hello and welcome to excuse my 80 HD A podcast for adults with or who think they may have a PhD. I'm your host, Jeanette, and this is my journey. Hello and welcome to excuse my a D H d Episode number one. Everything I am, I'm your host, Jeanette, and I am navigating a DHD one distraction at the time. Today's episode is about theeighty HD symptoms that make me everything I am.

So this is my story I thought about in the beginning of starting this whole journey that I would start with the clinical definition of what, a DHD iwas.

And then one day on a Facebook post, somebody had posted something about how it was

annoying that people compared a DHD to autism because a DHD is, I don't know. I guess they didn't feel like it was impairing at all, which I get. Autism is much more impairing and to a person than a DHD could be, I think, um, depending on where you lie on the spectrum, but I think the problem is that when people think about 80 HD, they envision the little boy in the classroom that can't sit still. They can't quit talking and that gets in trouble all the time. That's what I thought it was. I'm not gonna lie. The first time my husband told me he thought I had a d h d. That's what I thought. And I thought he was crazy. That wasn't me.

I wasn't that person. I could sit still. I could sit in my room when I was a teenager and literally read a book. From the time I woke up until the time I went to bed barely noticing anything until I had to go to the bathroom. I was so hungry. I just had to eat. You know, that's the hyper focus part of it. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that any a DHD had, like, I don't know, something like 90 some odd symptoms that they list in the D. S. M. And the more I've read,

the more I've learned, the more information and knowledge of gained more. I've learned about myself more my life, my whole life makes sense, and the more I am just taken aback by how little we use the general population. And even the professional seemed to know about 80 HD I think instead of giving the clinical definition, I'm just gonna walk you through all my symptoms, give you my story and maybe he'll give me yours. So let's see. Getting excited. Yeah, get excited pretty easily. I get excited about something and I kind of become obsessed. And part of that might be because one of my friends day THD is O. C. D.

Not the kind of O. C. D. Where you count things 100 times. We have to touch things a certain number of times or anything like that. It's just obsessive thoughts, I guess, and that with the a d h d. If I get excited about something and probably the easiest, most recent would be the Siri's Outlander. I got so obsessed with Outlander I was. I read every single book there. Eight books and their hundreds of pages long read them all in two months because I read it while I was at work. I read it when I was at stoplights. I read it when I was supposed to be playing with my kids, how I read it when I should have been sleeping.

I was so hyper focused on it that Not only did I read the books that quickly, I binged the show over and over again. I would google everything about caste or the clothes or the time period, the history of the time period that the show is being shot in everything I had to know. And it happens like that. A lot of times, they with projects, too, If I get excited about a project. Sewing was one I like a year ago, two years ago. Now I got a sewing machine so excited I was gonna learn how to. So I was gonna sew my girl's clothes. I was gonna make quilts. I was gonna do all this stuff. When got a sewing machine with gift cards and money I got for Christmas,

I started reading up on it. I started playing with seven stitches on scrap fabric. I was gonna be a sewer. And then all of a sudden, the excitement wears off and days go by. And there it sits in my laundry room. Not a single completed project. From what I wanted to do. I haven't made one piece of clothing for the girls. I started one. I have the material. Cut it just needs to be sewn. It made them little purses when I was practicing, but I don't really count. Those is finished products. And they are,

But they weren't. And then I've got scrapbook materials downstairs. I've never opened. I was I went in through that phase when they hold that all stamping up, paying people at work were making cars. Everything looks so cool. And I wanted to do. And I was gonna scrap book everything for my vacations for my kids. I was gonna make them these awesome baby books. I know all that stuff is sitting in the basement in the bag that I bought it in unopened has been for probably 10 years. I found it the other day. So it's stuff like that all the time. And then you have the memory of the memory is wonderful, isn't it? Um, remembering things.

That's one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves. I think they said, and I've heard other people say that to it. Of the lies we tell ourselves. It's said, I'll remember that. I'll do that. I can remember to do that. I'll make that phone call. I'll I'll do that thing and it. It's not that it's not an important thing to us because it is always an important thing. And it's not like I forget, Oh, repeated in my head. You know, go to the grocery store and I'll have a list of four things to get and I'm going to the grocery store and I've got one thing left to get in.

I'm repeating it over and over. It's like stamps, stamps you have to buy at the checkout. Aga. I got everything else I needed all three of the other things doing good. I'm so proud of myself. She's skin and everything at the checkout. I pay that. Lead the store to get in my car, get start driving to the house, and I remember Oh my God, I didn't get stamps. I thought about it the whole way through the store when I was standing in line to check out, and then I got distracted and it was gone, and it's like that all the time. It's not that we don't care or I don't care about things.

I just can't hold them. And so now, because I know that I've started keeping a bullet journal and that could be a whole podcast episode in it of itself. But I've been writing everything down to try and write everything down. If I have an appointment, if I need to do something on a certain date, I grab my book. I write it down. I take it with me everywhere. It was becoming a problem in my life, in my relationship, every day at work. It was just a problem because people would tell me things. I would think I would remember it. I'd go to write it down and get a phone call, and then I'd completely lose what I was doing and what I was supposed to dio gone.

Another thing is like when I talked to people and they tell me details about their life. And then I see them again and I asked them questions and I get a look and then I know it's because I've probably asked them on that question before. And then when they tell me the answer or response, it's like because I'm hearing it for the second time it clicks, and then I get that Oh my God, foot in mouth moment that I realized way too late that Yes, I already knew that. And they must think I'm an idiot or that I just don't care enough to remember these things. That's not it. It's the same with everything else. I just can't remember it. I can't remember a lot of things, and it sucks. Another thing. Planning for the future. I know people my husband included,

that can think forward so many steps in the future and plan things out and think of things that I can't think of. And God, I wish I could do that When I try and think of the future. It's like I'm looking at a blank wall and I know their stuff on the other side of it, and I just cannot get to it a couple days, a week or two. No problem. I can do that. I can plan it out because I could put it on a piece of paper and I can see it and it's in the journal. My dates were there, and I can see OK, this is what my week looks like, but you want me to plan something five years out in the future. There's just too many steps between now and achieving that goal. I don't know. It's like it.

Short circuits my brain and it just does not compute. I can't compute it. It doesn't work. I just go blank. Oh, and then emotions. Oh my God, So emotional regulation. That's a big one on my husband and I have gone and you know, we'll get in arguments and they'll escalate so quickly because all get so emotionally charged and I can't stop myself. And now it's happening. I can't stop. It's like it's coming. I can feel it coming, but I can't do anything about it in Confrontation is hard for me anyway. Hey,

because I can't think if we had an argument about something, it'll stay with me for days because in the moment I can't organize my thoughts enough to get a coherent thought out to say what I really, truly need to say or want to say, and then three days later, after I've been chewing on it and chewing on it, I have my whole response to the whole argument in my head and it goes a completely different way. What because I get so overwhelmed and stressed and frustrated it or angry. It's like the floodgates open and I'm crying and I don't know why I'm crying and I can't control the crying. I'm just so frustrated that it just comes. It comes full speed ahead and I can't stop it. Thanks. Yes. How do you have an example of one time when I was pretty funny and I laugh about it now? I was pregnant, had twins, and I was pregnant with my girls.

Is that my parents house on bed? Rest? Because the doctor thought my house was too far away in case something happened and Disney's Meet the Robinsons Come on. So I don't know if you know that, but I'll put a link in the show notes because it's just so funny. And there's this is just this part where this T Rex is chasing the people in the show. He is Louis cornered, but he's a T rex. T. Rexes have big heads and tiny arms, so he keeps hitting his head against the quarter. And then he stopped and he was like he says, I have a big head and little arms, and he's shaking his little bitty arms. It got me laughing, and once I started laughing,

I couldn't stop, and I laughed until I see my side started to hurt. And then I started crying and I couldn't stop crying and laughing. I'm laughing and I'm crying and I can't stop it. And it's just coming. And it was like several minutes of just uncontrollable laughing and crying, you know, obviously energy with hormones. But the fact that I already have an emotional regulation problem, it just magnified it. And I think my parents and my brother probably taped it and still have it make fun of me. But it's just that emotional regulation is just can be really hard to deal with. When your brain shuts down and you can't have a good, constructive discussion or argument, it makes communication heart. I'm not gonna lie.

It makes things hard. And then there's my short fuse, and most people I know would tell me I don't have a short fuse, but the people I work with oh, they know how short my fuse can be. But in general, you know, on the day today, things don't bother me that much. But there are a few buttons that I have that will just put me over the edge and a heartbeat on the 1st 1 is driving construction while driving anything that it disrupts me. Getting from point A to point B within the time period. I think it should take slow drivers. Annoy me fast drivers Crazy Cut everyone off drivers. It's like there's this. There's this screw fi cartoon short that was done like 50 years ago. But every once in a while you can see it float around,

and I don't remember when I ever watched it. Problem. The Disney Channel in some point in time, but it's goofy and he's this old. He's this mild mannered man He's walking outside, but as soon as he gets in the car, he turns into Mr Wheeler. Crazy driver hits people stamps on his car while paddling to that out. There, too is, is pretty funny, but that's how I feel. I feel like once I get behind the car and I'm in those situations that I'm that frustrated crazy got to get me out of here person, and it's the same way in crowded stores. I get I get so angry about having to wait in line or but the funny thing about the waiting in line is that like I can deal with it, its stores or things like that.

But put me in amusement park where I'm getting. I'm doing fun stuff and I'm okay. Like I don't mind Wait in line. I know there's gonna be a line. It was just part of it. Anywhere else. I can't no. A grocery store, grocery stores or the devil Grocery stores and malls at Christmas Devil. That's it. Straight up. Get people in a grocery store with cards on the weekend. They see somebody they know they take up the whole ill. I can't get where I want to go. And I'm not kidding. I drive a cart,

probably the same way I drive a car. However, I will say I have gotten much better driving the car. Thank you, sir. Terror and all the veteran, Um, but, you know, that's the thing. I get anxious about it, and then the anxious leads to frustration and the frustration leads to anger. And before I know it, I'm just I'm a mess. I got to get out. I can't deal with it.

I'm out of there as fast as I can. My kids are with me I start getting frustrated and rushing them along, too, and then they get frustrated and it's just all mess. Needless to say, Click List and Amazon Prime are my best friends. Ah, procrastination. Yep, Progress. I am the queen of procrastination. If you're like me, you do your best work when you're under pressure and an impeding deadline, there is nothing like the rush of having on hour or a day to get something done, even though you've known since the beginning of the semester that this project was d'oh or you've known for a month at work that this you had to get this done. But it's something you don't want to do,

or it's something with too many steps. It gets pushed his eyes like I don't want to do with this. I can't deal with this right now. It's going away. An example from college. I don't even know how I made it through college, because everything I did, I procrastinated. I can't studying. I I do not know how to study like most normal people do. I can't do it. I've never been able to do it. But waiting to the last minute procrastinating on homework Oh, I am the queen of that one. Probably the biggest example I have because it sticks with me. So much is an ethics class.

I had I had to write a paper. It was a 13 page research paper. Ah, something about ethics in the history of pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical ethics or something like that. And I did all this research about the beginning of pharmaceutical drugs back in the 18 hundreds and labels and all of this. That and the other thing. 13 pages. I got it done in one day. I don't I can't remember if I took the day off. I had the day off, but I spent the entire day doing nothing but that paper. I was in the zone. I had no cards everywhere. I had books everywhere. I had articles everywhere.

I was highlighting and underlining and typing. I got it done right before my husband and my son came home saved, ready to go. All I had to do was submitted. Go in later to a final quick review to submit. I can't find it. Not on the computer. I checked the jump drive. It's empty. Nothing there. I had tons of files on there, but they were gone. I don't know what happened. What I did, how it happened. But they were gone so frantically.

I emailed my professor. I told her what happened. She gave me 24 hours to get it, and she's like, I'm gonna give you this chance. If you did this paper like you say you did, you should be able to redo it in 24 hours. So fine. Sure. Yeah, I did it. I turned my 13 page paper put. The best part was, not only did I screw that up, saving it and have to rewrite it. But after I turned it in,

I found out that not only was it a 13 page paper, it was a 13 page double space paper. So thank you probably know where this is going. My 13 page paper was single spaced. So not only that, I type a 13 page, single spaced paper. I really type a 26 page double space paper. Because in my rush to get everything done, I read through the instructions super quick and didn't pay attention to those details and was kicking myself for it until I got my grade it was good grade. I think I can't remember. But that is probably my biggest example of that. Um, but it was the same story, you know, and work.

I start, but it didn't happen until I got a desk job. So I worked at McDonald's. I worked in hotels. I worked retail word in another hotel, worked in a bank, all those. I was constantly doing stuff. I didn't get bored once. I got a desk job and things didn't have to be done right then. And right there. I had that time that time to push things away and not do them right now. And, boy, did I ever push things away. I would push them away and forget about him until they were due.

Or someone would follow up with me until they were getting frustrated and make excuses. And I'm not even gonna lie. I mean, yeah, I am good at what I d'oh. But there are still times when I catch myself procrastinating. And I tried really hard not to anymore.

And then you got, you know, housework. Same thing. Hate,

hate doing ironing. It's tedious. It's boring. Can't stand it. I would rather clean a bathroom than iron. So wash clothes, hang them up. Anything that needed to be ironed would sit there and sit there and sit there. And I'm not kidding you. There would be shirts downstairs in my laundry room for months because I did not want to earn them and they would sit there until either I or my husband wanted to wear them. And then I would iron it, and then it would get washed and hung up and sit there again for more months until we wanted to wear it again. Four weeks, you know, whatever came up

and then so speaking of bathrooms, get on my PhD tangents. Yes, that's another symptom is like when doing housework. It's something actually, we used to argue about because, you know, my husband, they go it only it shouldn't take this long to clean the house. Why does it take you so long to clean the house? I'm like, That's just how long it takes. But after being diagnosed and reading Mick Russell Barkley, he's taking charge of it all day. THD and ad Hallowell is driven to distraction. I realize now, but that was one of my symptoms.

You know, I would start in the bathroom and I would clean the tub and clean the sink. And then I noticed there was something in the bathroom that would need to go in the laundry so I'd take it and put it in the laundry. Well, the clothes basket be full, so okay. And you take this close by asking to just go and do this load of laundry, then being the wander room, and I'd see something of the girls that would need Thio are my sons. That would need to be put up in their room. So say, I had a bow for the girls. I'd take the bow upstairs with me on my way back to the bathroom, but then all their bows are a mess. So I gotta organize those and their cause. It's a mess.

So I need to organize that too. All the time. Bathroom. Still sitting there, half done clothes and laundry. I'm organizing a closet. Well, you know, my closet needs to be organized, too, and I'm organizing my closet, and then I'm sorting through things and I'm spring cleaning, getting goodwill stuff ready, and the goodwill stuff reminds me of something else I need to do. And then I go down into the kitchen and there's dishes sitting there. I need to go and load the dishwasher.

So I load the dishwasher. So I've got laundry going. I'm loading a dishwasher. I'm organizing closets and getting good. Well, stuff ready? Bathroom. Still sitting there in the kitchen. Get the dishes loaded in the dishwasher. Well, there's a couple of pots and pans. I'll just wash this up real quick. Start the water. Get the bubbles. Go on. Put the stuff in the dead.

In the water. Turn around. See something? Uh, this needs to go upstairs. Walk upstairs. Oh, yeah. I need to finish cleaning the bathroom. Clean the bathroom. All while I've got a sink full of dishes and a sink full of water I haven't even touched. And then it just goes like that all day until my husband comes home. Expects a fully clean house. And I've done parts of every room, but not one whole room. And I always thought that's just soon.

That was the difference between realizes I d plane things and he didn't. But the truth us. My 80 HD brain was getting distracted and my O C d brain waas of this ground needs to be cleaned. I need to get a Q tip and claim this. I need to clean this. I need to clean that. I need to clean this. And that was my deep clean. But I would do that in bits and pieces everywhere into, but nothing was foully done, so yeah, and I guess that's kind of the big one's Another one is obviously insomnia. The sleep issue goes back for so long as I remember, I remember my mom and I We'd stay

up so late together cause she used to work night shifts and we'd stay up late middle of the night. Oh, you know, it sound really good. Fettuccine alfredo. Did we got the stuff to make it? Now you wanna go to Walmart? Sure. And off we'd go. And of course, you know when you got a Wal Mart, right? You can't just come out with what you need. You come out with, like, 10 bags, and we would when we come back and we'd make fettuccini Alfredo and sit up and watch,

right Instant be or Chris Rock or whatever was on some movie and that was fun and it was normal, but it was my a PhD to an impulsivity. God, that impulsivity gets me in trouble so many times has got me in trouble with credit cards and money with guys with just so many things got me in so much trouble when I was a kid. Just being impulsive and doing stuff do good crap. I knew I wasn't supposed to do. And then I would be asked. My dad would ask me Why did you do that? Why are you doing that? And my answer was always, I don't know because I didn't know what to say. I knew I wasn't supposed to do it, but I did it anyway. But I didn't know why. And, you know,

most parents that's not a good enough explanation. But it's all I had. And then, you know, I would be told that I was lying. But I I didn't know. But you know what? My parents didn't know that I had a DHD and that that was what that waas And so it just went on like that. I would do stupid, impulsive crap that I wasn't supposed to do and get in trouble for it like most kids would. And just a bad cycle. Luckily, a Mostly you're out of that. Mmm. I still do impulsive things, but not like I did when I was in high school. Middle school, that the meds? Help with that tremendously. Um,

but yes. Oh, that's

thing. That's most of it. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I'll probably think of it later, but I want to know what you're a DHD symptoms are and what your story is. So

for the next episode, just send me a message. Tell

me you want to talk and let's get connected, and we'll do a story.

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