Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 13: ADHD Myths

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Myths about ADHD, how females can sometimes be underdiagnosed and the fact that you can hyper-focus, you totally have ways to help yourself. And you just have to stay curious.

Hi, welcome to Beyond ADHD, A Physician's Perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers who are three and four years of age.

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovering  ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts backlog, a graveyard of unfinished projects, and a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes, the last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back like I have.

 

Okay. So today I want to talk about some myths with ADHD and some of them are the fact that only little kids who are super hyper active have ADHD.

The thing is that females tend to be a little bit more calm. We tend to be the daydreamers and sometimes you could be sitting there and your brain can be in 10,000 other places and not necessarily focusing on whatever the teacher is saying. And what happens is that if you were one to be hyperactive, as you go through menopause, If you are a kid who was hyperactive at some point, and then you go through your period stage, then you all the sudden can become more calm.

And so there was some misconceptions that people outgrew their ADHD as they got older, especially females, because all of a sudden they don't see this hyperactive activity happening. The thing is that now we have come to understand that you don't have to necessarily be hyperactive in order to be diagnosed with ADHD.

There was a lot of talk. There's a myth that says that, if you're smart, you can not have ADHD. Which of course, now we have come to understand that that's not necessarily the thing. The thing with ADHD is that. Tasks that sometimes seem boring or in important to us can be the reason we don't find the keys can be the reason why out of sight, out of mind, if it wasn't in our schedule, we tend to forget that.

And sometimes that can get us in trouble. Like when we forgot to pay our taxes or we forgot to pay a tuition or we forgot to turn in an important paper. Right? And the thing is that a lot of people think that if you go through college or you got through medical school or law school, or if you even got into that, there's no way you can have ADHD.

And that's not the case because whatever you have that interests, you. We tend to hyper-focus on that. And sometimes we spent so many hours doing that and we don't realize that it's like two or three times the amount of hours that other people invest in doing something. We don't make it mean anything because to us that's what is driving us or that's what feels right.

What's aligned with. What happens is that you end up having both male and females who have ADHD, but they're just working a lot harder than they need to be. And they don't realize that they're doing that because they have found their body finds ways to overcompensate for that dopamine that is low in their system.

How do they do that? Well, sometimes that looks like using too much coffee or using sodas. Or using, unfortunately, some people end up using like cocaine or different things like that. Alcohol, smoking, anything that gives them dopamine food, fried very sugary food as a way to try to find the dopamine.

Feeling like if you're smart, you know, you don't, you can't, there's no way you can have ADHD. That's a myth because as a physician right now with somebody that I have ADHD and, somebody who's currently has seen my patients in practice. Plus I now have a group coaching that I have physicians and medical students in..

I see it every day that all ethnicities, regardless of their social economic, and regardless of what specialty that they're in can have some problems. Right. And again, this is ADHD as a genetic condition. That is about how. Process information. It's an executive dysfunction that is also tied down to emotional dysregulation.

And even though in the US, it's not used as a way to, to say that you have ADHD, emotional dysregulation is not something that is used to diagnose that in Europe. It is it's one of the six characteristics to diagnose ADHD. The point that I'm trying to get at is that you can totally be somebody who is smart.

You can be an engineer, you can be an accountant, you can be an ER doc, you can be ICU nurse.  And being smart does not mean that that's automatically going to, um, rule out ADHD. So instead, what you need to look at is, are you somebody who forgets the keys?

Somebody who has no time awareness, somebody who has the best intentions and sometimes regardless of what you think you are not able to accomplish a deadline. Right? And so you have to just see the whole picture. Are you somebody who talks out of turn because you're afraid that. You're gonna forget what the other person was talking to you about.

And you're gonna look like the dummy because you didn't get in to say what you want it to say. Right? There's so many things that you have to look at. It's not just whether you can focus or not, but look at the whole strategy. With it. And that's the other myth. People think when they hear the word ADHD that you just have problem focusing.

And the thing is that not so much, like sometimes you have problems focusing on the things that to you are boring or too big of a task where you have. Find the task, but sometimes when you do get into whatever you're doing, you weigh over hyper-focused and you have a problem getting out of that stone to be able to come back and live with the rest of the humans in the world.

I will explain what I mean. So I have to use timers in the last year when I started understanding myself and I started to realize that I had no time awareness. And that's why, if I tell you that it's, something's going to take certain amount of time. It might take a lot more than that. I didn't realize until it was pointed out to me that the way our brains work is that we have places.

We have to think of a recipe when you ask us like, Hey, how long is this is going to take you, I'm going to tell you the time that it's going to take me to do something, but I don't tell you the time beforehand. Like, I don't tell you what I have to gather all these materials or make sure I'm at the right place at the right time with whatever I'm going and then the cleanup part of it.

So for example, I always use this example because it's real. If I have to cook a pasta, you're going to ask me how long does it take? And I'm going to tell you six minutes, but I'm not going to tell you that I don't even have the pasta in my house. I have to get in the car, drive to Walmart, go get the pasta.

Then I get the sauce. Then I get the bread. And then I looked at flowers and next thing you know, 2 hours has gone by that. Uh, by the time I started cooking the pasta and then I realized that I don't even have the pot that I needed because last time that I cooked pasta, I took some to my neighbor and then I forgot to get it.

All of these steps that I hadn't accounted for, when you asked me how long it was going to take me to do something. Right. And so the time awareness factor, because you didn't plan out what you wanted to do because we tend to live in the moment. Sometimes can get us into trouble. For me understanding that five minutes or an hour can feel the same sometimes when I'm enjoying something that I'm doing was a big revelation, because that gave me the opportunity to start to use timers so that before I walked into a patient's room, my nurse can come and knock and give me a heads up that certain amount of time had passed by so that I can start to wrap up appointment.

It's amazing when you're the one who's having the appointment with me, because you're the only thing that is in right in front of me. And I'm so excited to be talking to you, but if I'm not aware of the time, if you're the person waiting to be in the other room, you're gonna want me to hurry up. That's the thing like having that awareness that sometimes it's not that we have a community or a personal flaw that we're lying to people or that we don't care about people.

It's just the awareness that there is some other parts of us that we need some extra little help on so that we can create systems to support us and be more mindful of what we're doing. Understanding as well, that ADHD is not something that you caught. You know, there is some data out there that shows that it's obviously genetic, but it also shows that the environment that we grow up in makes a big difference, because it can be in our genes and it can be asleep or dormant.

And if the environment is such where your parents help you create good systems so that you can support yourself, then that works out great. And it might be that your ADHD does not get manifested until way later in life. But if you're in an environment where maybe there's some abuse or maybe there is some financial hardship, or you don't have the best schools or different things like that, it could be that your ADHD gets manifested a lot sooner rather than later.

Like for me, I didn't get diagnosed until I was in medical school. And I knew I was working a little bit harder, but I didn't realize that in high school, you know, I was running 10 miles. And so in the cross country team, that was probably giving me the dopamine that my brain needed. And I struggled a little bit when I got to college and it was because I wasn't running, I didn't put the two and two together today, which are myths about ADHD, how females can sometimes be underdiagnosed and the fact that you can hyper-focus and sometimes.

The things that are boring and makes us seem like we're under focusing and the fact that, you know, you totally have ways to help yourself and you just have to stay curious. I did end up having some tutors and different things like that because I knew that I worked best by talking it out with somebody else.

You have to understand that it's not just that you can't focus on something, but it's that sometimes you way over focus on something and you stay for too long of a period. So you have to have some tools to bring you back into like, present moment so that we don't become like over perfectionist on certain things and dwell and little details that can get us into trouble.

It is obviously a real condition. You know, a lot of people always say, oh my God, people are always overestimating it. Actually, the fact shows that it's way under diagnosed, especially for females. Sometimes they don't get diagnosed until the birth of a child or after they get to college or even like get a job promotion and stuff like that.

Well it's because of all the changes that happen with executive and organization and emotional and all that stuff that can really bring it out. And sometimes they don't even get diagnosed until they get into the menopause years because of the change in estrogen. So it's so important for you to just have an open mind if you have ADHD or if you know somebody with ADHD so that you can come curious and get to learn more about yourself.

I hope you enjoy the tips that we share today, which are myths about ADHD, how females can sometimes be underdiagnosed and the fact that you can hyper-focus and. The things that are boring and makes us seem like we're under focusing and the fact that you totally have ways to help yourself. And you just have to stay curious.

 

As someone who understands that time is your most valuable asset, I am so honored that you have shared your time with me. Please click the subscribe. And join my Facebook Group: Beyond ADHD A Physician's Perspective so that you never miss an opportunity to create time at will. Do share this podcast with your friends. So they too can learn to live life and stay in their own lane.

If you are a physician or medical student who is always taking work home, never keeps up with charting and feels their frustration with themselves building every day, it’s time to make a change.

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