up and I was like, oh, I thought I actually had more time than that, but good thing I got this done early. Yeah.
Jennifer Dall: But you got it done. So cut yourself some slack.
William Curb: Yeah. I was like, yeah, it did get done. And again, giving yourself slack, I mean, why did I need to get it in early if I'd known the correct time and I was like, on it? What getting it in early, what would that have gotten me? And it is, again, what I want to want, what do I think society wants me to be like, oh, I need to be on top of things. I don't operate like that.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah. And it's hard, but realizing that, you know, and if I'm working with somebody else, okay, so when would you actually like it done? So to say this is do whatever day and you're working on this together and you're uncomfortable about this. So then you tell me when you actually want this done. So then that becomes another real deadline because you're depending on me and I don't want to upset you and us. So that becomes another real deadline. But if it's unspoken and they're just waiting and waiting, when is it going to do this? When are you going to do this? Like it's on due to a Friday. It'll get done. But they don't understand that last minute thing. I have a friend from high school who's still gets mad at me because I used to write papers for English right before they would do. Believe me, high school's been a long time, but she still will not let me forget that.
William Curb: I've done so many papers. I mean, I've done so many podcasts, the first one is like, oh, this needs to be out. Well, let's see, tomorrow is in two hours and I'm going to put it up tomorrow. So I should get this done. And then even like, well, it's Monday and I release new apps. It's on Monday. I can still release this today. But then also being like, hey, you know, if this is late, that's okay. This is one of the things where it's okay to be, to say it's not a hard deadline, but I still want to do it.
Jennifer Dall: And that's good too, admitting it because then you're owning it and you're realizing what's best for you.
William Curb: And it's, yeah, it's one of those things where it's just like, yeah, you got to give yourself that grace because being hard on myself was an effective strategy. I would be correct at everything, but because I tried it for so many years and no, it did not help.
Jennifer Dall: No, it hasn't really helped that much as it's always fun to talk to other people who have ADHD, you have the same language.
William Curb: Oh yeah, because it's...Especially when you're like, oh yeah, this is like one of the things I've always just discovered is just it's really nice to be able to be like, hey, I have, I'm not alone struggling in this. Like very things that I feel like I, especially like I feel ashamed about the fact that I couldn't get podcast episodes out on time or I'm writing papers at the very last minute and then talking to other people like, oh yeah, I did that all the time. You're like, oh yeah, I feel a little bit lighter about that now.
Yeah. Which, yeah, certainly, I think this, that has also been one of the huge things for this conversation with women in ADHD. When you're holding the ADHD in your head so much, you do feel very alone in it. And at least I know when I was doing that, that's how I felt. And I feel like that's something that a lot of women do where they're just like, yeah, I am bad for not being the perfect mother, housekeeper, whatever, that they feel like they should be.
You know, like, oh, I'm not performing well enough at work. And especially because so many women, they're also performing all this invisible labor around their house, you know, the emotional labor and doing all the extra housework that isn't being seen necessarily, but it still needs to happen, keeping track of who's keeping track of all the schedule in the house and making sure the meals are happening and that the bathrooms get cleaned and that laundry happens and all these things. And if you're undiagnosed with ADHD as a woman and you're dealing with all that too, I just can't imagine how overwhelming that must feel.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, it's overwhelming and you hide it more and you feel worse about yourself. And you know, there's a certain component that I believe then self-medicate with alcohol, exercise, food, or then you go in and you try to talk about it and hear back to the SSRIs and this and then that, you know, that's just kind of masking it that's numbing you, that's hiding it, that's not really, hey, why don't we sit down and really try to take a look at what all is going on?
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to acknowledge that, yeah, if you are struggling, it's not that you're internally broken. There's something going on there. There is something.
Jennifer Dall: And I'd say there's something that you do well that you have success in and if nothing else, low-hanging fruit, start there. You're really good at whatever it is, value that, and go from there and learn how to delegate or put things off or pay somebody else or it just doesn't happen. It just, not everything has to be done.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, that's been such a hard lesson for me to work on learning just being like, oh yeah, you know, like as we were talking about the to-do list stuff, that's yeah, that's going to be on my to-do list forever. And you know what, just delete, it's gone. Yeah. And my ADHD memory, I may or may not ever remember about it again.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, so you write everything down because you're afraid you're going to forget it, just like, well, you don't close the tab on your laptop because then it's going to be gone. And then I find myself having no idea what I've done. So another thing I started, and it was probably excuse to go by a cool notebook, but I started writing down like what I actually did. So either as I'm doing it not like all the little silly things, but you know, I prepared for this podcast. And then I'll put down, I did the interview and seeing able to see as opposed to sitting there in the afternoon when I'm tired. And like, I don't even know what I did today.
William Curb: Yeah, I have a friend that does that and they call it their to-do list.
Jennifer Dall: Oh, that's good. Yeah, I like that.
William Curb: Yeah. Like all the things I did and I am proud that I've done things. It doesn't even matter if they're big or they're small, they're all worth celebrating.
Jennifer Dall: Yeah, because I honestly forget.
William Curb: I mean, it's so easy to do. Like, yeah, I'm like, if I did a bunch of housework all day, you know, like I'm like, okay, clean the mirrors and I folded all the laundry and got the dishes done and took the dogs to a vet appointment. And like, at the end of the day, I'm like, I did a bunch of things, but they weren't like high value thing.
But I spent a whole day doing things that were important for who I want to be as a person. That's valuable stuff that's valuable time spent. Like, these are, if it's something that someone might pay to have someone else do as a task, that means that has a value there. There are people that want that done. And if you're one of the people that want to have it done, then that is valuable to have that having done it. I was just wondering if you have any final thoughts you want to leave the audience with.
Jennifer Dall: I think so much of what we talked about is great. And I hope it helps somebody I always feel like if there's one person who heard what we were talking about, and that helps them, that's great. I know that some of the best things that I've read or listened to or when I've found somebody who I feel like gets it. So just all of those little things and just to just keep trying and have confidence in believing yourself. Like, even if you're trying to get a diagnosis or you're trying to talk to a doctor or someone in your family or a friend, believe in yourself. You know what's going on with you. You know, and you can tell them and you can find people to help you. But you have to believe in yourself first.
William Curb: If people want to find out more about you, find out about your coaching or anything else online, where should they go?
Jennifer Dall: My website is ADHDholistically.com. I'm also on Instagram at Threads at ADHD.holistically. And so you can find a lot of things there. If you go to the website, there's some information about talking to me about some of the coaching. There's also some really great resources for you. And I'm working on creating some little books. And also, I'm writing right now a book about ADHDholistically that we're out there shopping and hoping to get out.
William Curb: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I had a great time with the conversation and I think people will really enjoy it.
Jennifer Dall: Thank you.
This Episode's Top Tips
1. Low-interest tasks like laundry, dishes, or paying bills often aren’t just one thing. They’re a series of micro-steps that might require you to switch gears, remember where you were, and re-engage. Each step is a potential stall point for an ADHD brain, especially if the task is competing with something more engaging.
2. Watch out for overstimulation shutdowns; ADHD brains can have trouble filtering out sensory input and mental noise. If we can learn to recognize when we’re starting to hit sensory or mental overload, it makes it easier for us to take care of ourselves without burning out.
3. Tasks like keeping track of everyone’s schedules, making sure the pantry’s stocked, or managing the emotional climate of a household often go unnoticed, but these tasks are still real work and they’re important. If we can give this work the weight it deserves, it can help us start seeing ourselves (or someone else in our household) as productive even when the results aren’t as visible or tangible as other tasks.