Ep #329 GenX Women and ADHD

Jill:Welcome to The Run Your Best Life edition of the Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a GenX woman whose brain still feels like a member of the breakfast club but the person you see in the mirror is starting to look a lot like your parents, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Jill Angie and we’re gonna dive into all the weird shit Gen X women are facing right now, so you feel less alone and a lot more empowered. Are you ready? Let’s fucking go!

Hello my friends and welcome back to the Run Your Best Life series where I talk to experts in the field on issues affecting Gen X women. Now today we are gonna chat with the incredible Emma Magenta about being an ADHD woman and I just know that there are a lot of you out there who are going to relate hard to this episode.

Now, if you don’t know Emma, she is a feminist ADHD coach who helps ADHD women thrive. Emphasis on the thrive. I have been wanting to do this episode for ages because Emma’s the coach who helped me see that ADHD is just one way that a brain can work rather than a personal failing This was a huge realization for me and I’m hoping you have the same now.

She is an absolute delight. She’s an unexpected soul mate. I’m obsessed with her and if you have even the slightest thought that you might be an ADHD woman You are going to love this episode.

Now, real quick before we start, if you are a member of Run Your Best Life, don’t forget to download the podcast companion from the members area to help you go deeper into this episode.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

All right, my friends. So I’m here today with someone that you may not be familiar with, but after we’re done with today’s episode, you’re going to be obsessed with her the way I am. Her name is Emma Magenta. And I love, first of all, before I, before you say hello, I just want you to know Magenta is like one of my favorite colors of all time.

It’s just such a rich, like delicious, lovely color. So it makes me happy that that’s your last name. But yeah, hello.

Emma: Hello. Hello. Hello. I actually got real lucky. My husband, it was not my birth name. It’s my husband’s last name. People often ask me, is that your real name? And I’m like, yes, it’s my real name.

Jill: That’s so awesome. And I, you know, it’s funny when we talk about like, women changing their names. I always said if I married somebody with a better name with me, I would change my name. I would upgrade. So I would love that you got to upgrade.

Emma: 100%. Do you know what my maiden name was? No. Wigglesworth.

Jill: Oh, wow.

Okay. I don’t know if I would have changed that.

Emma: Yeah. It kind of was a pickup. Yeah. I totally feel you. My husband did not want me to change my name. He wanted to keep my maiden name because it’s so like bananas. It is bananas, but I, I had lived with it for a long time. At that point, I grew up in Kansas with that last name and nobody else had that last name.

And I was, I was pretty happy and it really felt like an upgrade. So yeah, it is.

Jill: Right. Needs to feel like an upgrade to you. And also I can see that you’re like, okay, I’ve been there, done that. Like, it’s the, the novelty has worn off. Yeah. Wigglesworth. That reminds me, what was that game? They’re like, I played this board game when I was a kid and it wasn’t, it might have been called Piggly Wiggly.

And I know that that’s also like a store out in the Midwest. Yeah. But it was like the pig. It was like Mrs. Piggly Wiggly, I think was the name of the game.

Emma: Piggle Wiggle. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, there was a book about her and she was like this amazing if this part is not useful to your podcast, I assume that your, that your person will just cut this out, right?

Jill: No, no, no. We’re keeping it all. Because my people are like, Oh, I remember that game. I remember that book. So talk about it.

Emma: So this is a set of children’s books that I loved. And the main character was the sort of matronly woman in midlife. And the mental picture I’ve always had of her was that she was fat, she was a stout lady, and it was a set of children’s books, and her, the whole thing about Mrs. Piggle Wiggle was that she had a way of teaching lessons to kids that was totally different from the conventional way, which actually dovetails really well with the topic that we’re here to talk about.

Like, I remember there’s this one book where she’s teaching a little girl how to make a bed and of course, the whole, the setup of the story is that the little girl’s mother wants her to make the bed. The little girl does not want to make the bed. The mother browbeats her and it doesn’t particularly work. And then what Mrs. Piggle Wiggle does is she, she basically creates this elaborate fantasy for the girl that she’s a wicked witch and that the little girl has to make the bed exactly to her specifications.

And she invites the little girl into this fantasy world where the little girl gets to be the hero, gets to do this elaborate work of making the bed in a very particular way. And it really helps make this household chore something that’s, that’s fun. For this little girl. And this is just one story in a million stories in these books.

And I love those books when I was a kid.

Jill: I, well, and I feel like maybe Mrs. Pickle wiggle was like the original ADHD coach. Yeah. Yeah.

Emma: You know what? I freaking love that. Never thought of that. I never thought of that. Yeah. I love it.

Jill: Oh, I love that so much. I’m so glad that we just randomly have, see, this is the beauty of ADHD, right?

Emma: Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Our brains make unusual connections.

Jill: So good. All right. Well, like, okay, so I don’t know. I’m hoping, like, if there’s anybody out there listening that remembers the books or by chance had the board game, which was, which was my experience, please let us know, because I want to know that, like, first of all, I want to know that I didn’t imagine the board game.

I’m pretty sure it existed. I remember playing it. Or if you love the books, And got value out of them. Please let us know.

But, but Emma, like, let’s hear about you. So so I’ve, you know, I’ve already done a little bit of an intro for everybody, but I think you know, I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you came, what you do and how you came to this work before we really sort of dive into our topic today. Cause I want people to get to know you a little bit.

Emma: Yeah. Okay. I love that. So I actually grew up on a farm in Kansas on a sheep farm. Yeah, which was amazing for an ADHD kid because I got to wander around outside a lot. I had a very rich internal life. I my best friends were dogs. I just got to see a lot of beautiful things and wander around in the woods a lot, which is something that I really love to do.

And then for the first part of my adult life, my main, my main, my main career was I owned a yoga business. I was a yoga teacher and I owned a studio and I had like 20 to 30 employees at any given time who worked for me there. And What happened was I loved the studio, it was amazing, but I really felt like a lot of the time I was holding on by the skin of my teeth.

And you would think that as a person in the yoga business, as a person whose life was doing that work, that I would be really good at taking time for myself, at self care, really good at like relaxing, and in fact I was terrible at all of those things, I had no skills. I had first, like the first inkling that I had that ADHD was a factor in my life was that when I was 16 years old, my mother came home and she said, listen, and she was a doctor, my mom, she said, listen, there’s this thing called ADD because that’s what they called it back then. And I have it. I think you have it. I think these other people in our family have it.

And I, maybe I read a book or something, but that was basically it, and it definitely, when I read the book, it rang some bells for me, but I did not understand it. I did not know how all encompassing ADHD was. Fast forward to 2012, I was going through some really tough stuff in my life, and I really hit a breaking point, and I went to a psychiatrist, and he diagnosed me with ADHD and anxiety.

And again, Like he tried me on an ADHD med that did not particularly work for me. That made me feel awful. And so he was like, okay, well, maybe you could use some ADHD coaching. Maybe you could try that approach. And I was like, okay. So he gave me a business card and Jill. I did not use it for seven more years.

So when I tell you it took me years and years and years to come to terms with this part of myself, it has taken me years. And Finally, what happened was there was this sort of intersection between the pandemic, which became a kind of an off ramp for me out of my yoga career, which, as I got into my 40s, it was more and more like I could not keep the plates going.

I could not keep the plates spinning. There was just too much to do at the studio. We had like, 8000 people on our email list and members. We had classes multiple, multiple times a day. There was not a single day off at the studio. It was like a very successful little business, but it was exhausting.

And the older I got, the less I could handle it. And so the pandemic became this great opportunity for me to First of all, kind of exit the yoga studio business and then pursue this thing, this slowly growing passion of mine, which was in true ADHD form, I had become totally hyper focused and obsessed with learning more about how my particular brain works, reinterpreting my past through the lens of what I, of how my brain works, and And This is super important.

Really looking at my present and my future through the lens of if this is who I am, if this is how my brain freaking works, I am going to need to learn to take care of myself in a radically different way from the way that like I was raised to take care of myself from a radically different way than like our culture tells you.

You’re supposed to take care of yourself. So that’s really how I got into ADHD coaching

Jill: oh, I love this Well, and I I I think All of my friends that have received a diagnosis, you know in the past five years or so have been told by their doctors you need to take medication and what i’m hearing from you is Maybe yes, maybe no, but like there’s a whole other way That you can approach it.

Emma: Yeah.

Jill: That traditional medicine is going to be like, Nope, here, take some drugs and you’ll be fine. And there’s other options out there.

Emma: Totally. The way that I think about drugs, I kind of think of myself as medication agnostic, which is that I see meds as one tool in a potential set of tools, in a potential toolkit for ADHD people.

And for some people, the meds work great. Yeah. Yeah. I totally know people who have gone on the meds and it changes their freaking life. I feel like these types of people are all up in the comments on socials. These are people who are like Oh my god, I went on the meds, suddenly it was like I had been blind, now I can see, amazing grace everything changed, great, my life is perfect now, everything works, it’s great.

To tell the truth, I actually don’t meet a lot of people like that in real life, like I know those people exist because I’ve seen them commenting on the socials and so, but most people I know have a more complex relationship with meds, either they go on meds and the meds really help them to a certain point.

And then they don’t really quite help. There’s certain things that they don’t help. Or they go on the meds and the meds do not ever work for them. Yeah. So my sense of it is, if you want to try meds, absolutely. Freaking try meds. If they work for you, that’s another tool in your toolkit that can work. And if you either don’t want to try meds or you can’t get a doctor’s appointment, there are other ways that you can address ADHD.

Jill: Okay, I’d love that. And speaking of meds, I have kind of a funny story. So my bestie her doctor put her on ADHD meds, and I don’t remember which drug she’s on and I said to her after like about three months, I was like, so do you, do you feel like it’s helping? And she said, well, yes, there’s a lot less chatter in my head.

She’s like, but I’ve lost the ability to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. She could, she used to be able to like have a conversation and also pay attention to what everybody around her was saying. She’s like, I can’t do that anymore.

Emma: Yeah. No, that is, that is totally real. I think that ADHD, one of the things about it is that it is such a mixed bag.

It’s such a mixed bag and there’s aspects of the ways that our brains work that do not at all dovetail with what the cultural expectations are for how an adult or just a person is supposed to function. And that is very painful. Extremely painful. But ADHD also comes with features or traits that are delicious.

Like there’s aspects of my ADHD experience that I would not trade at all. Like if you were to say to me, Emma, I’m going to wave a magic wand, and you’ll have a neurotypical brain. I would decline every time, despite the wounds of my childhood from having this undiagnosed condition, despite the all the ways that it makes my life hard now.

I personally, I’m not saying that every ADHD er has to feel this way, I personally would never want to, it would be like amputating a limb. I would never want to get rid of this part of myself, this aspect of myself.

Jill: Oh, that is fascinating. So, okay. I want to, I want to dive in. So let’s put a pin into that because I have a lot of things, but I want to sort of like back up just a little bit for anybody who’s listening, who is like, I don’t, I’m pretty sure I don’t have ADHD.

But I tend to procrastinate a lot and I think of myself as lazy and I start doing one thing and then 10 minutes later, I’m doing like three different things. Like what, what are some of the symptoms of ADHD that, that may manifest, like, especially like that you may think are character flaws that you’ve been told your whole life.

Like I remember from age six. Yeah, you’re a procrastinator. You need to get your shit together as my, you know, the way I would have said it in the seventies. Yes. Right? Like, so what are some of those symptoms that you, that might be an indicator of ADHD and maybe not a character flaw? Like, by the way, I don’t think there are any real things such as character flaws unless you’re a murderer and like, you should probably work on that.

But other than that

Emma: Please work on that. Yeah, work on, work on that. Please get some coaching.

Jill: Yeah, if you, if you hurt animals, please don’t do that anymore. But yeah in general. Yeah. So, sorry.

Emma: First of all, I just want to, I just want to honor the fact that your memory of having this trouble goes all the way back to age six.

And I wonder if it would even go back further than that. Like if you dug around, if it would even go back further than that, I have a recollection of being somewhere around age four. And my I have a big sister who is neurotypical and she so I got a lot of hand me down clothes from her and one of the things I received from her was this beautiful It was a white knitted cardigan with brass buttons and red and green trim around the cuffs and the collar.

And I was a farm kid. My sister actually, the way that it worked in my family was that my family lived in the suburbs of Boston for my sister’s early childhood and then we moved out to the farm. So I had been given this white cardigan as a hand me down and I was a farm kid. You can imagine what happened.

I almost instantly got it dirty and my mother was like, your sister, I mean, God bless my mother. She was, she did her best, right? Is doing her best. She’s still around. Love her. But she was like your sister had that sweater for eight years for what have you and, and kept it pristine, kept it totally clean. And you’ve had it for five minutes and you’ve gotten it dirty.

I just think this is really common. There’s a study, I forget the exact details of it, but it’s, it’s something like ADHD kids get 20, 000 more critical critical comments in their lives before age 10 than neurotypical kids. Yeah, I can see that.

So the experience that you had of being young and have it just like receiving this negative feedback about the way your brain works, that’s common. So, to speak to your question can we also define ADHD for your listeners?

Jill: Yes, please. Let’s start there. Yeah. Let’s start there. My brain is like already bouncing up like a million different ways.

Emma: That’s why we’re so much fun to talk to. That’s why we are good coaches is because

Jill: we make the random connections. Yes, please. Let’s, let’s start there for those, for those of you who aren’t ADHD and are listening and are very frustrated right now, we’re going to try and like, bring it back.

Emma: So, ADHD is a very poor, actually inaccurate name for a cluster of traits that indicate atypical neurological function.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. And this is a name that neither the people in the healthcare field nor ADHD advocates are particularly pleased with. Attention, the part of it that’s attention deficit is not a particularly accurate phrase because the ADHD experience of attention is actually more like it’s more like an attention surplus.

I like to think about it like this, ADHD, like a neurotypical person, their attention is kind of like a garden hose. And they can they can kind of use the garden hose. They can spray the roses and then they can choose to turn around and spray the zucchini and they can water the grass, right? Whereas, whereas attention for an ADH, an ADH deer is more like a fire hose.

And you cannot necessarily control where, where the water’s going to go. Can’t necessarily choose. I see you nodding your head.

Jill: I’m, I’m like, okay, yeah, that, well, thank you for explaining my entire brain to me. That’s it. That’s it. And sometimes a little bit goes up. Like you, you have like a little bit of attention on everything all at the same time.

It’s exhausting and you never get anything done because it’s like, ah,

Emma: cause it’s everything all at once. Yeah. Okay. So then the H, the hyperactivity part, it’s also not a very useful, useful part of the name because some ADHDers are hyper. And what does hyper even mean, right? When you’re like a four year old kid or a six year old kid and you’re hyper.

What does that even mean, right? A lot of times what it means is that you don’t fit in well to the system that is industrialized education, right? You don’t fit in well at school. So I, for example, I’m not a hyper person at all, particularly like one of the ways that people have kind of tried to retrofit the hyper part is they’ll say, well, ADHD brains are hyper, even if their bodies are not hyper.

And I myself am somebody who needs a lot of rest. I’m kind of more a dreamier. Type of person. I’m not hyper at all. Other people might be hyper. They might not be moving much, but their foot is always tapping or something like that. So I feel like the hyper part actually is a red herring for a lot of women in midlife.

And as part of why the stereotype of ADHD years is that it’s hyperactive little boys, right? And when you’re a woman in your forties and fifties, and you’re hearing about. ADHD. I think that stereotype is part of what makes people say, no, that, that, that can’t be me. Yeah. That can’t be me. Right. Yeah. So the hyperactive, yeah.

So the hyperactive part is also not that helpful. And then the last part of the name disorder. So in the realm of neurodivergent advocacy, you have people who are ADHD advocates view ADHD differently than a medical practitioner in the health care field might view it, right?

So I personally do not view the way that my brain works as disordered. I view it as atypical. I view it as unconventional. I view it as sometimes disabling. Sometimes disabling, but you can have a particular physical, like, style of brain function That is sometimes disabling, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean it’s disordered, that it’s somehow pathological, right? So that’s the way I see it.

Jill: Is it, is it disabling in, it’s disabling in the context of how our society is expected to operate? Not necessarily, just like it’s not, yeah, it’s like it, your brain still functions, it’s just. You know, if 80 percent of the world or I don’t know what percentage of people have ADHD, but if 60 or 80 percent of the world is like, no, this is how you’re supposed to do things, then of course it’s going to be disabling.

Cause you’re like, my brain doesn’t work that

Emma: way. Yes, totally. So I think there’s 2 ways in which ADHD can be disabling. One of which is the fact that our world is not set up for an ADHD brain. Right. ADHD brains do not work in a linear kind of a way just to get into a little bit of what the ADHD traits are.

Like, ADHDers tend to have what’s called time blindness, right? Where time, our, our experience of time is not the same as the conventional experience of industrial clock time, right? Okay. So, 1 of the ways that ADHD can be disabling is that we just don’t fit in to the world that we live in. Right. But another way that ADHD can be problematic is that even if I don’t know. Our society radically, radically changed, or even if you fantasize a little bit or daydream back about, well, what was life like? Like, what would I, and this is something I think about a lot. I think about what would life have been like for an ADHD or living in prehistoric times. When, right, like, there’s this whole thing about human beings evolved, like, we first appear on the scene about 200, 000 years ago, and, like, for the vast, for most of our history, we lived in very small bands of, like, 150 or 250 people, and that’s when you have, like, this hunter.

Gather lifestyle, right? Not to like romanticize that history who knows exactly what was happening. And I’m sure there’s all kinds of things about it that were awful. But I often think about like, well, what would like have life have been like for an ADHD or pre in like prehistory? And one of the things about it is that on the one hand, there’s a way that our brains do not fit into our current culture, right?

But the other thing is, even when ADHD ers want to do something, and other people want them to do it, it can be hard to do it. Mm hmm. So, for example, I’m in the, like, like I just began to, like, I, I’ve talked to you about this before, how, like I just started to run like eight weeks ago. I am in the honeymoon period.

Like you would not believe, right. I am so into it, but I’m pretty sure a day is going to come when I want to run and I will not be able to, because my executive functioning challenges will not allow me to. I’m pretty sure that’s coming.

Jill: It is coming, I’m sorry. It is coming. You of all people are probably the best prepared for it, but yes, it will come.

Emma: So, I don’t know, hopefully I answered some question in there.

Jill: Yes. I think like that is, that is ADHD, right? Like that’s, those are, well, what are some of the symptoms that might manifest, especially like if you’re like a Gen X women, for example, like in, in our specific age group?

Emma: I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So the way that I think of them is not as symptoms.

I think of them as traits.

Jill: Okay. Thank you. Actually, thank you for that correction. Because like symptoms implies. That there’s something wrong.

Emma: Exactly. And I don’t, of course, I don’t insist that other people think of themselves like this. That’s just kind of how I think about it. So, just to give a few words I’m gonna give the more like symptomatic word.

The word that is more like, kind of has a negative implication. And then I’m, then I’m gonna give an an example of how you might rephrase it from an ADHD positive perspective, right? So you could be a hyperactive person, you could reframe that as energetic. A daydreamer, imaginative, overthinker, curious, forgetful, present in the moment, disorganized, doesn’t sweat the small stuff, inconsistent, cyclical.

Jill: Wait, say that last one again.

Emma: Cyclical.

Jill: Cyclical. Ooh. Wait, okay, wait. Because that, I feel like we need to do a whole podcast on people who struggle with consistency and exercise and help them to redefine it as like, no, you’re just cyclical.

Emma: 100%. Yeah. Yeah. When you first contacted me, I actually kind of like before, like we talked a little bit about what you wanted to discuss. I was like, Oh, well, one of the things we probably should talk about is how consistency is tricky for ADHD years and how you might have to reframe that a little bit to make it work for you. If you’re trying to do something like, have a practice of anything in particular..

Yeah, so those are some examples impulsive, spontaneous, right? Reckless could be brave, a chatty Kathy could be exuberant and warm, distracted, sees details, others, miss, right? Yeah. My experience of lazy because lazy is the big one. Right. And I remember, Oh my gosh, this is many years ago, my husband and I have been Been a couple now for 22/23 years and when I first met my husband’s mom She’s a lady with a big for a big personality and she she was getting to know me a little bit and we were joking and laughing about what I was like and she teasingly said to me. Oh, you’re lazy And I got, it was just a, it was just a joke, right? It was very teasy and funny and, but I got very upset by it because I have this internalized story that I’m lazy.

So one of the things for ADHDers to understand about themselves is look, look, ladies, you’re not lazy. You’re, you are on a different time cycle then the prevailing culture around you, the culture around you works on these scales where it’s a nine to five work day. It’s a five day work week. It’s it’s 52 weeks a year, right? All of those categories are human inventions are cultural inventions. And this culture style does not necessarily match the way that your inner tempo functions.

That is why you have this experience where you’ll have, I don’t know, three or four days where you’re working your ass off. Sunrise to sunset on a project, right? And then and then you crash, right? Or you’ll have three weeks where you’re busting your ass. One of the things I love about your podcast actually is that people drop F bombs and curse.

Yeah. Yeah. You’ll be busting your ass. On a work project for three weeks, killing yourself, staying up late, and and then and then you’ll crash. You don’t work in the conventional span of time.

Jill: Yeah. I mean, I see that even on a day to day basis. I’ll use yesterday as an example, cause I still, I still tend to beat myself up for not being able to like sit down with a nine to five, but like, this is, this is why I feel like the entrepreneur life suits me so well is I really can just kind of like set my own schedule.

But yesterday I got up. And I went for a really great walk and, and just kind of like got my body sort of filled with endorphins and then I sat down to work and I was like, I’m going to be so productive. I sat down to work and I was like, no. no, no. And I had like specific monuments in my day where I had like meetings so I like for sure showed up for all my meetings, but, but I was like, I was like getting kind of anxious cause I’m like, I need to write these emails and I need you this, and I had like all these different things I wanted to do. And, and then I just ended up not doing them. And then I ate dinner and I sat down and I turned on the, the. Packers Game . I I turned on the Packers game and like all of a sudden, like something clicked in gear in my brain and I had my laptop and I just sat down and like banged out two hours worth of work. Right? And, and I was like able to watch the Packers game and then I got it. Was it, was it, was it Packers and the Bills?

Emma: Wish your listeners could see me nodding my head so hard that I’m gonna like, give myself whiplash.

Jill: Yes. I know. Please don’t do that.

Emma: Yes. This is like the fire hose. You got the fire hose around to where you wanted it. At the time that you wanted it to be spraying on your emails, you couldn’t get it there.

And, but then you turn on the Packers game, your brain was in a different place. You were able to get the fire hose of your attention pointing the way you wanted it to go.

Jill: Yeah, it was wild. It was wild. And so I, I, I used to think like, And I still do this. I like try to sort of manhandle myself and like, you’re just going to, cause I’ve taken a million productivity courses and they all say, well, you know, you, you just sit at your desk at the time you said you were going to work and you were either going to work or you’re going to sit and stare.

And that is just like, those are not the options. I can’t, neither of those options work for me and it just, it’s so frustrating and it, like it over, it stresses me out and. And like, I think once I just sort of give myself permission to like, Hey, when that, when it moves me, when like that inspiration shows up to like, just get it done and like take care of it.

And I feel like the quality of my work is so much better when I’m not trying to force it.

Emma: Yeah. Totally. It’s so fascinating. I think so. Like you’ve been in the coaching realm for a long time. And I think one of the things that I am endlessly fascinated by is how coaching For neurotypical people does not necessarily work for ADHDers.

Jill: Interesting.

Emma: I have had a ton of coaching. And some of it has been great and some of it has been not so great. And some of it has been what I recognize now as like it was probably good coaching, but not for my brain. Yeah. Not for my brain. Yeah. And I think this attitude, I think there’s a lot of sort of, Attitudes and coaching and even in the self help world.

That that are ableist, frankly, that do not take into account different ways that people’s brains function and that quite deliberately and explicitly connect those differences to character flaws, like it’s not just that you hear that laziness or your inability to sit down from nine to five. Like, you don’t just hear that that’s a character flaw. When you’re a kid in school, you hear that as an adult everywhere. And especially in the self help space especially in like business or corporate spaces, like ableism is a real thing. And it really impacts ADHD years perspectives on themselves.

Jill: Yeah, I, I agree. I agree. And it is, I mean, as somebody who worked in corporate for many years and manage people and had to manage myself, I think, like, like, I had a real hard time, like, paying attention and getting my work done. But also I have been blessed with the ability that, like, when I. When I sit down to work, I can usually like bust it out really fast. So like, yeah, I had an eight hour day. Like I maybe would do like two actual hours of work and it would, and the rest of the time I was just like, These are flagellating myself because I felt guilty about not working, but, but I still managed to get the same amount of work done as the, as the neurotypical person that would come in and sit down and just like, yeah, along.

But

so I think I was able to sort of mask it and I don’t, I don’t, you know, I don’t think anyone really knew, right? I think that’s classic, but there was definitely, you know culture of the people who didn’t get their work done. And, and that could have been like ADHD folks who were like this, this whole way of operating doesn’t work for me.

There’s something wrong with them instead of like, Hey, maybe we can figure out a way to like, like people don’t come to a job thinking like, I’m just going to fuck off and not work all day. I mean, maybe if you work at McDonald’s, you’re doing that because there’s not much fulfillment there.

I don’t know. Nothing against people who work at McDonald’s. Maybe there is, but I think maybe some jobs you’re like that, but like if you, if you went to college and you worked your ass off to like, get like a corporate career, like you’re not showing up thinking like, what can I get by? Right. Right. Right.

Without doing right. Like you want to do a good job and then it’s just not always set up for you. So yes, it’s, it was very ableist. That was a, yeah,

Emma: totally agree with you. I’m going to quote one of my heroes in my line of work, which is this guy named Ross Green, who’s actually not specifically an ADHD coach and he’s not for adults.

He’s more addresses kids, but he, but he says about kids, he’ll say kids do well when they can. Yeah. And adults also, it’s the same. Basically everybody here on planet earth. We all do well when we can. I love that. And it’s like, what, when I think about myself as an ADHD adult, part of what I’m always thinking about for myself and my clients is how can we impact the can part?

How can we empower ourselves and create the structures around us, have the conversations that need to be had with people at home or at work? With our friends, with our families, that make it, that make it possible that we can, that we can do well. How can we build some bridges between where we are now, sitting in the messiness of our ADHD lives when they are unsupported, to what our dreams are?

And a lot of that is about creating structures so that, so that we can succeed, so that we can live our dreams.

Jill: And what do some of those structures look like?

Emma: Great question. I freaking love this topic. It’s when it, like, do you have this experience, Jill, as an ADHD woman? Do you identify that way now? I don’t want to jump the gun for you.

Do you feel comfortable with me saying that?

Jill: Well, I’ve never, yeah, I think it’s something that like, sometimes I think, no, maybe I really am just lazy. But I think like, I’ve never, I’ve never pursued, actively pursued getting a diagnosis because I’m not interested in going on medication. And so, I don’t have a diagnosis as an ADH woman, but I think I have a lot of the traits.

Not all, but I have many of them. And so, I have found that like, Identifying that way helps me. Yeah, right. Whether or not it’s true, right? Like, even if I don’t meet the exact clinical definition, like, creating that identification for myself has given me the space to be like, Oh, my brain just works a little differently than other people’s.

And so, yeah. So to answer your question, yes, I do identify that way. Thank you for asking.

Emma: Yeah, it’s empowering, right? Yeah, it is. That’s one of the things about it. Some people will say, Oh, I don’t want to identify that way. I don’t want to put that on myself. But it’s like. I mean, everybody’s different.

Everybody has their own path. But personally, when I started identifying that way and claiming it, my life got way better. Yeah. So, so the thing I was going to say was, do you have this experience where somebody says something and it opens 50 tabs in your mental browser? Yeah. Okay. So you asked me that question.

Jill: Yeah, wait, here’s a tab that just opened that I want to share with you because I have

conversations with, you know, I, I know a ton of coaches, either life coaches or like all kinds of coaches and, you know, sometimes somewhere, you know, we, we get together periodically, talk about our businesses and stuff and like give each other ideas and what happens is. Somebody will give me an idea that is an amazing idea, and it will open 50 tabs in my brain of like, all the ways I could do it, all the ways I can’t do it, yadda yadda yadda, and I am unable to act on that idea. And then like a month later, It’s

Emma: like the robot breaks down. It’s like, it’s like a tin man, right? It’s like, it’s like the computer breaks down because there’s so much running through the system.

Jill: There’s exactly, and they’re, and they’ll be like, well, what’s going through your mind? I can’t read your expression. And I’m like, Everything is going through my head. I don’t know how to

Emma: The universe! That’s what’s going through my mind right now. The universe. The entire cosmos.

Jill: The whole universe, exactly. Yeah, and so yeah, that was one of the tabs that opened when you said tabs. Because I’ve never had anybody explain it to me that way. But what, but I just freeze and then a month later, they’ll be like, so did you implement that idea? And I’ll be like, no, I’m still thinking about it.

You know, I’ll try to like pass off. It’s like, I’m giving a deep consideration when in reality, I was like, it’s not possible because I it’s just, it crashed my system and yeah, I need to keep doing what I know.

Emma: Yeah. Oh my God. I actually recently. So I have a million ways that I personally work. Oh my God.

So let me go back and like, I just don’t want you to think I forgot your question. I am going to go back and speak to your question, but one of the, one of the ways that I’ve learned to work in my brain is I have a bunch of different ways that I can capture the flood of ideas that run through when I have that experience of 50 tabs that open inside my brain and they’re nothing fancy.

It’s like, I have, I have a notebook and I have, I really use the notes app on my phone a lot and I, but the other thing that I’ve done. Is I give myself permission, I just say to myself, this is how my brain works. It’s okay that this enormous creative flood is going to wash through me. I’m under no moral obligation to capture all of these thoughts.

I’m, my business is not going to fail if I do not capture these thoughts. I’m not going to, the well’s not going to dry up. I can trust. That part of my nature as a living being is that enormous waves like enormous gifts flow through me. I am so, and I don’t, I know this may sound like vain or what have you, but I, I say this as humbly as I possibly can.

Because believe me, there’s all kinds of ways that this does not work for me, but I have so many creative gifts. It’s okay that I can’t capture them all. The universe is constantly downloading through me. It’s okay. I don’t have to capture it. I don’t have to capture it all. The universe still loves me.

Jill: I love that.

I love it. And if it’s meant for you to do, I feel like the idea will come back again.

Emma: It’ll come back. Absolutely.

Jill: Absolutely. But what a great way to think about it because. When I think of like somebody who creates, who paints or something and you know they have, or somebody who writes novels or like, you know, they have a kajillion ideas and they’ve got one lifetime and they’ve got 24 hours in the day and they cannot possibly capture it all.

I feel like probably a lot of like artistic, like people who create art. They must have some sort of like,

Emma: you think about Van Gogh, right? Jesus, that guy must’ve had like such a plethora. And like part of being a creative person. And in my opinion, somebody who’s doing what you’re doing, you are doing an extremely creative job.

Like you’re like coaching is intrinsically a creative act as a, as a business person, you are creating your business all the time. Right. Part of being a creative person. Is that you are constantly receiving these downloads from the universe and it’s like, it’s, it’s just okay that you can’t act on them all.

That’s the nature of it. That’s how it works. So to go back to your question, 20 minutes ago, what are some of the techniques? Well, here’s the, here’s the thing about that. I could sit here and discuss and describe techniques to you all day long. I will tell you one thing in particular. This is one of my favorite quotes from an ADHD doctor who I really admire named Ned. Hallowell, he says, the best ADHD hack is another person.

That’s wild. The best ADHD hack is another person, right? Yeah. Which, I mean, again, not to get too far in the weeds again into the, like, philosophical weeds, but if you think about it, if you think about it that way, then ADHD becomes less a neurological disorder and more a failure of, of, community in modern society.

Jill: That is wild.

Emma: That is kind of mind blowing, right? Yeah. So basically the reason why I don’t talk too much about hacks. Like I, I mean, I’m happy to go into hacks. If you were my client or what have you, or if you were in a coaching program with me and we had, we had time, we’d be like, okay, what’s your problem?

Let’s talk about all the ways that you could solve it. Right. But one of the things about ADHD strategizing is that what’s going to work for each ADHD person differs in the same way that like everybody’s taste in like exactly what snacks they like exactly how their meals prepared, or this is actually the best example that I can give exactly what you want, what you like in the bedroom, right?

Everybody’s got their own extremely specific, extremely bespoke, nervous system level preferences about what’s going to work for them in the bedroom in the same way as an ADHDer each of us has our own nervous system level, very bespoke, tailored, specific strategies that are going to work for us in terms of how we manage our lives.

Jill: Yeah. And I love that you just word, use the words bespoke and tailored because it makes it seem very posh and very like high end, you know, I love this. Totally. Yeah. And I think, I mean, that’s what I’ve found myself, because I’ve tried a few of the hacks and I’m like, that doesn’t work. The accountability, I wouldn’t even call it accountability, but the other person, like, I’ve recently started every day from 9 until 11 my my friend and I, we work together on like over video, like, and we, you know, we chit chat for a few minutes and then we just sit down and work. And it’s like, sometimes I fuck around and I don’t work super efficiently, but I’m like, this is the time I’ve carved out. So I know that every day I show up to work at 9am and I get my little treat and talking to my friend, Jen and like whatever we need to discuss and then, and then it just sort of slides into work and it’s. It’s like the best of both worlds because one of the things I miss about working in corporate America is having co workers and having somebody to talk to at the water cooler. And this kind of like serves that need. And then also it’s like, she’s working, I’m working. I don’t know. It’s weird, but it works.

Emma: So that’s super common. So it’s, I love that you very correctly in my opinion, identified that that is different than accountability. Thank you. Yeah. So what you’re describing is something called body doubling. Have you heard that phrase before?

Jill: Yes, I have. And I never heard it.

My friend, Jen, she’s the one who suggested it because I was like, I can’t get my work done. But she’s like, Hey, this is what I do for one of my other clients. She’s asked me to be her body double and we do it once a week or whatever. And I was like, let’s do that. And yeah, so explain what body doubling is, I’m still not sure I understand it

Emma: All it is is if there’s another person present, it’s easier to get shit done. That’s literally all it is. And it’s so wild. So the difference between body doubling and accountability, for example, is that when you’re working with an accountability coach or what have you, they usually are doing something like. They make a, like you have an agreement about what you’re supposed to get done and then they check in with you and they’re like, well, did you do this thing? And you’re like, well, no, I didn’t. And they’re like, okay, well, when are you going to do this thing? Which P. S. In my opinion, for ADHD adults, that is not a strategy that is going to fucking work for you. That’s going to make you feel like trash. Okay. Agreed. Body doubling is different. Body doubling. It’s just you get on the horn. You get on zoom or you get like it could be on zoom or it could just be having them come into your office. Right? I sometimes have my husband come in and sit with me if I’m going to do something really hard that I really don’t want to do. They’re just present. They’re just there. You’re not telling like, like, it’s totally cool. Like sometimes I actually offer clients in my group program, a body doubling session. And in that context, we come on and we say, okay, what are you going to do today?

And they say, well, I’m going to do blah, blah, blah. And then they work on that. Right. But you don’t even necessarily have to tell the other person what you’re doing, just the mere fact of their presence. And it doesn’t have to be in person for a lot of people, even just being on zoom together is enough to is, is enough to create the conditions where you can get it done, where you can turn, where you feel like you have a little more control over the fire hose, right? That’s what body doubling is doing. Body doubling is allowing you to get your hands on the fire hose so that you can turn it where you want it.

Jill: It’s just, it’s just like a weird energy shift that like suddenly, yeah. So I’m also kind of wondering, cause sometimes I can be with certain types of tasks, I can be super productive if I turn on a TV show or a football game or a baseball game in the background that like, I don’t need to follow closely, especially if it’s like, for me, it’s the office.

Cause I’ve the entire series all the way through at least 10 times, right? Like, so it’s just, I feel, and the office, right? I feel like, Oh, I’m just going to turn my little coworkers on over there and like, Oh, they’re up to some antics

Emma: oh my God. I love

Jill: that. Do you think, is that a form of body doubling? Do you think, or is it? Or is

Emma: That something different? That is something slightly different. Okay. That is, oh God, I wish I could, I wish I had a name at the tip of my brain to tell you about that. That, that, that is something that’s a little bit different, but maybe that is operating in the same way. I mean, I think about how like it sounds like that’s kind of operating in the same way for you.

Yeah.

Jill: It kind of, or going to a coffee shop and noticing that there’s other people there with laptops. Not that I’m necessarily going to talk to them, but. See, no,

Emma: I’m not going to talk to them.

Jill: I’m an introvert and I do not like a lot of social contact but it’s something about seeing other people do work, like makes me want to do the work too.

I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s weird.

Emma: Well, it’s weird, but it’s, it’s actually only weird from a neurotypical perspective. That’s really common ADHD experience. Like my husband, for example, he works from home three days a week and he goes into the office two days a week. And he actually would prefer to go in every day because if he could go in every day, because he works way better around people.

And this is also like, I mean, I personally, what I’ll do if I need to get shit done I. Well, I listen to music. I have this weird app on my phone called Endel that has these cycling through certain sounds and it’s the same thing basically each time and I turn it on and my head goes somewhere different like it shifts my brainwaves.

Yeah. Something shifts in there and I’m able to get into the slipstream of my attention and get the hard thing done.

Jill: Oh, that’s fascinating. There’s, okay, this is gonna sound weird, but there’s a chant you’re gonna relate to this. Om Namah Shivaya. There’s a record, there was a specific recording that somebody did. I think it’s like, his name might be Robert Bliss and it’s like a really, really layered version of it. And it’s about an hour long. And I put that on and it’s like, my brain drops right into,

Emma: You better share that in the notes for that. Cause I’m going to want to know that. And I bet your listeners are too.

Jill: Yeah. And I mean, you can get it on Spotify. I used to like years ago, I got it from a yoga teacher and I had it on CD and who knows. What’s all the CDs are gone now.

Emma: Talk about a Gen X problem. how do music things work anymore. Like once CDs went out, I never figured it out.

Jill: Wait, but speaking about Gen X. So my, my husband, who’s actually like, he was born in 1982, so he’s like a really early millennial, but he’s, he’s a Gen Xer at heart.

But anyway We, we just moved into this house, this new house. And he’s like, I think I want to get a turntable. And so he went out and he got a turntable. And now on the weekends, we go out to like used record stores and we are literally recreating the, and it’s mostly like seventies and eighties music, because that’s what was really, it’s so much fun.

It’s so much fun. And I’m like.

Emma: The only thing is it’s more satisfying right. Than like Spotify.

Jill: It is, it’s very satisfying because we don’t have a TV in our living room. We just have this turntable. Yeah. And so we’ll kind of just like sit and like, just listen to music and read or we, we like, we listen to records now. It’s the cutest .

Emma: It’s amazing. I I love that. I love that. I feel like any minute that I’m spending. Not on my phone. I’m like, is it such a, it’s such a gift, especially if you’re a digital business person, like you are, like I am to some extent, it’s like any minute we’re not on our phone is like just a gift.

Jill: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Well, this has been an incredibly satisfying conversation, at least for me. Me too! So fun! So how can people find you, follow you, work with you, tell us all the things?

Emma: Okay, my website is emmaMagentacoaching.com and I’m on the socials as well. Emma Magenta coaching. I think that’s what I am on Facebook and on Insta as well. So yeah, there you go.

Jill: Let’s do it. And you, and you have, I know you have classes and you also do individual coaching. Is that correct?

Emma: Yes, I do individual coaching and actually on February 2nd, I’m launching the next cohort.

I’m starting the next cohort of a group program that I teach that teaches anti procrastination to ADHD women. It’s called Get It Done 101. And I don’t know when this podcast is going to come out, whether it’s going to come out

Jill: Probably not till the end of February or the beginning of March, but I’m going to sign up for that program.

And also, like, do you re teach things after the fact, or do you record them and, like, can people buy it after it’s done being taught?

Emma: That’s kind of my plan eventually.

Jill: Okay. I just opened 50 tabs in your brain.

Emma: Well, you basically touched on the 50 tabs that are constantly like gestating inside of my brain.

So yeah, absolutely. We are kindred spirits. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, one of the things that is so great about identifying more as an ADHD person is you really get, you really start to meet other people like that whose brain works like your brain works and that has been, that’s so fabulous because then you just feel less like a weirdo.

Like talking, talking to you, it’s like, Oh yeah, I’m not a weirdo. I’m just like Jill.

Jill: Yeah, exactly. I love this. I love this. Well, thank you so much, Emma, for your time today. And everyone, please, if you resonated with even a, a fraction of what we talked about today, make sure you go and follow Emma on Instagram and Facebook, check out her website, get on her email list, because she is, she is doing the best work in the world by helping those of us with slightly different brains than everyone else. Not feel like weirdos and actually, I mean, I, I think there are so you said in the beginning that there are so many positives to having this type of brain that, you know, like you wouldn’t want to change it. And I kind of feel the same like. I don’t know if I’d want to change my brain, because I think some pretty awesome stuff has come out of it.

And if I had a very neurotypical brain, I don’t know if I’d be doing the work that I’m doing and I don’t know if I’d be making the impact. And so I like, Hey, thanks brain for, for being who you are. And thank you, Emma, for making it okay for the rest of us to

Emma: you, you and your brain are a gift. Jill. Thank you so much for having me today.

Jill: Same.