Beyond ADHD: A Physician’s Perspective

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 14 with Decluttering Expert & Coach Rosemary Nichols

Rosemary Nichols: I have boxes of boxes in this storage area that I didn't see visually. That were just postponed decisions. Like I had many years of caregiving and I don't regret it for a second. I loved my family and I still love my family, but I just kept putting things to the side. That's really, when I dug deep and really had to deal with my own inability at times to create the system that worked for me.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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.
All right. I am so excited this week. We are talking with one of my star guest coaches in my program. So I am so thrilled to have her here. As you guys know, time is our most valuable asset. And so I'm so humbled that she's here today. Her name is. Rosemary Nichols. She is a woman with a mission. Her aim is to help individuals, especially those with ADHD, to overcome disorganization and create beauty and order in their environment and in their lives.
Using self-compassion approach, her background is in education and she's been a special ed teacher, a health educator. A speaker and a trainer, a child advocate in a crisis center, a career development specialist. And now she is being a blessing to many, many people around her by being a professional organizer and an ADHD, decluttering coach.
You probably are starting to put the picture together. She's the Jack of all trades. Right? And she is one of ours. She has ADHD herself. So that's quite, she's probably going to be a life learner. Like most of us are. So I'm very excited that she's here today. Rosemary. Do you mind sharing some of the circumstances around your diagnosis of ADHD?
Rosemary Nichols: Absolutely not and as you, as I explain it, you'll see that it could help someone out there. And why I say that is that my journey to being diagnosed is rather humorous in one respectand the fact that I spent 22 years as a special education teacher in the classroom. And I taught students that had learning disabilities, behavioral issues, developmental delays, and ADHD.
In the beginning of my career, we called it hyperactivity. But as time went on, we called it ADHD without realizing that I had ADHD. And I think part of that story is that along the way, as both a student and then as a teacher, I kind of unconsciously develop these what I, what we call the special ed compensatory strategies that helped me with some of the challenges.
But yeah, I was still plagued with self doubt and frustration when it came to time management procrastination, keeping my home, you know, in good order. And there was always something nagging at me that said, why can't you be with like other people who have their act together? I mean, I must have read countless books on organization and time management, but back then, let me just tell you.
The books that were written were written by people that didn't need help in those areas because it came naturally to them. So it was only after I lost my mother, I was 57 and I was working as a manager in an educational agency that I just couldn't shake the feeling that there must be some reason why I was having such a hard time focusing beside, you know, the normal grief. And so through some reading and exploring, I sought the help of my counselor at the time, and she referred me to a psychiatrist within her practice to discuss this issue of ADHD. And so I taught, I was in the first session with the psychiatrist and he asked me a few questions, but one of his main question was, did you have, a problem or struggle learning how to read when you were a child or reading in general?
And I said, no. And he said, oh, well then you don't probably have ADHD. And I was okay. So he begrudgingly. Agreed to give me some medication to see if it helped, but I just didn't feel comfortable working with somebody who didn't believe that I had ADHD when at that point, my inner voice and my counselor both knew, you know, this is something that makes so many things in my life makes sense. So I got another recommendation from the same counselor for a different psychiatrist who is more holistic in his approach. And that proved to be a better match for me. So I do suggest advocating for yourself because this is my opinion, but I feel like ADHD. is a spectrum just like autism.
And some of us are on one point of that spectrum. And some of us are another point. And just because we're not on an extreme point of the spectrum, first of all, it doesn't mean that we don't have ADHD, but it also means that the issues and challenges don't affect us just as great. And the other thing I do want to add is, I've listened to some of your podcasts and people talk about, you know, especially the idea of female students.
And sometimes we look different than male students have ADHD. So looking back, school career, I didn't get into a lot of problems at school. I do remember in third grade though, being told, being talked to because. Talk too much, which is not a shock to people with ADHD or to my friends, but it was interesting.
So in school, I didn't have a lot of behavior problems, but at home I was always punished for talking back to my parents. And I just look back at that now and say, well, the impulsivity. As someone with ADHD was always there from the time I was little. So that's kind of my journey to, to being diagnosed and to start dealing with how to deal with this.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And how old were you when you got diagnosed? Were you in the middle age or towards, later on or was. It wasn't in childhood, right? You said.
Rosemary Nichols: No, no, no. I was 57 years old.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Oh my God.
Rosemary Nichols: That's what I'm saying. And what I think is I always have a sense of you or the fact that I was a special education teacher and it took me that long.
Now let me just tell you. Maybe about 10 years before that, when I was working in this educational agency and I was surrounded by people, you know, a lot of people that dealt with special education, I would say jokingly, oh yeah, I'm a little ADHD, but it didn't really absorb into me until that issue with losing my mom.
And it just felt more dramatic. And then it was just. Wow. I can't focus many. I should look into that. And then I remember very clearly the day that I was in Barnes and noble with my sister and I had picked up this book and this book about ADHD, it described the different types of personalities. And I looked at the one that sounded like me, and I read it to my sister and she just like.
Their eyes and she's like, yeah, that describes you to a T. So, so I just think everyone's journey is a little different. Do you know what I mean? And my journey of being diagnosed officially late in life. It gives me more empathy for people that again, have been struggling with this without a label and also without the knowledge of how our minds work and how we tick, because that's the beginning.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: I think of dealing with it effectively. Yes. I think you're a hundred percent correct. . And the fact that not until somebody else kind of recognizes it, right? Because like you said, we've been doing what we've been doing for years, and this is the norm for us. Right. And we look around and sometimes our family's a little bit like us.
So we consider that to still be the norm for us. And not until somebody else outside of you can maybe pinpoint something and then you're like, oh, well maybe. And then, like you said, opening that curiosity. And then finally, when you do get the diagnosis, it's understanding how you tick, like you said, because for me, I was sitting in shame.
Like I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to share it with anybody because in my mind it meant I could no longer be perfect student. I could no longer be like the role model that everybody was looking up to because I felt like I couldn't be perfect. Right? And so for some reason, my brain was equating perfect with worthiness, which obviously now I've come to understand that some females and sometimes people with ADHD, like they have this imposter syndrome and they don't realize that their thoughts are not really them, like, it's something in there that is telling them, you're too loud or too slow or too, whatever. But it's not really the truth. It's just an opinion that our brain is there to try to protect us from like messing something up or being fired or whatever. Right. For getting the keys and like locking ourselves out of our house or like something like that.
Like you just said, you tap into curiosity, you start to see, huh? Maybe there's a different way of thinking that I'm having, and it's not necessarily a bad thing that I'm thinking differently. So tell me now that you have the diagnosis, do you feel like it ever impacted your life? Like, do you feel like it impacted your family or your friends around you?
Like, because you had ADHD.
Rosemary Nichols: Yes. Yes. Yes. But also I also will temper that with saying that it I'm sure it still affects anyone who knows me, but to a lesser degree because of my knowledge and my strategies, but yes, chronic lateness. Which has dramatically improved doesn't mean I don't run late sometimes, but I mean, chronic lateness, like, oh yeah, Rosemary.
She's never going to be here on time. Impulsiveness. Sometimes interrupting people when they speak, oh my God. I became so aware of that. It was so ingrained in me. It was like, I felt like I had to add something in at that point, because maybe I wouldn't remember it, or many times it came from a place of supporting the person, like acknowledging them.
Oh yeah. I understand what you're saying. I know what that means. But I really had to really consciously work on listening to people until they finished and then making a comment also at times, not listening as carefully as I could to someone, not because I didn't want to, but because my mind was like, And about all these things.
Like they would say something and my mind would go to a lot of different places. And this is one, the last one I feel definitely, I saw it maybe more as my manager and education, but over committing to projects and events, and then not following through or getting too many things on my plate at the one time, because for those of us, with ADHD, we have a lot of interest and we have a lot of, you know, that's how we, we sort of get excited because like, oh, something new, you know?
 And so I feel like the knowledge of those things, and it came at different points in my life, really supported me working on these. So. I was less affecting those around me in a negative way, but I always say to that, you know, I am like kind of gregarious. I'm a talker. That's going to be who I am. I just need to temper that in a way so that I'm respectful of the people that are around.
So, yeah, definitely it did impact people and you know what my mother passed away, but my God, she would be laughing so hard now. When we would look, if we were looking back at my child to through the lens of ADHD, because she was a bright person, but back then, there really wasn't a lot of knowledge about it and she would go, I know she goes something like, oh my God, that's why you never could.
You know, stop talking and just say, yes, mom, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I had friends, we were a little, what do you call get together with people that grew up in my neighborhood? And I said to this one woman who lived next door to us, I said, oh yeah, I was always being punished, you know, sent to my room. I said, but you know, really?
How often did that happen? A lot. She's like, oh yeah, it happened a lot. Just said, yep. Come over. Can Rosemary come out to play? Nope. She's up in her room. She can't come out. So, it's always humorous to look back at things in retrospect.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So tell me, how did you end up like using your ADHD to help. You know, with this successful business of yours, that now you are helping other people. So, you know, sometimes clutter is an area that is so shameful for us. We, we keep telling ourselves, I should know better. I should be a better blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Either with paper or with stuff that we don't make decisions.
We just have a pile of somewhere, either laundry or different things. And I think you shared at the beginning that it was after your mom passed away, but how are you able to be such a successful coach now with decluttering? Tell us about that.
Rosemary Nichols: You know, I think part of it is I just want to reinforce something that you mentioned too.
I had a lot of shame about the fact that I could kind of go to my job and sort of manage it. It didn't mean that I didn't have struggles, but then I come home and it's like, I'm an intelligent person. Why can't I keep my house neat? Why do I create clutter? You know, it was really, I was never a happy, messy person to, you know, what I'm saying are people that are like that.
They don't mind the mess. It doesn't bother them. They don't feel ashamed of it, but I was never one of those people. But I think part of my journey in this, aspect that we're talking about was after my mother passed away, but then a few years later, my dad passed away. But a few years later after that, my younger sister. I was very, very close to passed away and I was the executress of her estate. So I needed to go through her condo, which was originally my parent's condo. So there was still some remnants of my parents' possessions, but not a lot. I had to go through it, you know, to clear it out and put it on the market and sell it.
And. Oh, my God, she loved to shop. She loved gadgets and she had a lot of stuff like people that knew her and knew that she had a lot of stuff, had no idea how much stuff came out of that. So I really focused on that process and I had help from friends and I have to say at one point I hired a professional organizer for like the last month or two, because.
It was such an emotional, a loss for me that I don't think I would have been able to do it as successfully. If I had my best friend or her best friend helping me, I needed somebody who was compassionate, but they didn't know my sister. So what I say is I went through that process. We, you know, got it on the market.
And then I came back to my point. And I have a three-level condo. And I realized, especially in my basement, which is a combination of an office and a family area TV, and that kind of thing. I had boxes of boxes in this storage area that I didn't see visually. That were just postponed decisions. Like I had many years of caregiving and I don't regret it for a second.
I loved my family and I still love my family, but I just kept putting things to the side. So that's really, that's really when I dug deep and really had to deal with my own inability at times to create the system that worked for me. So why I feel that I can be successful and am successful with the clients that I serve is that first of all, I have experienced some moral different, but some of what they've experienced and I have found success in creating order and beauty and systems that work for me, for me as an individual.
And I think that lays the foundation for trust. An openness to experiment with me to finding the strategies that work for them. And many times it isn't just me saying, try this. It's a collaborative process where we come up with a strategy together. And I also think that my nature. I love to be creative and inventive, and also both as my experience as a special education teacher, but just general.
I love to problem solve. And that really helps me in customizing strategies that work for the clients uniqueness.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So then tell me a little bit about how are clients working with you. Are you going to their house? Are you doing virtual? How have you done it or what are you currently doing? I know the pandemic has obviously caused us all to think very creatively nowadays.
How are you doing your thing?
Rosemary Nichols: Primarily working with people virtually, to be honest, I have over the course of the last year, worked with some close family and friends that are like in my pod type of thing, but I really, you know, it's not just about my safety. It's about other people's safety. And, you know, it's like what they say when one door closes another opens, I'm really finding that when you help somebody virtually it really reinforces them developing the skills and the knowledge to continue to do it when you're not around or when you finish your work with them.
So I actually have been pleasantly surprised with the changes that I've seen people making. And even from, I would say from session to session, do you know what I mean? Starting out with that total overwhelm and where do I begin to seeing the pieces that can get them to where they want to go? So yeah, primarily virtually at the moment I do.
I do want to start developing, some online courses and possibly a podcast, because I feel like that can reach more people than just my one-on-one clients. As you probably know, from the work that you do.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, that's great. You know, I was a teacher myself, even though it was, I guess, for a short time before I went into medical school.
But I feel like as a physician, you're kind of still a teacher you're still kind of still teaching them different things about their health. And now with this coaching program that I have, it's like, you're still kind of a teacher in a way. So that ability, like you said, can help us to connect with different individuals and not, not make it mean anything if they're just think a little bit different than us, because that's like you said, it's a spectrum, right?
So learning how to communicate is so helpful. And then being able to, like you said, you can't do it for them. Like you're there to be a guide or a coach or whatever, but you cannot run the marathon for them. This way, like you said, you're empowering them to create their system based on what their needs are and implementing them.
And then it is a privilege to be able to see our clients or our friends take into account ways to invest in themselves and help if they feel like that's something that is important for them, right. It begins with an intention. So, how do you feel like you're making a difference in the world? I mean, to me, that's obvious you're helping people get empowered, but how do you see this to be something that is front and center?
I think you kind of already shared with me with four, even asked a question about what your goals are and the next year you were talking about setting up courses and stuff.
Rosemary Nichols: Well, you know, I have to say looking back, I don't think when I was younger, I thought of it as consciously, but I am just the type of person that I need to be in service to other people.
I mean, that connects to my work with students and it's not to put down somebody in the business world. That's just working on a specific project. I just need to be of service to people. But I also want to use my creative nature. And I have to say that even when I began as a special education teacher and this was a while ago, so it was a little bit, it was less programmed and prescriptive in the sense that if the principal start looking into your room and he knew that you could control the kids.
They closed the door and you could, you've got the objectives done, but you could be very, very creative. It's a little bit different in education now. So I think that's why it was a good match for me at the time. But really at the moment I specifically feel like how I can help, make a difference is continuing my work, helping and supporting individuals.
Especially women with ADHD to lead better lives, to support them in their decluttering and organizing and setting up an implementing systems so that they can lead their best lives. And with the energy that was previously spent on self criticism and doubt, it can now be focused on their dreams and aspiration.
And as I mentioned, I really have been thinking that, this year I really would like to be able to do. To a larger amount of people. And that might be through, developing some online courses or programs and maybe even creating a podcast like you have.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And I mean, now you're already coaching my group, right?
Like you're one of my guests coaches. So you already part of a group and you're already obviously doing a really good job at leading the class. Now, can you tell us a little bit. About the, the clutter bugs. I know it, that's probably going to take a whole thing and itself. Can you just give us like a minute explanation of what that means and like how that is just one more way of triggering your personality type, right.
Rosemary Nichols: And, what it is is what, uh, Dan is referring to. Is there as a professional organizer, one of my favorites, whose name is Cass. Her website is clutter bug dot, I think M E that's how it is. When I got exposed to her, I was so refreshed by the fact that she differentiated between people that look at organization in different ways, because maybe from my background as a special education teacher, I mean, one size does not fit all.
So she created this system, which is kind of adorable. It's called clutter bugs and there are four different types of clutter bugs. There is a butterfly. Butterfly is somebody who likes in their environments, visual abundance, but organizational simplicity, there is a lady bug and that is someone who likes visual simplicity.
They like things hidden. They don't want to see everything out and they also want organizational simplicity. They don't want complicated system. Then there's also a bee and that is the person. To make a generalization. It could be the person who looks like they are naturally organized. They have visual abundance and they have lots of detail in their organization.
And then there's the cricket and that's the person who they liked the visual simplicity. But within that, they like the organizational abundance like, they want things maybe hidden from site, but within that, they want a very detailed approach. So what I do with my clients is I have them take the quiz, which is on her website.
It's like a five minute quiz. And to me, it's just a starting point. It's not like, I don't think any system is black and white and everyone doesn't fit into one bucket perfectly, but it just gives me an idea of. Kind of the way their mind works related to organization. That's why I think some of the approaches that just take a sort of single approach don't necessarily work because unless you're that type of person who wants that type of organization, you're going to try to make yourself into that kind of person or force yourself into systems that are just not going to work for you.
Yeah. So, yeah, and I just also feel like for myself, I'm a quote butterfly, but there are areas like with my paper and maybe it's because I'm an educator, I'm information is important to me. I like a more detailed system. There were in other areas. I just want a simpler system. So we were, this is a starting point that we work from.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. And so that's really good that, you know, you're able to go do a whole class on that and then explain to each person how their stuff might be different from the, like their way of organizing is different from their children's or their significant other or their partner. Right. And so that's why sometimes we get into ourselves into trouble because in your mind you want to organize it one way and then their mind, they want to do it another, and then y'all can sometimes clash.
And that's where it's so beautiful when you come in and you're like, well, duh, he's not trying to sabotage you. That's just the way his brain thinks. Right. It's so good with that.. Rosemary. Well, I am so glad that you came today. Can you tell us how it, where people can find you?
Rosemary Nichols: Sure they can go to my website, which is Rosemarynichols.com. And that's spelled R O S E M a R Y N I C H O L s.com. Or they can email me and it's very simply rosemary@rosemarynichols.com.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Thank you so much. Now, if you could give us just one takeaway point or one thing that you want people to like walk away with today, what would it be?
Rosemary Nichols: It would be that to ask for help or support is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.
And understanding your ADHD and how it affects you is the first step to creating a life that truly works for you. And again, I am so passionate about practicing self-compassion because it will make this journey as someone with ADHD so much easier and so much joyful and more, I mean, more having more joy in the.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Well, I think you stated it beautifully having self-compassion and choosing joy instead of overwhelm is the key. Right? And like you said, asking for help because your sown of genius. Might not be somebody else's zone of genius and vice versa. So why not use each other's gifts to make sure that, you know, the universe supports you, right.
Why not? Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for coming. I know time is your most valuable asset and I am very humbled that you decided to invest your time in us and all our students who are wanting to be less cluttered.
Rosemary Nichols: So, well, I just wanted to say, Diana, it was a pleasure talking to you this afternoon, and I greatly admire the work that you're doing as a physician on the frontline, in the pandemic, but also.
As a coach and a mentor to physicians who have ADHD, because so many of us look at ourselves as we're functioning professionals, why can't certain areas of our life work for us. And I say it from the bottom of my heart, but knowing you. Continually inspires me. So thanks so much. I really appreciate.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you. Well, they say you are the average of your five people, so your network really gives you your net worth and you know, you've been, you helped me declutter my house. So I had to bring people and share my goods with them too. Right. So. All right. Well, thank you so much again.
Rosemary Nichols: Thanks so much, Diana. Have a great day. Thanks so much for this time.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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.
 
Ways to connect with Rosemary Nichols:
W: rosemarynichols.com
E: rosemary@rosemarynichols.com

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.
𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐆𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 & 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙍𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙏𝙍𝘼𝙉𝙎𝙁𝙊𝙍𝙈𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝙏𝙊𝘿𝘼𝙔!
📩  overachievewithadhd@gmail.com
🌐  adhd-lifecoach.com

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 12: Lara Hochman, MD (Family Medicine Physician, Founder of Happy Day Health)

Dr. Lara Hochman: Most of us in medicine are perfectionist. Something I see all the time is doctors get stuck on making the right decision when. You can't really make the right decision. You make a decision and then you make it right. But you got to know that you're not going to make the right decision every time. If it's not the right decision.
That's okay. We tend to feel stuck in our jobs in medicine, and you're not stuck. You can absolutely make a change.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
Hello? Hello. So excited today. I have an amazing friend and an amazing physician. I want to introduce her.
Her name is Dr. Laura Hochman. She is a family medicine physician, and she's an advocate for fellow doctors wellbeing. Of course, this burnout and dissatisfaction has taken a toll and she's here to save the day. She founded Happy Day Health, , a physician recruiting agency to match doctors with well run private practices where they can enjoy practicing medicine again.
And so it's such a great treat to have somebody who is looking out for our well being and more importantly, helping us get a job that fits our environment, but please tell me, how did you get into this? How did you decide this was what you were going to be doing? It seems like a big adventure.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Yeah, it's certainly a big adventure. Yeah. And thanks for having me on today. You know, I essentially fell into this job, or into this business. I was helping friends find practices where they'd be happy. They were burned out. I was doing it anyway on the side, just for fun. And I was helping friends who had practices find doctors because they could not find a doctor to join them.
I already had the thought of, I want to do something to help physicians. I can obviously see with my own eyes what's going on in medicine, and I want it to be a part of the solution. And so in doing what I was doing anyway, that's when I realized that I can make a huge impact by helping doctors find places that they're a better fit.
And, rather than trying to fit a. Peg into a square hole, it's find to fit the peg into a pink shaped hole. So, and so that's how I got started. I realized that I could make a big difference and you know, there's a lot that needs to be done and this is the way that I can play my part in us taking back minute.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's an amazing thing that you saw the need and you realize that this is what you enjoy doing anyways. So why not make it official? And everybody wins, right? Like private clinic, we'll get an amazing doctor. And the doctor knows that this is what they want because you, yourself being a physician, you are.
Gonna be trying to make a quick buck and just placing somebody somewhere, but you understand the ins and outs. So you have that deeper understanding that other people don't sometimes.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Yeah. Being a doctor. I totally get it. And, one of the things that makes us unique as a profession is that we go into medicine because we care and we want to help people.
And, I mean, I absolutely bring that into this business because that's who I am.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So tell me, I'm sure there are some residents that are listening or even some medical students, or even some attendings that are already have a job, or maybe they're in between jobs. What would you tell them, how can one choose a job or how can they decide what they should do now that you know, there are that stage.
Dr. Lara Hochman: There's so many things to do. You know, the first thing to know most of us in medicine are perfectionist. And so something I see all the time is, doctors get stuck on making the right decision when. You can't really make the right decision. You make a decision and then you make it right. And you want to make the decision that's best for you, but you got to know that you're not going to make the right decision every time.
And so if it's not the right decision, that's okay. We tend to feel stuck in our jobs in medicine, and you're not stuck. You can absolutely make a change, but there, you know, there's so much to do. I would say if you're a medical student or just starting out your residency, or even if you're an attending and you're not ready to leave your job, the first thing to do is just.
Notice what you're good at notice what you're really good at notice what you're not so good at and really take note of those things, because that will absolutely play into what kind of job you should be looking for, what kind of job you would enjoy and what you absolutely want to avoid.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: People with ADHD sometimes tend to think outside the box. We sometimes tend to spend a little bit extra time with our patients because we don't have that time awareness sometimes. But at the same time, we're willing to be, you know, run diabetic groups or we're willing to do something else that's a little bit different or procedures or different things, right.
Like you just said to. Inventory of what your strengths are and what you want to do or not do, or if you want to do research or if you want whatever you're wanting to do, or definitely not do, like if you don't want to be on call, you know, then knowing, okay, that environment is not, or that job maybe is not the best fit.
And like what you just said about making decisions. That's the fastest way for us to move ahead. Like you said, because, not making a decision is still a decision that you made. Right. And so, we, we want to forecast innate at times because we're like, whoa, what if I messed it up? But what if there's no wrong?
Right. You just now have more data when you make the decision. Right. And like you said, then you make the decision, right. Either you signed a year contract and you go forth and conquer or you decide, yeah, this is not the right environment. And then you call Dr. Hoffman and she helps you out. Right?
Dr. Lara Hochman: Exactly. I mean, you know, like you said, there's so many things that, that doctors can do with ADHD. It can be a superpower. So, you know, don't, don't get stuck doing something you hate and that you won't thrive in find those things that you'll be great at. And more than likely. There's tons of doctors who don't want to do those things.
If it's business development or hiring or setting policies. Your ADHD can be an absolute superpower with the hyper-focusing and being able to get excited about all the different things and making something boring into something interesting. You know, that's thinking outside of the box is what we need in medicine.
So we really need more of these innovative things.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Can you tell me a little bit, I know you've worked with so many amazing clients and I know you've been able to help them find the right environment for them. Like what have you noticed when you're working with clients that have ADHD? What kind of environment do they tend to thrive in?
Have you noticed any patterns?
Dr. Lara Hochman: Yeah, so,, with ADHD, you know, there's that distraction. Issue where you get distracted very easily and evolutionarily. It's been very beneficial and we've, we've selected. We've selected out for that because if there's a tiger running for you want to be distracted and run from the tiger.
So there's certainly benefits to that, but you want to make sure to maximize that. So. You know, in the back office, if there's one big office with lots of doctors, lots of nurses, medical assistants, back office staff on serving patients questions and calling patients with lab results. And people bombarding you with questions all day and prior authorization is being done and, you know, nobody can focus in that environment and, and especially if you have ADHD, so.
Typically, you know, if you have ADHD, you'll do better if you have your own office or if you're away from a window, and if those things aren't necessarily possible, what accommodations can you make? You know, without necessarily making accommodation. So is it that you need sound canceling headphones?
Do you need to set better boundaries where your medical assistants, if they have questions, they don't come ask you every time they have a question, they batch those questions and every day at 1:00 PM, before you, while someone else is rooming your patient, that's when they come to you with that batch of questions.
And so rather getting a scheduled, scheduling it into your schedule is far better than the constant distractions. So part of it is, is this practice better set up for you? Do you absolutely need a scribe? Do you need someone like Dr. Diana to help you with, with how to manage your ADHD, um, in, in a practice setting?
 Or is it. Not the right environment for you at all. And is this perhaps not the right practice for you?
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, you're so right. You know, whether you have ADHD or not, we all get distracted. With distractions, right? If somebody is knocking at your door, which they, they would, for me, they would knock on my door as I'm seeing a patient and they will pull me out so that I could sign like a referral or I could sign like physical therapy order or something like that was obviously not an emergency.
That would distract me. And then you go back into the room and guess what? Your patient has five additional questions. When you thought you were about to close the encounter, right? Like you just said, learning to set boundaries from a place of like, no, I made this decisions ahead of time. Do not distract me.
Unless, literally the, the window is like on fire and the whole building is on fire and then I can't escape then come distract me. Right. But other than that, send me a text and I will get to you at certain time. Right. If it's not urgent and having that understanding of how your brain works, that if you have some boundaries, like if you already said, okay, we're not going to take every walking patient, like we're going to, set up some urgent care appointments, sort of say like shorter 10 minute appointments at the beginning or at the end of the day, or we're not going to see like double books, because then I don't need understanding if that environment is feasible. If they respect what you're asking them to do. Like you're not asking them for anything other than a lunch. Right?
And sometimes. It doesn't seem like you have that environment and it could be very different. Like I know when I was at my first job and that's another thing that's important to point out that sometimes your first job is not always going to be your last job, right. Sometimes it's just, you're there for a year or two, and then you learn what you like, or don't like, And then you can move on to another job.
And it's not just about the money. We all know that because it's how they treat you. Right. If they respect your opinion, if they give you your boundaries, if they give you your vacation, what kind of benefits you have? I know in my first job that I had. They had amazing maternity leave. Like you could be out three months, like paid and then you could be half paid for additional three months, which I, like, I had never heard of something like that.
Of course, when I came to my current job, they didn't even have like anything. Like it was, you get FMLA and that's it. Like you are not going to get paid, but of course I was able to negotiate and that's something that is important to know that sometimes. You can negotiate things that are not necessarily in the contract.
If it's something that. Important for you. For me, I didn't have kids at that point. And it was very important for me to have three months paid off. Now I didn't get three months paid off, but I got eight weeks paid off. And then I could use my four weeks of my own sick time, which win-win, you know, I was still going to take it, but why not take it paid right?
The point is that again, you have to understand. Your environment. And like, I was able to tell them up front, like sometimes you're not even supposed to be talking about that. If you're going to get pregnant or if you're pregnant or whatever. But to me that was so important and I told them, Hey, listen, I am going to get pregnant at some point.
And I want time off paid off. And so they gave me a one-time deal, but of course, then the second one came around and they came and they offered it to me without me asking. And so that's amazing that type of environment. Cause I, assumed we already had a contract, then that's what it was. But again, an environment, when I finally got pregnant, they send me flowers and they're like, congratulations, you're pregnant. Right. Which doesn't happen in some jobs. Right? Like in other jobs, you're just like one of 200 doctors. And even though you want to change or provide a way to change, you're easily replaceable and it doesn't matter what you say.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Absolutely. Yeah. And you bring up so many good points in there, you know, you don't want to be one of 200 doctors because then you may not have those opportunities to use your strengths strengths. And as far as finding a new job goes always negotiate. But before you even get to that point, you want to think about what are your deal breakers?
So if a fully paid maternity leave is a. Is an absolute must. Private practice may not be the best option for you because you don't have the entire hospital system to support your maternity leave versus in a small private practice. If it's you and one or two other doctors, that's not really financial feasible.
 So you really need to weigh the pros and cons of each, you know, how important is a paid maternity leave versus how important is an office. That'll send you flowers and, and that's like a family, you know, there's so many amazing private practices where they function essentially as a family.
And you can get that. In some hospital-based clinics. But it's certainly a lot more common, in private practice because everyone's invested in the practice for sure.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And yeah. And of course, I asked I was still going to assign, regardless whether they said yes or no. Right. But you don't lose anything by asking.
Right. And so that's a thing. And even if they would have said, no, we're not paying, I still wanted to make sure I could take the three months off. Right. So like those sorts of questions. To ask and, and you don't know what they're going to say until you ask, so don't tell yourself no, right? Like that's the no, no, like don't just assume things because that's the fastest way to make an asset a you and me assume that's what it spells out.
So just ask and, and then if it's not meant to be no worries, but at least you asked right.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Exactly and that's something that was kind of beaten out of us in medical school is asking for what's important to us. And that's so important because if you don't ask you, the answer is definitely no, it may still be no, but it may be a yes. So definitely ask.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Let me ask you a question. Like, what else should they be thinking about? Should they be like looking at if they have 401ks or if they give three weeks vacation, four weeks vacation CME, what other benefits should somebody be looking for?
Dr. Lara Hochman: You want to look at, so certainly paid time-off, that's an absolute must. You need to decide how much is good for you. I had one candidate that I was speaking with, who she went to go visit her family in Canada at least once a month. And so needed a minimum of one Friday off a month. But didn't want to use up all her PTO doing that. So that was something important to her.
And she was able to negotiate that in addition to her paid time off. So that's really important. Non-compete is something that's an absolute must that you have to look at. So I've seen. Non-competes that are very fair. The most fair I've seen as you have. I don't remember how many miles it was. 10, 15 miles.
Non-compete for your first two years of employment. And after that, there's no, non-compete, I've seen non-competes that are absolutely outrageous 30 mile non-competes or, you know, something. It's closed systems here where I live have a non-compete that's 10, 20 miles from every single one of their locations.
And the locations span most of the big cities in the state and I'm in Texas. So that's a fairly large,
yeah.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: You almost have to move out of state or be ready for lawsuits. Right?
Dr. Lara Hochman: Exactly. And so even though it's technically not enforceable, the hospital can still come off to you and fight you for that many years.
Essentially enforcing the non-compete. So you really, really want to take a close look at that and keep in mind, you know, I don't love non-competes and I, I do see them essentially as a little bit of a bully tactic, but that's really when it's unfair. To either one of the parties from the practice standpoint, every practice I speak with is afraid that the person that they pick the doctor, they choose will open up shop next door.
So you really want to see it from both parties. What's fair. What's not fair. Is it, you know, five miles, 10 miles. Those tend to be more fair. Of course it depends where you are. Is it 30 miles. That's not fair. That's not fair at all. So, and sometimes what I'll see is candidates think, well, if I were to leave this job, then I'll probably just move back home.
But a lot can happen in a few years. You can, you can get married. You can. Get divorced, you know, so much can happen. That can tie you to a city. You can fall in love with the city and never want to leave. So if you have a non-compete, that's preventing you from working in your city, that's not. Okay. So, you know, take a very close look at the non-compete other great things to look at our benefits like health insurance. Dental vision, all of those things, but don't only look at what the practice is providing. Also take a look at what can you get on your own, because you may be able to actually get a job that pays great and pay, pay for your health insurance on your own, on the side, which is very expensive, but you don't want that to be the reason you don't take a job that you love.
You may, this job may pay. $1,500 a month more and your health insurance costs $1,500 and that may even be tax deductible actually. So, you know, there's, there's things you can do as far as that goes, be flexible and really think about it from all aspects as well. Other things to look at. So we have non-compete salary, the hospitals are able to usually, provide a higher salary because they're also making money off of the tests that you order, the referrals that you make. All of the other things that you're doing in addition to just seeing patients. So is salary the number one, absolutely most important thing. ' And you're Okay with taking whatever may come with that versus the you're OK with taking a little bit of a salary cut in a position that's better suited for you. And some people love hospital-based practices and they love academics because with that comes, research, it comes, you know, all sorts of really cool opportunities.
But for a lot of people who want to get in there and see patients and spend time with patients. Private practice may be a better, better fit for you. So take a look at all of those aspects and really think through what the caveat being like we said earlier, where you are now does not have to be where you are 40 years from now.
It would be wonderful. And that is what we all aspire to is to be in a job that we love and never need to change, but life happens and things.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So curious, what do you think you're then it'd be up to in the next year or two? What are your goals? What are some fun things that you can't wait to get yourself or continue to do
Dr. Lara Hochman: My goals for this coming year? You know, I, I have a goal of I'd love to place at least two doctors a month. Business-wise this year is I just want to hear back from doctors about how I'm helping them, whether it's placing them in a job or maybe even something they learned from a podcast that I listened to. But that's one of my big goals is being able to make an impact, being able to spread the word that we don't need to settle.
We don't need to be unhappy and we're not trapped. That's something that I feel. A lot of us feel as retract and there's no way out and there's no way to go. So my hope for this year is to spread that message. You're not trapped. There are options. Fun things I'm doing. I have a trip planned in April to go to the EntreMD conference, that'll be super fun. Right?
 I get to see classmates and, Dr. Una who inspire me and who pushed me to do greater things every day. And I love watching everyone's progress and seeing what they're doing. I right now at the time of this recording, when the middle of the Omicron surge. So I took a break from exercise.
 I take gymnastics classes and not doing it is just killing me inside. So couldn't wait to get back to gymnastics. I'd love to be able to do a press handstand this year. It's been my goal every year for four years. So
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Are you getting closer?
Dr. Lara Hochman: Maybe this is the year. So this year I hope to really just thrive and, you know, become a better business woman, become a better parent and do that. Gosh, darn press handstand.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: I am so gonna root for you when this happens. And even while you're trying, because let's face it, it's who we're becoming right along the way, getting those goals met.
Right. So. Where can the listeners get in touch with you so they can learn about all the great stuff you're doing and maybe you could help change their life as well.
Dr. Lara Hochman: There's a few places you can find me. I'm on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn name is Laura Hochman MD. You're welcome friend me or connect with me and message me there.
You can go to my website. There's a contact form on there that you can reach out to me. It goes directly to me that is www. happydayhealth.co. It is not.com and I'm on Tik TOK and Instagram. My names, there are happydaymd
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome! If you could leave us with one thing, what would be the take away point that you would want us to have?
Dr. Lara Hochman: I would say having ADHD does not need to be a liability. It does not need to get in the way. Who you are. Don't see it as a bad thing. It can absolutely be harnessed to be an asset. So use that and learn how to really harness your superpower. It can create great things, the best entrepreneurs. Art have ADHD because they're able to harness their creative thinking and their risk-taking abilities. And so it's a superpower. Use it.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you so much. That's such an amazing way of pointing that out. Now I have to ask because everybody's going to probably be like, oh my God, I love her accent. Tell me. Tell us where's this accent from,
Dr. Lara Hochman: I was born and raised in South Africa.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Amazing, and now you said you're in Texas, huh?
Dr. Lara Hochman: Yee-huh!!!
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: I am so glad to have you as my friend and as my classmate and everybody, please reach out to her. She as, you can see has your best interests at heart, and she can help you get placed in an environment that's going to help you thrive. So don't waste this opportunity. She might just change your life.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Yes. Please reach out. Don't ever hesitate at all. I'm here. I answer all of my emails, I answer all my messages and I would love to hear from you.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you again so much for sharing your wisdom with us today and your time. Because to me, time is the most valuable asset that we have. So I am so privileged that you shared that gift with me today.
Dr. Lara Hochman: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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.
 
Guest Speaker:
Dr. Lara Hochman MD
Website: Happydayhealth.co.or https://larahochman.weebly.com/
Linked In: Lara Hochman,MD
Instagram: @happydaymd
Tiktok: @happydayMD

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 11

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: If I only had 24 hours to live, how would I live? What would I do? What things would I take off my plate? Who would you call? What would you eat? Where would you go? What would you not do anymore?
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 or three and four years ago. And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovering ADHD coaching and that 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. The secret learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their sown of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back, like I have.
So another topic that I was asked about was how do you have an  unlimited time?
I always see you doing this, doing that, doing that. I don't know how you do everything. What's your secret? The thing is there's no secret. I mean, I used to be somebody who always had like, oh my God, not enough time always had like 90, a hundred projects that were all uncompleted. And I always felt like. My worth was tied to my productivity.
And if I wasn't productive enough, I wasn't worthy enough. And it was just some shennanigans that was happening. So those types of thoughts are not very helpful. But what I have learned is that there are certain things that will create more time and there's certain things that will deplete your time.
And so having an abundance of time is really. Your thoughts about it in the night? I know it sounds weird, but really when you, you start to understand what coaching is, coaching is understanding that there are certain things that can happen in the world, regardless of what we do. And it's always how you react to that thing that it happened that gets you to your.
Outcome. Right. So most of us do what we do because of a fee. Like we either get married, we go to medical school, we go to law school, you know, get a job, buy a new house, buy a new purse because of the feeling that oh, having that my make me feel more happy or will make me feel like I've arrived or make me feel like accomplish the thing is.
We always feel like there's not enough time. There's always this question of how, can I fit everything in how, how, how, how I'm always so overwhelmed if you're thinking that. There's not enough time. Like if your thought is time, like that's the fact that everybody would put in their thoughts, time is there.
And if you're thinking I don't have enough time, you're obviously going to feel very stressed and overwhelmed and you're going to feel like life is just not. You might feel like there's a pressure on your chest. You might feel conflicted. You might feel like a lump on your throat. And the actions that you might take is delaying things like putting things off or doing other things that are not as important as to stuff that you needed to do.
Like we are professional buffers, meaning where we might start cleaning the house. And we might start doing laundry or making phone calls instead of the actual things that are more important that could save you time. Like if you just paid, let's say, your daycare fee or your tuition fee or your motrgage or different things like that, there are certain things that we need to do firsthand and we don't do because they seem a little bit complicated.
Like maybe the taxes, right. Tax season is coming up. When we are doing other things we're buffering because we're thinking, oh, I'm too stressed. I'm too stressed. I'm stressed. I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time to eat right. I don't have time to sleep. I don't have time to, you know, sit down and read a book with my kids.
I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't have time. Then the results ends up being that you give all your power away. Like you just let life happen to you. Instead of you realizing that you get to decide what is important, what should have your attention? You get to decide how you handle time. If you're more intentional, and if you had a different thought, like I have plenty of time, or time is abundance.
Oh, you have, you're like me, you have no time awareness sometimes. So whether it's one minute or five minutes, they feel the same to me, which is wonderful when you're my patient in my room, because a time stands still. And. The only thing that's in front of me. And you're the only thing. That's the most precious thing in that moment in time, but it's not so great when you're the one waiting to see me when I've taken so long with that other patient.
Again, the thought, the thought, the thought is what's going to get you to how you're feeling. So you're thinking I have plenty of time. Then you feel like content, you feel happy, you feel alive, you feel limitless, right. You then decide that you focus on what's the most important and you execute. And then the result is you feel like you have an endless, endless amount of time. .
So with that being said, like, I want to share some things with you of ways that I have learned that are sometimes we're not really so easy for me to learn, but they have definitely shown me that when life just keeps happening, right. When you make decisions ahead of time, that helps. Things that will make you have more time is making decisions.
A lot of us don't want to make decisions. Sometimes we don't trust ourselves that like, maybe your taste is not as good, or like, let's say you're building a house and you're like, oh, I don't want to make that decision. That's too much of a decision. Let me just wait for my husband or let me wait for my friend.
Or let me ask what they think about the color or what they think about the cabinets. The thing is it's going to be your house. So why don't you decide what you want, make a decision. That decision is going to move you forward. You're going to move on to the next step. Don't get overwhelmed that there's so many decisions to make.
What have you make the wrong one? Like that's what your brain is going to tell. But I truly believe that everybody, when they make a decision, they're doing it from a place of how can I make this simple and easier for myself in the long run? Like nobody wakes up and says, oh, how can I make this so complicated today?
So that the rest of the day I spin out and I try to figure out how to undo all this mess that I just did. Right. And nobody wakes up thinking that. So honor yourself, make a plan, make a decision, trust your gut, trust yourself, and know that sometimes we might not get what we want, but the universe will give us what we need.
And sometimes what we need is better than what we even wanted. It, we didn't even realize that constraints. Just say no to things that are not for you. And, and I know we all tend to be people pleasers and some of us are a little bit better than others, but when we decide that you have the right answer and you've had the right answer all along, it's just different.
You learn to say, no, you learn to say. No, two things that don't like belong with you, and that causes you to feel like you got your own back and you trust yourself. So creating time is important from the decisions that you make. Sometimes failing, failing royally is important. It's still creates time because now you know that that didn't work out and now you can make the next big decision.
And now you can move on instead of sitting there and indecision and confusion and regret and and judging yourself, all those things, they don't give you more time. They take away time. It's silly how sometimes we will think about how to do something for long, long, long. Like when I was shopping for a house, like sometimes those type of purchases, obviously you have to be a little bit more give and take and you have to take your time examining like where it is in what neighborhood. What school, your kids might go to, it might take a little bit more time to make a decision, but other decisions such as like, what food am I going to eat today? What am I going to wear today? Like all those are decisions that you should make them quickly and move along because. You don't have time to dwell on all of that.
Let me tell you, I used to be somebody who wake up and be like, okay, what do I feel like eating today? And like the whole day was consumed with the thought, like, what am I eating? What am I not eating? And it was just, it was just a hot mess. And so when I decided last year that I was ready to lose weight and I've been able to lose 20 pounds, I decided I was going to make as many questions.
And answers beforehand. And I decided I was going to try to make things simple. So for, for a while, I would bring like a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly to the clinic. And that was going to be my breakfast every day. I had decided. I had made five decisions already. I didn't have to think every single morning, what am I going to have for breakfast?
I already decided ahead of time. And then for lunch, I was lucky enough where I could go to work. And in my work, we can go to the cafeteria. So on Monday, I would just see what menu was there. And I would just write it all. I would check, check, check, check, check, check boxes. I wouldn't remember what I checked, but I had made the decisions.
Right. And then at home, my husband and I like on a Sunday would figure out what I needed to order on Instacart so that they can come and bring me the goods so that he could cook for the evenings. And sometimes he would cook. One day and then we would have extra food, like leftover for the rest of the days and stuff like that.
So anytime that you make decisions ahead of time, you're using a part of the brain that is called a prefrontal cortex, which lets you be conscious and objective with the way. Things can go and it could be easier and smoother for you. So that's going to create a lot of time because if you think about it, instead of me trying to make 20 meals in a week, all of a sudden I just, I didn't have to.
It was quick, right? Not judging yourself or sometimes going through the drive-through or sometimes a reheating stuff, or sometimes. Doing things your own way is it's still very valid. Like you need to make sure you meet yourself where you are and that you stopped doing things that you think you should be doing because somebody else told you because whatever and, and do it your way.
Because when you start to do things that aligned with you, That are your intention that you're living out your values. All of a sudden it becomes so much easier to say no to the things that are just not really aligned with you. And, don't get me wrong. It's human nature to want to fit in because we want to be, you know, in a community where we're all accepted and everything is peachy.
Right. Our brain is going to tell us that if we don't come form, if we don't do exactly what everybody else is doing, we're doing it wrong, but that's not the case. Like everybody has a way of doing things. And so we just got to make sure that we trust herself enough and that we do things from a perspective of, of just wanting to be ourselves. Right. And so it's so important that you stop pretending that you don't have enough time. If you were to get in a car accident today, if you were to get a phone call today that your kid was, on the playground and passed out or whatever you would drop, everything you would find time for, what is the most important thing with the pandemic, it has really gotten me to think if I only had 24 hours to live, how would I live? What would I do? What things would I take off my plate? And you got to think that way, like who would you call? What would you eat? Where would you go? What would you not do anymore? Ask yourself those questions. If I had 24 hours to live, what would I do?
Well, what have I had a week? What have I had a month? What if I had a year? What if I had five years? It doesn't have to be hard. Don't complicate it. What do you really want? What is really important? Is it important that you pick up your kid every day and spend time with them reading? Is it important that you went for a walk?
Is it important that you started to learn how to play the guitar? Is it important that you went for a massage? Is it important that you talk to your. Is it important that you had dinner with a friend? Is it important that you had a date night with your spouse? What is important only, you know, so stop pretending like you're confused and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you don't have enough time plus excuses. It's time to stop making excuses and start living the life that you want to live.
As someone who understands that time is our most valuable asset. I am so honored that you have shared your time with me. Please click the subscribe button and join my Facebook group Beyond ADHD Physician's Perspective so that you never missed 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.

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 10: Procrastination

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So today I want to talk about a question that I get all the time from my clients. And it's a question that was also always on my mind.
Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, A Pysician'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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
I would constantly ask myself, how can I just stop procrastinating? What is it that other people are doing? That they just do what they need to do and they don't think about it twice. And why can't I do that? I would ask myself what's wrong with myself. I don't understand why I have all this best intentions and they just never happened.
I had to get a lot of coaching on it myself, and really I had to do some reflection and I had to come to understand that sometimes we are not really procrastinating. Like sometimes we are just not having the right class. We think we want to do something, but we're not even sure of what that is. And so it's really hard to do something when you don't even know what you're trying to do.
I know it sounds silly. Listen, what I mean, when we are going to go somewhere, if we decide we're going to go to the store, we made that decision, right? Like we said, we're going to the store to go get X, Y, and Z. If we're already been to that store before, we might not have to look up the directions or anything like that.
But if we never been to that place, it would make sense that we would slow down enough to put the address in our GPS so that we can actually arrive to the destination that we want. However, most of us don't think that way. Sometimes we don't want to get off the spinning wheel because we feel like it's going to slow us down.
We feel like we have hit momentum and we need to keep going. But sometimes when you slow down enough, you get clarity. And so if you're putting off something that you have told yourself, you want it to be. For example, let's say as we're now in the new year, right? Like let's say, you've always had this intention of wanting to lose weight or of wanting to start to exercise.
If you are not clear on a lie, you want to do that and how you want to do that, then it's not really going to happen. And you're going to feel like, again, you're procrastinating. The one thing that you told yourself you would do. The lack of clarity. I keep going back to that when a task is too big or the task is too boring, it just feels like it paralyzes us.
It feels like too much work who wants to do so much work thing is people with ADHD. We're not afraid of hard work. Don't get me wrong. If that thing is motivating enough for us, we will do it. And we were burned ourselves out doing it because we're so excited about it. So it's so important to check yourself when you think you're procrastinating on something like, again, losing the weight, ask yourself, do I really know what I want?
Is the goal to lose five pounds or is the goal to be able to walk up the stairs or is the goal to fit on a specific size of clothes? Having that clarity just right there could help you take the next steps. So if it is that I, you just want to get more healthy that you don't want to be short of breath as you're going up the stairs, then deciding.
That I am going to start to exercise. What am I going to do? I'm going to walk. 10 minutes a day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and it's going to be at the park and I'm going to bring my music. And I'm going to listen to a podcast as I'm doing that. If you're that clear on what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it because you don't want to be short of.
Then it's a lot easier for you to stop putting off the things that you kept telling yourself you were going to do. So you have to put it on your calendar because people with ADHD, you already know it's only two types of time now and not now. And so if it's not on your calendar somewhere, it is just not going to happen.
So you gotta make sure that you prioritize this. If this is something that is truly important for you and that. The next question is that sounds simple. Right. But the next question really is one that is so important that you ask yourself, is this really important? Like this task that I've been putting off, is it important?
Can it be done today or can it be done by somebody else or, or should I just let it go? That it's not the right time to do? Why wouldn't it be the right time? We are so used to doing things sometimes because we feel like society has, um, this expectation of us to do it, but we don't realize. Sometimes we didn't even rest.
Right. We haven't slept. We have been, uh, taking a shower. We haven't had a day off from work. It's been three months and you haven't had a day off yet and your kids were sick and you had COVID, you don't realize that your body is not trying to be a rebel. Your body's just tired. There is not, it's not just procrastination.
Like you really have to check your. Is this the right time for me to be doing this? How are things in my energy field? Did I sleep last night? Did I eat, you know, on my frustrated about something else? That is a live situation that happened, right? Life happens. We're not robots. We're not meant to just keep going, going, going, going, just like the battery in the car that needs to get charged black, the gasoline in the tank that needs to happen for the car to keep going.
You two need to rest you two need to refill that energies. And so whether it's spiritually, whether it's by exercise, whether it's nutrition, whether it's by singing a Nancy, like you need to refurnish your cup, it goes back to the same thing. Was I being like unmotivated or was I procrastinating on something that I wanted to do?
Is that a character? I'm not trying to give you more excuses. Cause believe me, we all make those. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to have at least some awareness that sometimes your body's doing what it's meant to do. It's pushing off things that are not considered an emergent type of thing. And it's trying to give you the, a warning that you need to rest, that you need to take care of yourself first so that you can help care of others.
So, if you really want to stop procrastinating, you need to get clear. You need to know what your intentions are for that day. How are you going to accomplish it? Ask yourself, do I have everything that I need to do that task that I want to do? So if you decided you were going to exercise. Do you have the sports bar?
Ready? Do you have your water bottle ready? Do you have your tennis shoes? Ready? Do you have everything that you need to accomplish? The tasks that you were set out? If let's say you have to stay for your board exams, do you have your question back with you? Do you have your journals? You were going to do.
Do you have a babysitter who's actually taking care of your kids so that you can study. Did you block off time? So there, you're not trying to see patients in between. I know it sounds silly, but you need to do the basics. You need to make sure you have the tools that you need, that you're in the correct environment that you need.
And that when the time comes, you just do it. Don't second. Guess yourself, do it. And then re-enact. Hey, what worked well? What didn't work? Well, what can I use going forward? And then ask yourself, have I really taken care of myself? Did I sleep? Did I eat, did I, did I ask for help? Because asking for help is a big strength.
A lot of us want to think that we're just going to do things on our own. No, you need to ask for help. Nobody. Nobody is their own island. I hope you take some tips to. I hope that what you can come away with today is that your mindset is everything. If you are feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling like you're not enough, ask yourself, why am I having these thoughts?
Is my brain trying to protect me from something? Did I even eat? Did I sleep? What's going on? Just ask yourself. You cannot be in your head and be a detective at the same time. Take care of yourself, take care of each other and nature. You reframe the question. If you are brain asks you, how can I stop procrastinating?
Ask yourself, am I really procrastinating? Is this something that I want to do or not? Am I trying to eat the whole elephant at once? You need to take a bite size of that elephant and eventually. You will, you will take care of it and make sure that you ask yourself, what is the one thing I can do to move forward.
If this is a project that I am really trying to do and who can I ask for help? Because remember everybody has their own sown of genius. I would go to a specialist if I needed some. So that's how you should see it. What DIA, can you ask? What friend can you ask? What neighbor can you ask? Because everybody has their own sown of genius.
You have to tap into that so that you too can get the answers that. They're all there. The universe is waiting to give them to you just have to be willing to ask the right one,
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.
 

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 9: Emotions

Emotions
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Emotions. A lot of us tend to think that we should always be feeling happy that we should not have any pain ever. We always feel like the pursuit of happiness is, should be something we strive for, but emotions, whether they're good or bad. They all teach us something.
Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, A Pysician'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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
A lot of us tend to think that we should always be feeling happy that we should not have any pain ever. We always feel like the pursuit of happiness is, should be something we strive for right? But emotions, whether they're good or bad, they all teach us something. They really happen, based on a thought. And we don't realize that the thought is what eats to the emotion and then the emotion guides, some of the feelings and some of the actions that we take.
And so this week I want to bring into a discussion, emotional regulation and people with ADHD, even though the us DSM five diagnosis does not count emotional dysregulation as one of the six Fundamental features of ADHD to get to be diagnosed with. And it is used in other parts of the world, like in Europe.
And it makes sense, right? Because we all can get flustered. Whenever we get frustrated with a task that we're not able to complete. And I don't know about you in the last year when I started to get curious and discover about my ADHD, I started to realize that there were certain behaviors that I was doing.
I sometimes felt like I just could not bring myself to stop doing it. I would say little lies because I felt like I didn't want to displease anybody. I didn't want to upset anybody. I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I didn't want to feel rejected. And I remember there was one episode with my husband years ago, before I had kids that I was like, so excited about cooking.
And I remember baking a chicken and I don't even know all the specifics about it, but I think he had told me like, don't use that Rosemary spice because it was expired or I don't even remember what, but I think I forgot, you know, how it is. They tell you something and you're like, well, yeah. And then you forget.
And then of course I was so excited to have cooked this chicken that I was going to show him that I should have done it. And he asked me whether I had cooked a chicken. And even though internally, like my voice was saying, yeah, just say, yes, I couldn't like I had this like immediate sense of fear that if he knew that I had used the rose mary, he will no longer like me.
And she had like the chicken, like all the thought and effort that I was, I had put into this meal with a little sh**. So logically I could have jumped, answered Yes. I did cook the chicken and then allow him to make the decision. To decide if we wanted to eat the chicken or not. Because I had used a rose mary that he had inquired me about, but I could not get out of the loop of lying.
I couldn't say yes. I just think he gave me multiple chances, and I just could not. And so he knew I was lying. He could obviously see that the amount of the. That was used and it resulted in like us not talking for a few days. And it was a very painful experience because I'm an extrovert. And of course, with ADHD, you make things seem like worse than they are.
And so at that time, I didn't realize like, there's a name for that. There's a name for it. It's called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) which is something that. shifts or if they're short lipped sensations, it's an emotional dysregulation that is triggered whenever you feel like an intense pain, because you feel like you might be rejected.
You might be cheesed. You might be criticized. You might start to judge yourself and you don't realize that you're lying to try to avoid feeling those feelings. And so I ended up, like I said, it was horrible for me because he wasn't talking to me and he ended up saying like, why are you lying about that? What else are you lying about?
Of course I wasn't lying about, to me, like a small little lie didn't mean anything because I thought I was trying to protect them, but he made up a good point. Like, why do I have to lie? I can touch it. Say yes. And then if you do whatever. And so the point is that when you don't know any better, you do.
Thank you need to do to protect yourself, but let's not an immediate danger, but my brain could not associate that. And this week I want to talk about emotions and why some things trigger us and how to be able to tap into what we are feeling like right now. And what are the top three feelings that we always have?
And whether those are the three feelings that you want to continue to feel, or whether you can choose another three things on purpose to be able to support you better with whatever goals or whatever things are doing throughout your day. Yeah. So that's the topic of this week and I want to go back to emotions, right?
People can internalize or externalize sometimes emotions. Like when you have this emotional dysregulation and you internalize it, you can send any change. Right? You can call yourself all kinds of names. So negative self-talk you can go from feeling like fine to like immensely sad. And sometimes you might even look like you're like severely depressed and suicidal, but then all of a sudden, like a few minutes later hours later, you're like back to.
Bizarre. Right. You can also externalize it. And I didn't even realize this was time times because you're in like overwhelm or anxiety. Like that's what the feelings that you think you're having, you become like immediately angry or irritable and frustrated, like from zero to nothing. And you just can't seem to control it.
But then again, I can sit back and just be a few seconds. So having those emotions and you not being able to regulate them, long-term can really lead to low self-esteem to self doubt, self criticism, to rumination and your, and it can affect relationships. Not only like with yourself, it can affect relationships with your coworkers, with your family members.
And so it's very important to like really recognize the importance of emotions and to realize that emotions. Because of a thought that we having, many of us want to think, I feel happy just because they're all I feel. Well, I feel happy because I have a husband ended up, but neuro is not that you have a husband it's because of your thought of whatever the husband is doing or not.
Or some of us. I think, oh, I feel lonely. And you still have a husband. So it doesn't matter what the fact is. It's whatever your thought is about the circumstance. Right? Because I have heard many people tell me, doctor, I don't understand. Like I was in a room with all my family members there. They were treating me like we, and yet I still felt lonely.
Obviously that person who was having a thought about something, it was not the fact that everybody was around her. She was still having a thought about something. So I really want us to give the importance of emotions. It's important because if you are feeling like. You're probably going to do like a lots of other actions that you probably thought you weren't going to do.
We go back to the same thing of exercising. If you think you don't have enough time, if that's the thought that you have under 90, your feeling is going to be, and from defeated or hopelessness, you're not going to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to go exercise. You already have the thought I'm coming at time.
So you're probably going to say, ah, just tomorrow, I'm not a big deal, but if you have. I take care of my body. Then you're likely to have a feeling of like being focused or like being excited or being motivated. And that's going to lead you to different actions. So I really want you to tap into what are your top three feelings?
Are they supporting you? And again, this exercise is just to bring awareness. Most human beings don't even pay attention to what their thoughts are and when they don't pay attention to them. Then they just wonder why they can't figure out why they feel the way they feel, but you have to be willing to look at it on purpose, to become aware of it.
On purpose. We really are not taught about emotions and a lot of us don't even have lots of vocabulary with emotions. And there is things that are considered like an emotional childhood versus an adult childhood. And that's a very important distinction when. We tend to think that if we behave well, if we get good grades, then we are worthy of love.
Like our parents are going to treat us well, they're going to love us. They're going to acceptance. And when we come, we become adults. We in, we just continue doing those behaviors. We think that if we treat others, which I'm not saying you shouldn't treat others as well. But what I'm saying is that when we do things for others, But even though internally, we don't think that's something we should be doing.
We don't set boundaries or are just people pleasing because that's what we got taught, like when we were kids and maybe we didn't get taught that, but that's what, just what we learn to be. And so when you, it's natural for us to continue to want to do that, but nobody ever teaches us that it is not our job to make us happy.
Your spouse's job to make you happy is not your best friends' jobs, make you happy. It is not your mom's job to make you happy. It's your job to make you happy. It's the relationship you have with yourself that should make you happy and be aware of that. It's okay. To feel all the spectrums of feelings, be aware that the good feelings and the vaccines, they all teach us things.
And sometimes we are very afraid of the bad feelings, because we are afraid that whatever thoughts we are having, like they mean that about us. And I can, we're having a thought, like I'm too stupid to read a book. What is that going to cause that's going to cause pain, right? And most of us don't want to feel pain.
We don't want to feel like a failure. We don't want to feel ashamed. But the thing is that if you are not willing to. Or to even question that feeling, you're never going to realize what is the thought that is making that feeding and whether that feeding is actually serving you or not. I'm not saying that the job is to change the fee.
Right? A lot of us are going to think like, okay, I'm just going to change the thought that way I have a different feeling. No, you have to be willing to process a FINI. You have to be willing to sit with it. And many times when we just become the upstairs. Of the feeding. If we tune into where it is and our body, is it in her chest, isn't in her stomach.
Is it on. How does it feel? Does it feel that it constricts or does it feel like it relaxes? Will you just become aware of it? You become aware that lean on any emotion is just a vibration in our body. And many times, you know, I have now made the connection that when I was lying a lot, like I ha I was lying.
And to me, they were baby. They were white lives. And I didn't think that was wrong because I thought I was genuinely saying babies are genuinely sparing. Somebody else from that disappointment. I'll give you an example. Let's say somebody invited me to a party pre COVID and one, I was too tired or too, I just didn't feel like it instead of just say no, I don't feel like interrupted tired.
Like I would say something like, oh, my kids are sick. Or, oh, I'm on call. I can come even though I wasn't on call or something. Right. And January. And so I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I didn't want to say, oh, I don't have time for you. And I'm not saying that's how you should say it, but in the last eight months or so, and really more and more I've been working on just saying what it is that I need to say and staying true and not worrying.
About me trying to control how the people are going to react. It's not my job to control how other people are going to react. When I try to do that, I don't show up from that place of integrity to myself. I lie to myself. So I think it's more important that you speak your truth. So for example, when there is something that me and my husband disagree on, he tells me no, don't do this.
And I still do it. And I tell him, look, he told me not to cause this. Something in me told me that was the right thing to do. Of course, I didn't want to disappoint you, but disappointing myself was something I was not willing to do. So it's about communication, right? Because we don't know the present with us or not with us, whether it's a coworker or.
They might be with us for a lifetime or not. They might be with us for six weeks, six months, who knows six years. But hopefully you and the relationship with you is going to be for a lifetime. So you really have to know you don't die when you just are willing to feel all the emotions. You just feel so much better.
What I made the connection was that whenever I was saying those little eyes, I was feeling like stomach issues like constipated and just not well. So all that out there that paying attention to our thinking and noticing what you're feeling. It's not something that people do on a regular basis, but it's something that can be very beneficial and especially be willing to not just feel good emotions, but also bad emotions.
Because when you do that's when your life really starts to change and transformed, because you are willing on purpose to create and sign the life of your dreams.
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.
 

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 8 with Dr. Elisa Chiang (Ophthalmologist, Oculoplastic Surgeon, Life Coach Specializing in Money Mindset)

Elisa Chiang is an Ophthalmologist, Oculoplastic surgeon and Life Coach. Elisa primarily works with physicians to master their money mindset so they can build wealth and practice medicine on their own terms.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: I think there's different levels of budgeting for some people having a strict budget really stresses them out. And I don't know that you have to have a really strict budget. I think you do have to have a sense of what you're spending and where your money is going.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, A Pysician'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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
Good evening, I am so excited today to talk to Dr. Elisa Chiang, is an Ophthalmologist Oculoplastic surgeon and life coach. Dr. Chiang primarily works with physicians to master their money mindset so that they can build their wealth and they can practice medicine on their own terms. So today you all got to pay attention because this is going to really change your life..
Dr. Elisa Chiang: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Can you tell us a little bit about how you started this and money mindset? How did that come about?
Dr. Elisa Chiang: You know, so in the beginning of. Yeah, everyone. When they're starting to love, coach business tries to think about like, well, who are my people and what can I specifically do to serve my people?
And so being a physician, you know, it's natural to want to coach other physicians because that's, you know, our people. And one of the places where, I have a lot more, you know, knowledge and just, experience is with. Investing and partially with money mindset. And I have to admit it's not because I've had to overcome a lot of, money mindset issues, but I, I guess was blessed with parents who actually talked about money and you know, not everything.
It's not like it was a perfect money upbringing, but. My parents, when I was young, like, you know, money was discussed in the household. When we got allowance, it was very specifically to kind of teach us how to manage money. When we want to kind of bigger ticket items like a bicycle, we actually would go 50 50 with our parents.
So we understood the value of money, the bio of working for something that we wanted and how much things like actually. And so that continued, you know, in college, like there was always talk about like saving for college and how much, , you know, college cost. And then when we're in college, like actually managing our money, like my sister and I literally had like independently, I don't even think it's like, my parents told us this, but somehow we just independently like had spreadsheets where we actually put all of our spending and like, yeah, like who does that?
But like, literally she did it. I did it. It's not like. It's not like we were ever told to do it, but somehow it just came up like, well, we should be tracking everything we're spending and making sure that like, it falls in, you know, the budget that we have so that, you know, we can, you know, I mean, freshman year we were all on meal plans, but after freshman year we were no longer on meal plans and we had kind of a budget.
And so we wanted to make sure that. Yeah, we had food.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's amazing. You know, I remember I'm the oldest of my family and I'm the first one to go to college and education was always like something that my parents were like, this is how you're going to get ahead. This is how you're going to have money security.
Right. But I remember like, I would always, because we didn't have excess money. So to say, like, I got scholarships and I was also on financial aid. I remember I was choosing like the biggest loan, like not knowing that eventually I was going to have to pay it back. Right. And so I would always choose the biggest loan and like, Use it to go on vacations and like all this other stuff, instead of being mindful.
Oh, I should be careful. But it was, it was silly because I remember always looking to see if I could find like a cheap book, because those were expensive. They were like $500 or something crazy. Right. But at the same time, I wasn't really careful with buying all these clothes and purses because I was like, oh yeah, I'll pay it back.
Eventually. I wish somebody would have told me, like, you know, if you don't need all that money, that all that exess loans, like don't take out that, all that excess loan do you know? And so, yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes realize that yes, while money can help us, it can also get us into trouble.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yes, it certainly can. And I definitely saw, you know, there was a reason why credit card companies always have booths at college campuses to get people, to sign up for their credit cards. Right.
[00:05:12] Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, exactly. So I have ADHD and I tend to have some type of limiting beliefs. Something like money is too hard or something like, I don't know how to manage it.
I don't know where to invest or maybe I should just let my husband take care of that. Like, why do you think those are things that we shouldn't just wait for others to manage? Like why do you think it's important for us to try to understand like how much money comes in or where to save or all that.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Because honestly, no, one's going to care about your financial security more than you yourself care for. Right. Everyone's out to get money and you know, people in the financial industry, they want you to feel like it's hard so that you give them their money. That's how they make money. Uh, most financial advisors are really just glorified salesmen, and they're not doing what's best for you. And if you don't know what's best for you, then.
I mean, maybe yourselves like can handle it, but you don't ever actually want to be in a position where your spouse is. The only person is the person handling all your finances. Know, I don't want to have to cite the divorce statistics, but I mean, it's really high. Right. And you may be in love with. It might be great, but literally first marriages are 50% and in divorce and with each subsequent marriage, it's a higher percentage.
And of course, we don't want to go into marriage thinking about that, but there is a point at some point where you may not be with that spouse anymore, and it may not even be divorced. Right. I mean, we're physicians. We see young people, you know, die. Like, you know, like I said, you don't want to think about that, but you want to be in a position where if your spouse dies, that you can still manage the household finances and if your spouse dies, I mean, like that's going to be even more pressure financially in general.
 And the thing is, I think a lot of physicians feel that. Well, not just physicians so that people in general feel like money is hard, but I can say that if you got through medical school, you can learn personal finance, right? Most people who are out there in the personal finance world. I mean, yes, they probably graduated from college, but not even necessarily that, right.
I mean, we know so much. More, we have, we have all the brain power that's needed. The difference I think is that we forget how much training. We went through to learn medicine. And we all went through four years of med school, a minimum of three years of residency. A lot of us did fellowship. I mean that's years and years of training where we learn medical language and medical jargon.
How many of, I mean, there are lots of physicians. Who've never read one financial book, right? So the financial world has its own jargon. It has its own language. And if you don't spend any time learning that jargon and language, it's not going to make sense. So like, if you go to France and you don't know any French, like nothing.
There, right. You go to Spain and you don't know Spanish. Nothing makes sense. There all you go to the talk to financial people and you don't know the financial language, then nothing makes sense. So you think you're stupid, but you're not, you just don't know the language. Once you learn the language, it's actually really simple.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Is there like one book that like you think would like be the first starting step that somebody might want to at least dive into?
Dr. Elisa Chiang: So there are a lot of bait financial books. I think for physicians, you know, the white coat investor and the physician philosopher both have on their books on personal finance.
And so if you are a physician, I think that is a good place to start because we, as physicians are generally a little different than the rest of the population in the sense that we typically have these very large loans. And while we do make a really great income, we went through a long time for, we weren't actually making that much money.
And then. Start making a lot of money. And, but when we start making a lot of, we may still have a lot of those loans. So that's not, you know, the normal situation for, a lot of other professions. I mean, law, I think might be an, a similar situation dentists. But other than that, people are spending so much money in professional school.
Yeah, we're just kind of in different situation and that does affect what we're going to do with our finances. Right? Because now some of us started having children and med school or residency and, you know, may have even had to pay for help, like nannies when really we didn't have the financial ability necessarily pay for it.
But when you're working 80 hours a week, like, what are you going to do? Right.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, exactly. And, and do you think it's important to have a budget, like to have budget enough for like the nanny, like you're saying, or for like a basic stuff, right. Like paying your car or paying your rent or making sure you're not on the negative every time with the credit cards and stuff.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah, I think there's different levels of budgeting for some people having a strict budget really stresses them out. And I don't know that you have to have a really strict budget. I think you do have to have a sense of what you're spending and where your money is going. So you don't necessarily have to say like, okay, I am only spending.
$600 in groceries a month. And then if you spend 701 month, then you freak out, right? Because it's going to fluctuate. There might be, you know, a month that's 400 months, that's 800, you know, if you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas, 10, you know, to have some bigger meals, potentially involved or family coming over for meals, there might be some months where you travel more.
So. You also have to look at, you know, your personal mindset, if having a specific number for a budget isn't going to work for you, then you may just want to, kind of just have a sense of like, okay, how much am I spending? So in general, you want to have about 50% of your spending. Fixed spending. So that's going to be things like your rent or mortgage, right?
That's the same every month. And then about 20% to be your fluctuating spending, the things that really, you can kind of control the difference. And then that last 30% you actually want to put towards investing in growing your wealth and retirement.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Perfect. And then can you tell me a little bit how you are making an impact with how you're coaching physicians to, understand their mindset with money.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah, so. I'm not a financial advisor, you know, I can certainly help people, with, how to think about investing and how much to put in different places. But what I've, I've worked with some clients where, you know, they've gone to a financial investor, they got their financial plan, but they don't understand it, or they don't have the mindset to follow it, or even.
Just doing simple things, like getting their disability insurance in place like own occupation, disability insurance is one of the most important things for a physician to have because one of our most important assets after we've done all this training is our ability to earn income. And you know, that own occupation, disability insurance.
I mean, even if you go to a non-clinical position that still covers yourability to bring in income, right? It covers anything. Prior you are making money from the value you're putting out in the world.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And, and where do you think they should, do you think they should have gotten it as a resident or do you think even now, if they're in their fifties, they should still go and do it. If they haven't done.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Unless you are financially independent, you should have own occupation, disability insurance, and yes. I do think you should get a residency because you want to get it before you have any health issue that might prevent you from getting it now also as a resident or potentially as a fellow, some of hospitals actually have special, arrangements with different insurance companies so that you can get a own occupation, disability, insurance, potentially without medical coverage.
That actually saved me. So I, got diagnosed with a medical condition in medical school where it made it where I can not get, I mean, I could get a own occupation, disability insurance, but it would only pay out a max of five years, which obviously is not ideal because there is a possibility that, of getting disabled and having it last longer than five years.
And so luckily when I was a resident, the last year you're in training, You could get an own occupation, disability insurance plan through standard, which is one of the five big companies that do a good own occupation, disability plans without a medical exam. And so I know like that is the best plan I'll ever be able to have and not switching out that plan for anything.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Well, I am guilty that I don't have one and I'm going to look it up after, after today to make sure that I get that in place.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah, definitely. I mean, any, any physician, and even like my husband's a teacher, he has disability insurance, you know? Yes. Could I cover him if he knows I'm working or got disabled?
I could. Honestly, I went part-time recently. And so his income does really contribute to our household this point.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. And can you tell me, like, what you like to do? Like how do you feel that you're making a difference in the world lights you up?
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Well, the number one thing I love doing is traveling, especially international traveling, which, 2020 is the first year of my adult life, that I did not leave the country or get on a plane.
I did get on a plane in 2021, but it was only domestic. And so I'm hoping that 2022, I can finally go somewhere outside the country, even if it's just Canada, because frankly, you know, Canadian U S border has even been closed for less, much of this pandemic
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: I know you from, other places and I know you love to travel, but could you share where you've been?
Dr. Elisa Chiang: You? So I've been to over 40 countries and six continents. I actually did have plans to go to Antarctica December, 2020 that obviously didn't happen in the end. I also, had a scheduled vacation to Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and, Slovenia. In June of 2020. So I'm really hoping to build, to do that trip at some point.
But yes, I've traveled. Most of Europe, traveled through Asia through China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia. I've been to Australia, not yet been to New Zealand, really like to go there. Iceland is also
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Did you do this you while you were in college or like in med school, or like in like after you done or a little bit of all throughout.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah, all throughout. So, and you know, this is one things about money is that I was doing this in. So I did do it. I'm a PhD program. So I had eight years, the MSTP program and I did this during medical school and residency and graduate school. Like I do remember. I wanted to go to Ecuador. I actually, my best friend from high school, was in Ecuador.
She was working at a nonprofit. And so I was trying to find other men's another med school who might want to, you know, come on the trip. And I remember people like, oh, I can't go there. That'd be so expensive. I'm like, well, I know the plane ticket gets a little expensive, but once you get there, it's like super cheap.
And the same person I was talking to ended up going to Vail for vacation to go skiing. And I was like, that vacation is definitely more expensive than when I went to Ecuador. I did go to Ecuador. I just didn't go with anyone else in med school, but I mean, you can enjoy the world and, you know, and have it be affordable.
I mean, even Europe, I did do some hostels, but actually I'm at my husband pretty young. I'm actually met him when I was a senior in high school and he was, a first year in college. So, because in hostels you tend to have either a, you know, a male or boys room and a female and girl's room.
We did that once and then we're like, you know what? We can spend a little bit more to just get a two-star. But yeah, I mean, really you can travel on a budget and there are lots of young people traveling, you know, across the world. You know, you're not going to stay in five star hotels, but you can stay in really comfortable, you know, situations.
And the experience is really what you're going to carry home with you, right? Like you don't need to, I mean, certainly buying things and having, souvenirs can some people happiness, but typically, stuff like that, you know, five, 10 years later to like listen to trash.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. Like what you remember are the pictures. Right. And you remember like the food or the friendship you had over, and sometimes you do hang out with those people later on.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah, definitely. And the food. Definitely. I remember the food. There are definitely places in the world. I'm like, man, I want to go back there just to eat.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Exactly. Yes. Yes. So I'm like, I love to travel and we all have our beliefs about money. Right. But when you understand. That money can get you experiences or something that you value that is more than just the cash, right? Or the money that you're thinking, that it allows you to be more of who you are, right? Like it's like an energy exchange, at least in my eyes.
And so it allows you to grow as you go and explore other countries and other cultures and other foods. Oh my God. And the music, of course, you cannot forget the music and all those different places. And, and I think it really. Allows you to realize that, you know, life's too short and yes, of course you can spend $5,000 on a purse, but you're not, to me.
It's not going to be the same as spending $5,000 in that two week vacation, like somewhere in Costa Rica or Ecuador. Thailand or, you know, somewhere where you're like, oh my God, I just got a $7 massage. It was amazing. Right. So I don't know, it feels like you've got a bargain, but at the same time, it's the experience.
Of course I would pay $70 for that massage, but it's the experience of like the culture. So I think. Knowing how to use money to allow you to become more of who you are is so important. And if you don't know how to come talk to Elisa here.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah. So I loved how you talked about like spending for your values are because I think that is really, the key is spending for your values are, and not for other people's values are right.
Because if you are having the Dr. House or the doctor car, and you don't really actually care about cars and. The smaller house, like, what are you giving up? Are you giving up? Like, you know, that vacation in Costa Rica are you, where you can have a great experience and really have memories that you cherish and spend that time with your family and, you know, get that experience to your children.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes. So important. And like you said, like, Your traditions are your tradition. So of course, right before COVID we had just said, okay, for Christmas, we're not going to buy each other any more gifts like me and my family said, we're just going to spend Christmas, like traveling somewhere. And of course, before that happened, like, we went to Disneyland and that's it.
And then of course it's January that we went for Christmas. And then of course, January happens. Here we are 2020 that Nimbix. So we didn't get to really do that afterwards. But as things slowed down, that's definitely something that we're looking forward to doing, having the experience. And in fact, like for my, for my sister's birthday, like I gave her the experience of buying her a like three sessions with a declutter coach, I think is like, better than me sending her something she might not like, and this is something she can do the experiences of something else.
Right. So, investment in yourself. And of course she told me that was what she wanted and I just didn't put it on her. Right. But this is something that she said that it would be amazing to learn, to have her own systems of things. Feeling like she wasn't doing it. Right. And, and sometimes that's the most courageous thing, right.
To ask for help when you feel like you almost got it, but you don't have it quite, or it just seems too complicated. Why don't go talk to an expert so they can at least advise you, this is their zone of genius. Why not go talk to them and save yourself the hassle? Yes. Probably read all those financial books, but who has all that time, if that's not your zone.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: It's true. I mean, to some extent, you know, you do want to do like yourself education, but other than the others extent, if you don't work on the mindset part. You're not going to have the motivation to actually even finish the books. Right? Know, it all comes down to your why and, you know, for a lot of people, their, why is, really wanting to have a better life.
But when you think about. Being financially independent, which means that your investments are able to pay for your basic expenses. Now, what freedom does that give you? Right. If you're in a job where you really feel tied to that paycheck and you wish you could leave where you wish you could cut down the hours, but you can't do it because of the money.
Well, what freedom would you have if you did actually know that the money that you've invested can actually be enough to support you. And, and that might mean, you know, maybe not support you with. You know, every luxury that you're currently used to, but that freedom of being able to cut back, maybe, well worth giving up that, you know, Louis Vuitton purse.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Exactly. Thank you. So what is one thing that you would share with our listeners today? Like one nugget.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah. So anyone can learn how to manage your finances. It is not hard. You just have to learn a little bit of the language and it just, it does take a little time and then a little investment. But if you can just get over that money mindset and really, start living a life of abundance in it.
So it's just like with weight loss, right. We all know how to lose weight to some extent, but you know how to do it without. In a way so that you keep the weight off and, you know, you're happy with where you are. So it's the same thing with money, right? Like, and, you know, initially you may feel levels of discomfort as you're trying to learn how to invest.
And when you make those first few investments or, or it may be, you know, learning to cut back on some of your expenses and really looking at, you know, what do you value? Where do you really want to spend your money? But once you get to that new place with that new mindset, You know, you can really be in a much better place where you're financially secure and able to, you know, do what you want when it comes to your job and working.
And I think it's a total game changer in that.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So the thing is, like you said, how do you eat the whole elephant one bite at a time, right? You can't just do it all at once, especially when you don't have that stamina. Right. But when you start trying that and you keep going and then you get help, then you might actually get somewhere.
Right. So tell us, how can our listeners find you? Cause I know they're gonna come and they're gonna say, Hey, help me get that financial freedom that you talked about.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: Yeah. So my website is www.growyourwealthymindset.com. You can sign up for a free consultation call with me, right on the first page. And you can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
My Instagram handle is grow your wealthy mindset and on Facebook, you really is probably easiest. Just look me up. E L I S A ELisa, last name C H I A N G. Chiang.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you so much. So you heard it here. Get financial freedom.
Dr. Elisa Chiang: I love to help you get there.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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.
 
Website: www.GrowYourWealthyMindset.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WealthyMindsetMD
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrowYourWealthyMindset
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GrowYourWealthyMindset

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 8 with Dr. Janeeka Benoit (Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician, Sports Medicine Specialist, Founder of Med Fit DO)

Dr. Janeeka Benoit AKA Dr. J, a Board Certified Internal Medicine physician specializing in Sports Medicine and the founder of Medfit DO. Dr. J is passionate about caring for not only the athletic population, but also passionate about teaching the general population on how to live healthier lives by living up to their optimum health, fitness, and wellness.
 
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Instead of telling yourself that you, we just said it, I can't do something. Ask yourself how can I do it? And that is very powerful because the word can't places us in a position of being stuck.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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, four, three, and four years of age. And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after this. ADHD coaching and not for the past sticky. 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 fuels 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. I don't have genius, so they too can reclaim their personal lives back. Like I have.
Hi, everybody. I'm so excited that you're here at our podcast. It's beyond ADHD, A Physician's Perspective. I am the host, Diana Mercado-Marmarosh a family medicine physician, and I'm an ADHD life coach. And today I am so honored and so thrilled to bring a good friend of mine. An amazing physician and her name is Dr. Janeeka Benoit, and she's better known as Dr. J. So that's a little bit easier to say she's on social media and she is a board certified internal medicine physician and a sports medicine specialist. Interestingly enough, she's also the founder of med fit DO. She's a runner, she's an exercise enthusiast, and she's a former a certified personal trainer.
Not only does she enjoy caring for all her athletes, but she has passion for making sure that those chronic conditions are originally taken care of through exercise. So they could live holistic, healthier lives, not just mentally, but of course, physically, as we all know, quality of life really, uh, gets us going, right.
So she's an osteopathic physician. Dr. Jay is focused on treating the whole body so that people can live more fully and have a life transformation from the inside out. So I am so excited that she's here today and let's ask her about her unique story, how she got here and why she's, getting us to exercise.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah. So thank you so much for that. Great intro, Dr. Diana. So, stories. I remember one specific day during my second year of residency, I was in the clinic and I just couldn't wait to get out of there because my day was just so hectic. And, as I got home and I sat on my bed with the covers on my head, I was thinking to myself, I was very much like my patients, because just like my patients were overwhelmed from taking so many pills, I was overwhelmed with having to constantly be filled them and prescribed them.
Just like them, who sometimes they didn't even know why they were on certain pills. I didn't know my, why. I felt like, I didn't know my purpose of becoming a doctor in the first place, because I felt that I was just, I felt like, you know, I was like in a machine, I was just prescribing and refilling pills and I wanted to get to a point where, I can discover more to me and more that I could provide to my patients and just like them.
 Sometimes I feel in control of their health. I felt like I didn't, I was not in control of the trajectory of my career. And it was like looking down a dark tunnel with no end. And, I basically came to where awakening because, I was pretty much a regular avid exerciser. And even during residency, through the rigors of residency, I made exercise a habit.
It didn't matter. You know, if I was busy, you know, even just five minutes, 10 minutes. Made that a priority. And because I made exercises, what habit I've learned to develop, to make other aspects of my life as habits as well. And I wanted to get to a point to not only teach people about physical activity, but also how there's a huge mental component that is involved in it as well.
There is a mind and body connection that I think sometimes gets, maybe not dismissed, but not given as much attention as it needs to. And I wanted to help people discover that.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So tell me what were your thoughts or what did you notice when you did make that five to 10 minutes a priority for you? What kind of exercise were you doing?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah. Well, you know, even like before the exercising, this type of exercise before I was doing it was really my thoughts, but I had to focus on because I thought that because I was a resident, I had to devote all my time and energy to being a resident that this was going to, this is going to be a new phase in my life.
And this was going to take over and I did not have time. At least that's what I told myself. I don't have time to incorporate other parts into my life such as like exercising or journaling or, just hobbies that I enjoy that make me feel human.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Oh, so your thought was, I don't have enough time, so I'm just gonna do what I can to get through the space in my life.
But eventually you switched your thought, right? Because you said all of a sudden you started doing five or 10 minutes in there, even though your brain was telling me you didn't have time, you kind of said, well, let me just give this a try.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Exactly. So, and that's exactly what it was. And you know, sometimes I didn't have an hour to dedicate to an exercise routine, but I was just like, Hey, what if I dedicate 10 minutes?
And I like dedicate 10 minutes consistently throughout most days of the week, what happens. And that's how I made it a habit. It was your small bursts of exercises.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So what did you notice when you were giving yourself those 10 minutes? Like, were you able to focus more? Were you less irritable where you, what did you notice? Why was it beneficial? Even just 10 minutes?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Oh my goodness. Okay. So for me it was my mood. So I was just, just more energetic. I was happy. I was cause you know, the fact that I was doing something for me, I think. And so I think that's what it was. I was doing something for myself and because I was doing something for myself, I was able, I was better able to then provide to my patients.
Right. Because, whereas before I felt like I was not, I wasn't making time for myself and I, and I felt depleted, right. Because when you're seeing patients all day, you're taking all their problems, taking all that with you and then going home. And then there's no outlets, right? If there is no outlet, if there's no care that is, then we send it back to you, you feel depleted.
So that was the major shift for me. It's just like, I need to make myself a party. I need to, no matter how much time it requires, I need to make it a over a priority because when I make it a priority, I'm better able to show up for my patients.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's amazing. I'm so glad that you were able to discover that in residency, you know, some of us, it takes us many years after we finish our training to figure out that our time is just as important as our patient's time as our family time, as you know, our community time.
Like, it really is important that you do take care of you, because like you said, how you show up. It's a ripple effect. If you show up with a mind that is focused or with a mind that is not so irritable, then you're just a little more pleasant to be around and in your, just a little bit easier to manage tasks.
So obviously I invited you here today because as you know, I'm an ADHD life coach, but people that work with me don't have to have ADHD. They just have to feel like they want to get some type of organization or feel like they want to tackle their time. And I figured exercise would be a way for you to explain to us how you think that fits in with people who have ADHD or people who feel like they want to manage their schedule a little bit better or manage their emotions a little bit better.
 Do you have any insights about how you think exercise could help people with ADHD or time awareness?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Physiological level exercise. Can really release neuro-transmitters such as neuro epinephrin, epinephrin serotonin dopamine, and all of that helps to improve the executive functioning of the brain.
So in addition, exercise, can help with really two major components of ADHD. So that's inattention and inhibition. So with ADHD, there's, you know, inattention to like specific tasks. And there's also a lack of inhibition too. There's that impulsivity that's associated with ADHD. So those are benefits that exercise can provide.
In addition to that, with any ADHD, sleep quality is diminished as well. So, sleep quality is improved in terms of. The duration of your sleep, your sleep onset, your sleep efficiency, all of that can help with, um, ADHD symptoms from exercise.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Do you know, if there's a specific type of exercise that would be more beneficial with ADHD or not?
I will tell you, I personally, I think I didn't get diagnosed until I was in medical school because running was what I was doing. In high school and, you know, I was in the cross country team. And so I know. Yeah. So I always joke around and like I made the varsity team, not because I was the fastest, but I was the only one passing.
So, and then I was so embarrassed. I was like, do you really want me to run this race? I like I'm finishing it, but like way back there, but you know, it's so interesting how sometimes exercise teaches us all kinds of things about life, about showing up and running the race. Even if it's different from everybody else's race, right? Like keep improving yourself and beating your own self. Right. But I was wondering if you thought maybe something like gymnastics or karate or something they have to kind of pay attention to detail, like if that's more beneficial than just running or walking or that does matter?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: So I would say with ADHD, it's important for it to be fun and stimulating so that the person with ADHD can be engaged. in addition, HIIT, which is high intensity interval training. So it is, pretty intense depending on the type of exercise that you're doing and may require a more motor control.
But I would say HIIT once a person with ADHD, pass some progression in improving motor control. And, they get to a point where that they feel comfortable performing epicenter exercises. Then high intensity interval training, could be beneficial because. Short exercises for like intense periods of time.
So that is great for some, with ADHD because it's short and intense and that requires, you know, focus attention on that specific task and then onto the next movement. So that's another exercise that would, that could be beneficial for someone with ADHD.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's awesome. So, you know, we tend to have problems. Like we don't want to initiate tasks.
I think that they feel overwhelming sometimes, but sometimes when we finally do start a task or we have problems like with hyper-focus where we're like three hours have gone by, you're like, oh my God, three hours went by and you thought you were going to spend an hour. And sometimes we don't realize that we're spinning,
like, just because we're sitting there for a longer period of time, it doesn't necessarily mean that we were efficient and focus those three. I think it would be really good to integrate, like, let's say, put, put a timer and give yourself like 20 minutes to do a task, but then do like a five minute something.
And that's where exercise could come in. Right. Because it would give you that dopamine and norepinephrine surge, like you just said, and then you could go back and continue to do it. Most people think that if they step away from what they're doing, they're going to forget. But I think there's probably ways to give yourself a little nuggets where you left off and still be able to come back because now your brain is refreshed because you use like the exercise or the HIIT, like you said, even sometimes just turning on music might be okay to get you out of the zone of frustration or doing a task that you didn't want to do right there.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: For sure. For sure. Those are all great.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So tell me more about what you think is important or what are some tips about? I know you said you got yourself thinking, okay. I need to make this a priority, but what were some tricks that you use to make it a priority? Like sending you reminders? Did you tell a friend, did you have somebody like via your accountability partner?
How did you integrate exercise? So that he could feel like a routine and not like a task.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah. So I think one of the one thing that I really focused on during residency was to make sure that I got really good sleep. Right. So, and you know, just, just like an ADHD sleep can be impaired. So, , what I did, I went to sleep at the same time.
And I woke up at the same time and I would even do that during weekends. I may not necessarily wake up the same time I would during a day that I was working. but I'd make it a point. Well, on weekends, I'm not going to wake up at noon. I'm going to make sure that I wake up on the same, around the same time, during the weekend and wake up at the same time.
So that helped me create like a regular circadian rhythm with myself. Right. And it just naturally, my body just knows that, okay, I'm getting sleepy. Cause sometimes I may not even need my alarm clock. It's just like my body knows, like it's getting sleepy. It's it's time for me to go to sleep. In addition, it also teach other people that I go to bed at this time and I wake up at this time. So, you know, that was a boundary also, like I created, it's just like, this is time for my sleep. And so, because I mean, my sleep a priority, I was able to wake up, refresh to then exercise.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So did exercise was you did it first thing in the morning.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: So I did it in the, in the morning and I knew that because I knew that for me more mornings were the times that I was most efficient in terms of, mental clarity. I was, I had the most mental clarity in the morning and I wanted to optimize. That time for myself in the morning. So, because after work, oh, no, I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to exercise.
So I had to really take advantage of that time for myself in the morning to get my workout routine in. And then the third thing was not letting those limiting beliefs like, oh, I don't have time to make exercise part of my routine. You know, that I took out the way because I was like, I can't just have my whole life be my job.
Right. I have to also pour into myself as well, and I need to do things that keep me energized that keep me be charged because when I'm energized and recharged, I can then provide care to my patients in the way that I want to. I don't want to be tired and, you know, lacking sleep and irritable when I'm seeing my patients, I want to be my best self.
So I want to show up as my best self. So. Three things that I did is just making sleep a priority, recognizing that I was most efficient in the morning and also getting rid of the limiting belief that I don't have time to exercise, because I'm a resident.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you so much for sharing that, you know, that believes that I don't have time is such a belief that gets us all into trouble or another thought, um, I'll do it tomorrow or I'll start Monday. Like, or I'll start the first of the month. Like, it makes a difference, right? , every day is as good as the day to start. And so you don't have to compare yourself to everybody else and you don't have to do the, you know, 50 minutes that everybody says you should do like five times a week, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Sometimes you just start where you are. And if it's three to five minutes that you start and you commit for like two weeks, and then next two weeks, you go up to 10 and then you just keep going. That's working on your mindset because it's who you're becoming. It's not how much you did, but the person who exercises.
Right, right. And what might be great for one person might not necessarily be for others. Right. Because we all have our uniqueness and our gifts and some of us functioning, like you said, amazing in the morning. That's me now, my husband he's the opposite. Like, he's like, don't talk to me until like 11 and I'm like, what the hell?
Like the kids have been up since six. You know, and like the kids will come in and they'll be like, mommy, don't wake up daddy. And I'm like, so why am I okay to be woken up? But not here. Like, it's just people, you know, like you said, you train them. Right. Like he's trained them not to bother him, quote unquote.
Right. But then he's the one who wants to stay up late with him at night when they they're full wired. Right. And so, again, knowing how you best function and then taking that into account. When you're trying to set up a technique, like exercising, setting up your system is important because otherwise, if you're not a morning person, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, well, I need to exercise in the morning.
You it's like trying to push a whole car up the hill. Like it's kind of hard, right. Versus if you know that you want to do this and how do you make it make sense into your system, then, then it's a little bit more doable. So, yeah, so it's so important to do it your way, and it's important to start. And as we know, like with ADHD, of course, Some of us who have the 80% of us are able to take pills and that helps us, but they don't teach the skills.
Right. Those pills don't do that. So that's, it's so important to be able to use exercise or meditation, or like you just said, sleep to get that executive function going. And there are those other 20% of people who can not tolerate medicine. Right. And. They use exercise as their medicine. And it's so important to see it as such because then you're not going to neglect it.
Right. You're not going to be like, well, I'll do it tomorrow. If you know, Hey, if I do this, like if I exercise for 40 minutes for an hour or whatever, and I feel like I can focus, then why wouldn't you take your medicine? If that's what could help you write? Yeah. What else do you think, like exercise can help somebody with ADHD?
Like, can you think you said that you noticed it helped your emotional state. Did you notice it helped with, impulse activity or, anything else that you noticed, like you were less likely to do something if you had already exercised like less likely to go get, go nuts or like something like that?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Well, I would say for me it helped with, you know, energy.
It helped with focus, clarity. , and it helped me be charged. I think those were, you know, the main things and, and because I knew I had to create time for it. It also helped with planning as well. So it was just like, okay, I have to exercise in the morning. All right. So that means I need to go to bed at this time.
So I wake up at bed at this time to exercise and then create time to eat breakfast. And so it allowed with the planning as well. And that's, you know, people with ADHD, they may have some difficulty with planning, which, you know, which is, one of the executive functions could be organized and planning. So the fact that I have to put it in my day and schedule it, I had to also schedule other things. So it helped with that aspect.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. And so that's very important what you just said, because. When we have a goal or when we want to start something, if we don't know where it's going to fit in our schedule, it's not going to fit. Right. And the thing is like, you have to be very specific. Like you have to say, I'm going to walk for five minutes a day at the park next to my house, like on Monday and Tuesday, like you have to know exactly what you're doing when you're doing it. 'cause if you don't give yourself that intention with the goal, it's not going to happen. It's just going to be like, oh, someday I'll start to exercise. And it won't, like you said, and then if you're not aware, like, Hey, do I have clinic at that time? When I said I was going to exercise, then you really like, you can't be in two places at once.
Right. We try believe me. We try to bend time all the time, but we always get ourselves in trouble. Right. And so that's where it's so important. Like you said, talk about the planning, because most of us don't want to go into that. Let almost sounds like we're, you know, it's a sin to try to make somebody with ADHD, pin them down to commit to something.
But again, if it's a priority that you focus. Is what actually happens. Right. If you don't focus on it, it's not going to happen. That's so good. So can you tell me, like about your coaching? Can you tell me about your med fit programs that you have?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah, so, Medfit DO is a coaching program that I'm working on to help women prevent chronic disease through mental and physical fitness.
And, and the reason why I say mental, physical fitness is because I can't just focus on. The physical aspect of it, you know, there's like, as we've spoken about, as we alluded to so nicely, there's a mental component as well. Right. You know, there are limiting beliefs that get in the way there's a finding that's part of it.
That's all part of creating a physically active lifestyle. Um, the beauty, is that not only are you taking care of your yourself, um, you're creating a, a life for yourself where you are able to then show up for others. Right? Because I am working on my mind and I'm working on a body. I am now at a point where I'm excited, I'm more excited to go to work because.
Poured all this energy myself, I've worked on my mind. I've worked on my body. I'm excited to then give back to other people, um, and you know, feel happy to do so. Um, so that is the whole goal of MiFID, Neo. And, you know, my underlying mission is to help prevent chronic illnesses because, you know, in medicine, you know, patients sometimes will come to the doctor where they need medicine.
And I want to really stress that. Let's not wait to come to the doctor, let's start all of this like beforehand and let's start things, lifestyle beforehand. So we don't have to get to that point. And also be at a point where we can then create habits for ourselves that we can teach all children. And we can allow this to propagate from one generation to the next.
And I call this generational health. You know, you think you're a generational wealth and I believe in generational health as well. So that's the whole mission behind that video.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's awesome. Now, Dr. Jay, tell me. What does not exercising cost us. You told us kind of like, it cost us to have chronic conditions. Right? Like what else does it, what can it lead to if we don't exercise?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah. So, so not exercising, leads to a, I think, you know, honestly, I feel like it leads to a life of, feeling unfulfilled, right? Feeling that you can do more, but you're not taking the steps to do more, not making yourself a priority.
And, the lack of not making yourself a priority allows you to then feel depleted and irritable and victimized. And exercise allows you to be in control, allows you to be in the driver's seat, allows you to show off as the person that you want to be. So lack of all that, you're not able to show up in the way that you want to be. And it leads to a life of scarcity.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So what if somebody says, well, Dr. Jay, I, I have really bad knees. I can't even like walk for a long period of time. Like I can't exercise. Is there anything that I could do?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Oh, yeah, for sure. So instead of doing weight-bearing exercises, they can do, exercises lying down. So for example, they can, work on their core and they can do core exercises. Another thing is that they can also do strength exercises, maybe with like weights. If you don't have weights, then you can use like water bottles. So you can sit down and do weights. And another thing that I want to stress.
I hear this a lot. Right. I don't have Binny's I can't exercise, but I like to invite people to think about what can they do because the first thing is I can't do it and I invite them and I said, well, okay. And that allows them to be creative and really think about what they can do, because just because, yes, you have bad knees, quote unquote does not mean that you cannot exercise.
I mean, if you, if you can use your arms, um, you can, work on your core in a supine or lying down position. Set up for crunches, or if that's not your cup of tea, you can use ankle weights and do leg raises. There's so many things you can do. There's so much creativity. And, so that's what I, you know, like to focus on. What, what can you do? It makes me think about.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: With that being said, it's like what, you're basically what I keep trying to tell people, like you have to create your own system that allows you to support you in your zone of genius. It might be that your exercise is a sitting down Zumba. It might be that it's laying down Yoga. It might be that. You're on a stationary bike. It might be different things, right? You'd like you say, you have to think, what can I do instead of what can't I do, right? Because if you tell yourself you can't do it, you're not going to do it. If you tell yourself you will do it, then all of a sudden, your brain starts to think of all these other possibilities.
Right. And so, I don't know if you know, but I recently learned that in Colorado, they actually have a system that it's not, when people are misbehaving. You know, they're not focusing or they're getting themselves in trouble, like they're irritable or they're disrupting the class instead of having a timeout where they send them to go to the principal's office or whatever they have a time in.
So they actually have them jump on a stationary bike or do some pushups, or do some turn on some music, like do something to actually engage their dopamine levels, to calm, like in a healthy way to be able to. Focus in instead of punishing them. So to say, oh, gold, they actually letting them have a time in instead of a timeout.
And the teachers are reporting that their students are being so much more efficient, so more, so much more effective. They're like, almost like they want to purposely just behave so they could exercise. So they are now making sure that it's in their routine, kind of like what I was telling you, like give yourself that boost.
Exercising so that in between strategically so that you can focus more. So that's so interesting how. People just have to keep thinking outside the box. They just have to see what works for them and turn it around in a positive way so that it could benefit them. Yeah. So awesome. So we're getting to the point where if my listeners didn't listen to anything else, but there's one Pearl that you want to give us, maybe something I haven't asked you or something that you just want to emphasize so that they walk away with this Pearl and they can implement today.What would you tell them?
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah, I would tell them, instead of telling yourself, if you just said it, I can't do something, ask yourself how can I do it? And that is very powerful because the word can't places us in a position of being stuck. And it makes us seem like there are no other possibilities. There are no other options because I cannot do something.
However, if you rephrase that statement and ask yourself, well, how can I do it? Whoa. You now have. So many possibilities open to you and the world is now your oyster because you rephrase that statement, your reframe your mind as well. So, yes, I wanted to leave that tip because, I can't, it's a very dangerous word and I really would encourage your listeners to ask yourself how can I, instead of telling yourself I can't do it.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, so whatever you've done in the past, you've done it or whatever you haven't done it, you haven't done it. It doesn't mean it's going to define your future. Right? You have to ask yourself the right questions to get the right answer. How can I become somebody who is going to use exercise as my medicine?
Right. What can I do to do that? Like where am I physically emotionally able to. What can I do today to start that journey, right? You don't have to have it all together. We're not talking marathon style yet. Right? So where can my people find you so that they can come to your masterclasses or to find you and see what else? Pearls you have to.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: Yeah. So, you can find me on my Instagram page. That's Medfit DO, M E D F I T D O. And if you had to my link in my bio, I have my YouTube channel there. In addition, I have a free webinar. That's going down on Saturday, December 18th at 11:00 AM EST, 10:00 AM CST. And the registration link is in my bio just to learn about, ways of course, your fitness goals for the new year.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. So good. Well, thank you. Definitely check her out. She's going to have so many more tips to give us start where you are. Don't compare yourself to anybody else. Just keep leveling up.
Dr. Janeeka Benoit: That's right.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. We know time is the currency.
As someone who understands that time is our most valuable asset. I am so honored that you have shared your time with me. Please click the subscribe button and join my Facebook beyond ADHD physician's perspective so that you never missed an opportunity to create time at will. Do you share this podcast with your friends, so they too can le

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 7 with Dr. Meriam Salama (Psychiatrist based in Ohio)

Dr. Meriam Salama is a Psychiatry Specialist based in OH. She has great passion to improve her patients quality of life; she's a very energetic mom and does Peloton and loves to travel. 
 
Dr. Meriam Salama: It comes from a place of wisdom where we have to lower our expectations of ourselves lower, the demands that we put on ourselves, lower the world's demands on ourselves and be able to just do the things that we can do. And then those things that cannot be done, they will be another day or another way to achieve.
Forgiving myself and changing my expectations on myself is a huge part of where I am today.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
I will be sharing with you physically. Some who have asked to remain anonymous and their names have been changed and others who have decided to tell us who they are. And so we're here to share their wins, their challenges and tips that they have learned themselves to become to where there are and be achieving and overachieving in this.
So my aim is to stop the mental stigma that is associated, unfortunately, with this disease. And to show you that ADHD is not just those kids, that we sometimes think mainly males running around distracting everybody, but it can be anyone. It could be male, female, they can be the J dreamer. They can be the very smart person across the room and they can be that overwhelmed mom or teacher or physician.
So let's do this together. Let's learn from me. So before getting started, I want to say something it's a little disclaimer while me and my guess who are both physicians? Yes. We're medical doctors, but we are not your doctors. Anything that you learn here is not meant to replace or substitute your own physician's advice or therapist or ADHD.
What we're sharing for you here are our opinions. Okay. So they're not meant to represent our own employers or hospital or any health system or any organization. Okay. It's just, we are just two physicians having a conversation to help you get more educator. So this week, I have a very special guest that I am super excited to share with you.
Her name is Dr. Miriam Salama. She is a psychiatrist and who lives in Ohio and she strives to improve her patient's quality of life. She has a great passion for this. Now she juggles being a mom of two boys who keep her on her. Entertained at all times. And she has to keep up with a very energetic, very successful private practice.
And she promotes some evaluations also on the. And on top of all this, she has high energy. She likes to do Peloton and she loves to travel the world. And she's a very social butterfly. That's why you have the treat of getting to know her today. Dr. Salama tell me, what were the circumstances of you finding out that you have ADHD?
Dr. Meriam Salama: So I struggled with difficulty sustaining attention and just remembering things and misplacing things since elementary school. And I struggled really hard. I struggled through high school. I struggled through medical school and I compensated for it by. Sending so much, so many more hours than the average person, just rereading material over and over walking four miles within wherever I was residing, reading things out loud coming up with schemes to remember things.
And so when I was a psychiatry resident during my child rotation the child psychiatrist attending that I was working with. Noted down how I was working really hard that I really cared about my work, but I had great difficulty remembering anything he said, unless I was writing it down and to how he had to repeat his instructions many times and the how I was there much later than all the other residents he has, we had worked with and he told me, you have ADHD.
You need to go. And being treatment. And that was my turning point.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: What did you think when they told you that?
Dr. Meriam Salama: I felt relieved that someone else recognized what I had been going through for very long now. I knew that I did have ADHD inattentive type. I knew all along. I just didn't have. The, either the encouragement or the opportunity or the window to address
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh How early did you know? Or you always knew?
Dr. Meriam Salama: I diagnosed myself that I had an attentive problem when I was in middle school. I knew it all. Wow. And then in high school, I decided I have to come up with all these structures in place to.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Did you ever try to ask your parents like, Hey, maybe I need some help or you just thought I'm just going to create systems.
Dr. Meriam Salama: So I created systems and because I was a good student, they were not going to be able to communicate and understand or be in my spot because. I really cared about my schoolwork. I knew I wanted to become a physician. And then when I started medical school, I knew I was going to become a psychiatrist.
And so I was also a very opinionated child. And so of course there was some rebellion and my parents. Weren't going to listen to my opinion, because I am already up opinionated to start with.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So did you grow up in Ohio?
Dr. Meriam Salama: No, I grew up actually in the middle east. I ha my parents were both professionals, both hardworking people who we went to British schools and I had a lot of resources, but that the diagnosis of ADHD was not very it wasn't spoken about wasn't identified around me at all.
And through medical school, I worked so hard to work against it. I learned ways how to also. Put my distraction to use so that I can roll with my drive. So I'm also a very passionate person and I'm also a very persistent person. So one of my strengths that helped me overcome ADHD is my stubbornness.
And I kept fighting to get what, where I was going. So I kept fighting to become the physician I was going to become. And then the psychiatrist. Going to the cop.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Do you mind sharing your ethnicity with us? No, I don't mind.
Dr. Meriam Salama: I am Egyptian. I grew up in Kuwait and Canada. I am a Canadian and American by immigration.And I've been in Ohio now for around seven around 14 years.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Perfect. Yeah. So I ask you this so that the listeners can see how it affects all cultures, right? Like all over the world. It doesn't matter where you are, like I'm Mexican American. And I grew up till I was in Mexico till I was 10. And then I moved to the U S I have the same thing that you just described, like this passion of I'm going to get this done no matter what. Because you were aligned with what was moving you, what was exciting you that was allowing you to like work above and beyond, like more than you had.
You just found it. Even though maybe somebody it would have taken them 40 hours, it'd probably take took you like 80 to 120 hours to do. Somebody else would have taken them 40 hours who didn't have ADHD, but the fact that this was your dream, you didn't care how long it was going to take you and you didn't care that it might take you a through C to figure it out, but you are going to do it right, because that's what you wanted.
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So it's so crazy how sometimes it's takes somebody else to point out how hard you are working, because most people always say, just study harder or just sit down or just stop, like distracting yourself. Like you can do that, right? If you could, you would, why would you, and listen, how you found the trick, you found that walking or moving.
Was going to stimulate your brain to get more dopamine into and be able to make those connections. And you found ways to set up systems that worked with the way your brain was thinking not against you, right? Correct. Yeah. So all those are things that people with ADHD learn to do without even knowing, but sometimes like, When I got diagnosed in medical school, I was just told here's some pills.
luck. Like I wish somebody else would have told me, Hey, you could probably hire like a therapist to walk you through whatever you've been through or an ADHD coach to show you that there's different ways of planning. So sometimes we don't know that there's more resources. Okay. So here you are, you get told you have ADHD.
What do you do next?
Dr. Meriam Salama: I went to my primary care physician. My primary care physician of course, is leery of my presenting my sentence, especially as the psychiatrist who I know these symptoms, like the back of my hand, because I treat patients who have ADHD. So it, I think it was one of the hardest days ever for me to go to my primary care as a society.
And say, this is really what I'm going through. Will you believe me? And she did her due diligence. She said, you probably do have symptoms at this point in time. I want you to go through neuro psych testing. I did two days worth of neuro psych testing, and I brought it back to her and she went ahead and started me on a stimulant.
And that truly. Truly helped me do less spinning of my wheels and air less checking less repetitive. Work to make sure that I didn't forget something that I, now I still have checks and balances in place. I still have to have, I have to have a lot of structure. So I say this all the time to myself and to patients that medications lower some of the intensity of some of my symptoms, but they don't eliminate.
And part of the symptoms are part of who we are as a character. So part of the symptoms are being able to think outside the box, being able to be creative, to be innovative. And those come along the same lines as someone who is not just doing what they're supposed to do whenever they're supposed to do it.
So part of our ADHD symptoms are ingrained in our kids. And that is part of our strength and tapping into that strength, being able to put those symptoms to work for us and so that we can flourish instead of always beating ourselves down because we don't fit into those boxes or we don't look typical, or we don't align with everyone.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: What do you think are those successful traits that have allowed you to do as a physician, I know you said you were stubborn, but you were also very intelligent an entrepreneur
Dr. Meriam Salama: One main thing that I had to learn throughout my journey is how to forgive myself for not meeting the standards that I'm supposed to meet.
And. To not hold myself to those standards. I know this sounds so outside the box and probably not popular at all, but it doesn't come from a place of. Laziness or a place of not being aware of how our world works, but it comes from a place of wisdom where we have to lower our expectations of ourselves lower, the demands that we put on ourselves, lower the world's demands on ourselves and be able to.
Do the things that we can do. And then those things that cannot be done, they will be another day or another way to achieve them. Forgiving myself and changing my expectations on myself is a huge part of where I am today. Also choosing to be flexible, choosing to not. Fall apart when things don't go as planned, always figuring out the next step in the moment and trying my best to just do what I can in the moment.
Knowing that not everything is going to rely on me meeting those specials.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So actually, that's something that I myself learned this past year and it's been like such a relief to know that, Hey, I'm just a human being like everybody else. And like the things that my brain keeps telling me that I'm not good enough fat.
It doesn't know, it doesn't know that I'm super optimistic and I want to do a hundred things and really manageable things are 10 things, not a hundred. And like you just said, having that self-compassion that awareness that you are doing the best thing that you can and what is important will get done and what is not, why am I so spinning out on it?
It's just not. It's just not the point. So that's so good that what you're sharing. I totally understand everything you just said. And the fact that you just said being flexible. So most people just think a, B and C. But with us, we're like a, B, C, D E F, like we're everywhere because it doesn't matter which one is as long as we get to what, where we need to.
And so that's so good because that makes you such a dynamic team player and such a leader too, because you don't just shut down when something didn't go exactly. As you thought, but. Ready to pivot and from a place of mindfulness, which is so different than just oh my God, I'm brand sick right now.
I think you've got some of this stretch TGS from your, you said you have two kids, that help you pivot a lot. Tell us about that.
Dr. Meriam Salama: So I do have two kids who also have ADHD. One has hyperactive type, one has inattentive type. I have the inattentive type and therefore being flexible, being open to plans, changing working with them.
Yeah. At the same time, doing parenting at the same time, giving them that place to be themselves. Where maybe outside our home they could be judged if they're moving too much or they could be judged because they're not paying attention. So I've created that space for me and them that they can just be who they are just like, I had to learn how to love who I am and create that space.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Do you have any resources for the mom out there? Who's oh my God. Okay. She has it. And she has kids. How does she manage it? Do you know any, like any books or any websites or anything that you could share with us?
Dr. Meriam Salama: So one of the books that I used as a mom is it's called smart, but scattered I don't, these.
Are not connected to me in any way, shape or form. But it's called smart, but scattered boost Annie child's ability to get organized versus impulse to stay focused. Use time wisely. Okay. By peg Dawson and Richard Greer. So this book did help me kinda create some lines and put into words.
Some of the ideas that I had flying around my head on how to approach, especially my son who has inattentive type also supports. Friends connecting with friends, granite, correct thing with other families. It does take a village to raise our kids. So having a supportive network and having people who truly care about me, like truly care about my family and kinda like partnering with them.
I have one of my friends that. Call her up once a week. And I just bounce ideas off of her on how to manage things, because sometimes I need someone who's outside of me. It's because I'm inside the family. And just, have more patients and. Do more waiting regarding the changes that need to happen.
They're going to, they're going to be later bloomers. They're going to, their brains are gonna grow in a different rate than everyone else around them. So learning how to not compare learning how to embrace who they are now, treasure, those moments, spend that quality time with them. And then, whenever they, transform into who they will become at whatever.
I will enjoy that one. That comes too,
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. That's so important. It's having a friend or several friends who are. What's the word blunt who are willing to tell you with love from a place of love that, you have a blind spot right there, or you could do this a little better or you're doing it just right.
Why are you punishing yourself? It's so important to be able to come to somebody with like your biggest dream, your biggest fears, because when we say them out loud, like we process them. And just hearing somebody else outside of you, it just brings it to a better place. Even in. I don't know, it just helps me verbalize it and sometimes write it, it's just a way to get it out and work on it when it's meant to be worked on.
Yeah. So that's so healthy that you share that tip. So one more question. Is there anything that if our listeners had to say, okay, the only thing I remember today is this thing, what would you tell them? W what would you tell them?
Dr. Meriam Salama: I would say that one of the hardest challenges I said I've had is to just accept myself as I am.
And I know we, we touched on that. Loving who we are as we are. And that is still
a journey for me. Yes. For all of us, because I'm always wanting to do more and wanting to be more. And and I think it comes with the driven part of ADHD or very driven people. And we're very passionate people.
And we, with things we care about, we truly, really care about. And so sometimes that crushes us within ourselves and. And, just setting aside time to actually be okay with who we are is I think the greatest takeaway.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: One more thing. Tell me about your goals for the next year. For the next five years.
[00:21:25] Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: You say you love to travel. I'm now that COVID is starting to calm down. Are you getting the trouble bag or what are you doing? What are your goals? And it could be your goals for travel, or it could be your goals for work. Just share with us.
Dr. Meriam Salama: So at some point in the next five years, I want to go to the Galapagos.
My oldest is a. He wants to be a zoologist or herpetologist. He is into reptiles and Marine life. And just being outside and seeing that level of wildlife, I, this is on my bucket list. So I'm going to do that at some point before he's all grown and gone. How old is he now? He's 13.
Dr. Meriam Salama: He currently wants to be an exotic reptile.Okay.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes. What about for you practice or anything professional that you are inspiring to do in the next five years?
I have a side gig. I do evaluations for probate court and their forum. So working with the state hospital on coming up with. Outpatient programs that maintain patients outside the hospital setting.
And so that's also part of my dream and I'm starting to open up that door with working with the state hospital here locally in Columbus.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: That's amazing. You feel people with ADHD, just think outside the box, they follow their passion and it leads them to making a change, right? Like we're not people who just said this is the way it's always been.
No, we ask how can we improve it? And how can we move it forward? Even though it can be a little hard sometimes that doesn't prevent you from doing what you want. Yeah, that's amazing. Okay. So I know our listeners are going to be like, how do I talk to this amazing mom and doctor? Where can they reach you?
Dr. Meriam Salama: Anyone who wants to reach me can use my email Meriam salaam@aol.com and it's M E R I a M dot S a L a M a at AOL.com
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Perfect. Oh my God. So thank you so much. That was an amazing interview. As you see, this is a lifelong disease, and. Just because you're smart and hardworking. It doesn't mean that you don't have it and it can affect any culture.
So if you suspect that you or somebody, may have ADHD, please seek out help. And just like she said, medication helps, but try all the other different things, exercise, sleeping, doing different things, and be willing to think outside the box and follow your dream. Thank you.
Dr. Meriam Salama: Thank you.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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.
 

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 6 with Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer (Pediatric Resident based in New Hampshire)

Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer is a pediatrician in Concord, New Hampshire, she has 2 kids and a proud mom to her fur babies. Join as today as she shares her wins and overcoming challenges. 
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: The, definitely the talking it out was a big part. And, um, I was, I feel very fortunate. The group that I was with and the attendings that I had, and a lot of hands-on learning, which made a huge difference in comparison to just having to read it out of a book
 
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: 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 for three and four years of age.
 
And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. 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.
 
So as we know ADHD, is in depth, it's just going to show up in different people, but it's going to affect us sometimes the same, sometimes a little different.
So I created this podcast to bring awareness that ADHD is a lifelong disease and I will be sharing with you interviews with many great physicians and some of them have asked to remain anonymous. And their name has been changed, but some have said, they're cool with telling us who they are and what they're all about.
So we are super excited about that. So we're going to share their wins and their challenges, and some tips on how ADHD can be a gift that can be unwrapped if you just know how to handle it. Right. So my aim is to stop the mental stigma that is associated with this condition. When most people think of ADHD, sometimes we just automatically think of a hyperactive boy running around.
Maybe with a lot of energy that we wish we could bottle. They are pretty smart. And sometimes we don't realize that an adult mother, a teacher, a physician can also have it. And so that's what we're here to talk about today. And before I go further, Give you the awesome speaker that we have today. I have to just give a small little disclosure while me and my guests are medical physicians.
We are not your medical physician. So the advice that we share here is not meant to substitute any of the advice or treatment that you are receiving from your own physician therapist or coach. In addition, anything that you hear here is not representing any of our employers or hospitals or any particular healthcare systems or organizations who that was a handful.
I just had to make my lawyer happy. So here we go. We got that out of the way. So today I have the pleasure of speaking with a very special person. Very excited about it. Her name is Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer and she grew up in New York and she went to the American University of Antigua College of Medicine.
And then she went to Crozer-Chester Medical Center for her pediatric residency in Pennsylvania. And now she is practicing in New Hampshire and she is married has 2 kids and lots of fur kiddos and she loves the New York Yankees and she's actually coaching her son's baseball team. So exciting.
All right. So here we go, Dr. Brittney, tell us all about you. How are you this morning?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Good. I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Tell me, we all want to know what were the circumstances that led to your ADHD diagnosis? Did you suspect anything yourself when you tell us the story?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: So mostly when I was a teenager, I did feel like something was just off and I didn't know what it was. I honestly did not know much about it, hyperfocus, hyperactivity, any of those types of things at the time, I feel like it was looked at very differently than it is now. And much more recently it's been know a lot more.
I would notice that, I could study for a test. I could read something and I knew I had read it. I had done some highlighting and then I would go back and look at it and was just not remembering what I had read. And there were certain subjects like math that I just got and did well in. And it didn't take a lot of effort.
There were things then like reading English, language, reading comprehension was the big thing. Like I said, that I could read through and it just, it felt fortress. You know, doing the passages where you had to answer the questions afterwards. I remember as a kid crying about this and just how stressful and frustrating it was.
And that's kind of funny because I had talked with my dad about it and the frustration. And it turns out years later that he also has ADHD, but we didn't know at the time. And so he told me that that's normal and that's how people feel about reading comprehension. And so, like I said, I had gone to my physician.
Well, you've gotten this far and you've done well, so just work harder. And so I took that as, okay. Then I just got to work harder. This must be me that, and I graduated from a high school. I did have a tutor for a verbal, for my SATs, because that was just so difficult for me. And he didn't know why. And even with that, it was okay.
It wasn't great. And then went onto college and struggled in certain areas that require that with the memory piece there and other subjects where were perfectly fine and required, very little effort. And then I, I did. Okay. You know, I always did well enough to, to keep going, but, I had a lot of trouble with my.
And a big part of that is the things that required longer studying longer memory were very difficult. And so I'd gone there, which I was grateful for. I loved my experience. I learned a lot, a lot of hands on experience and, um, and then when it came time for my step one exam, the first part of the boards and was having difficulty with that.
And just prior to then my dad, had been diagnosed with ADHD. And so they had mentioned in passing about what was going on with me. And so I met with a psychiatrist and spoke with them and they had seen some signs while we were talking and they sent me for official testing. And so I had the testing done, and this was in my mid twenties now.
And I remember, in a nice way, the psychologist who had done the testing kind of laughed, and I have this done because. It was, it was pretty bad. The significance of the ADHD from the diagnosis was definitely obvious. And so from there, I, we talked about medication and we talked about, some management at the time and I had tried the medication and then was able to sign up and take the board exam again and did really well with it.
And it just felt so different to sitting there for that all day exam on the medication. Versus not where, you know, towards the end of the day without it, I just wanted to be done. I needed to get up, but it was like painful to sit there any longer. And then with the medicine. It felt okay. And it was amazing to me that that's how other people felt naturally.
Right. And so I tell people, even now, like I can pair the day of the diagnosis and just that affirmation of knowing that I wasn't stupid. And there was something going on up there it's with the wedding day with the, having the kids day to day changed.
Yeah. So, you know, it's, I guess at that time, sometimes we don't, we didn't realize how genetic it can be.
Right. And so I remember when I myself got diagnosed, like it was, I wasn't sure if I was just anxious because of, you know, your, I got diagnosed in medical school. So I wasn't sure if it was, cause I'm just putting all this pressure and wanting to do so well. And then you don't or your grades, like you said, do not reflect how much effort you're putting into what you're doing. Right. And like you said, it can be so frustrating and irritating cause you keep questioning yourself and your, at least for me, I would question my self worth and I would wonder why can not just do it. I'm sitting here, I'm trying, but it's so frustrating.
And, and you know, you, you had the opportunity as a teenager to get the diagnosis, but unfortunately they said you're doing well enough. Right. But they didn't realize at the expense of how much effort. Put forth to be able to do what you were so passionate about. Right. And I think this is what makes and breaks people, you know, were you an athlete at all or did you do dancing or anything in, in high school or in college?
Actually both. I had done dance like growing up and then I got into softball and played from when I was about six until I was in like middle of high school time until I was 16. And I had gotten injured, so I had stopped, but then I got back into dance and did that through college and medical school too.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah.
So, you know, it wasn't until like maybe the last year that when I finally started to like, get curious after having ignored my diagnosis, I read that book ADHD 2.0. And it talked about how females tend to be under diagnosed. And once we are diagnosed sometimes undertreated and they say is. Uh, we tend to do things that UN unaware, like it's helping us like exercise.
And so sometimes that's kind of healthy, but sometimes like some other people unfortunately end up using drugs or other things that are not as healthy because they don't realize that that's how sometimes people use food. You know, they don't realize that that's a dopamine. That is increasing our capacity to be able to try to semi function.
And so you were probably speaking , it sounds like you were using that energy from exercising to try to get it better. Did you get any tutors during college or no?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: No, not at all. It's just discipline at the library studying a lot.
But the talking it out and discussing what we needed to learn actually made a, bit of a difference. And, the type of learner that I was, without even realizing it. I guess why I was doing it or what I was doing at four. Yeah. We made a big difference.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So that's exactly also how I feel like I ended up learning stuff. I was just as frustrated, like reading paragraphs and paragraphs. And I was like, what, what, like. But you go back and do it again and again, but when you would talk to somebody about it, all of a sudden to be able to, you grasped it a little bit longer, to be able to like put it into sentences or them telling it back to you, and that made a difference.
So sometimes did you notice that, like if you had a written exam that was like, you could explain your answer versus a multiple choice, that was that a little bit easier for you or if you had like a presentation or how did you do with those type of tests?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: So it depends on what it was sometimes. Honestly, just a quick answer was better because I, I found that keeping all of my thoughts in order was very difficult. So getting them out in a way that was easy for others to understand.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Great
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Even remembering in residency and presenting, you know, the patients that we were talking about and being told by a wonderful attending, you know, just tell it like a story and thinking, well, that's really hard to do my stories, go all over the place.
And I think, you know, having a lot of thoughts and, and trying to organize them into something that flows well is something else that was really difficult.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So how did you do it? Like in residency you were taking meds then?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Yes. For most of it, actually, I did stop when I had gotten pregnant with my son, which was the beginning of intern year.
And, oh yeah, when we do things we do all whole bunch of the time we had gotten married and started, started residency and then had gotten pregnant. And so I went intern year without completely. And then my second year I wanted to breastfeed. That was something that was really important to me. And I feel like part of it too is, is knowing I'm in control.
Different things. And that helps me. And so that was something I wanted to do to help me feel in control, I guess. And I knew it was important to me. So a lot of my second year, actually, I hadn't died there because at that time, and I know things are a bit different now, but I was told that I definitely could not be on medications for either pregnancy or for nursing.
I was studying for a first step three throughout there. So once in a while I would take the medication, but, but usually not. And, uh, it wasn't until my third year that I did. And. But then I had gone for not too long after that. And so stopped again.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. So I know life happens and that's the thing, right? Like you just go with it. So what strategies did you find, like you were able to implement during your first and second and third year? Because, uh, you know, The knowledge that was there at that time. And the fact that, well, you made a personal choice, which was a good one. And did you keep doing what you did and, uh, like just talking it out with other people, did you learn a way to like visualize it?
Did you learn to tell stories? How did you, how did you do it? What strategies did you use at that point?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: The, definitely the talking it out was a big part. And, um, I was, I feel very fortunate. The group that I was with and the attendings that I had, and a lot of hands-on learning, which made a huge difference in comparison to just having to read it out of a book and, and try to imagine that real life experience, it's a lot easier.
It's, it's maybe more exciting and, and just the way it works differently than just reading it out of a book, but it's, it's good to my husband's really supportive. I was diagnosed after we had started dating. So he was always supportive and I could go to him and say, listen, I need to read this. I need to remember this.
It's really important. Can you just listen to me, talk about this or talk about it with me or I'd make flashcards and he'd help me go through them or just big poster boards or whatever it was. You know, any tasks I knew I could go to him too and ask for his assistance with it. And he was always there for that, which was right.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. That's really, that's really good to have a support system and to feel like you could be yourself, right? Like that's the beauty of it. Not feeling like you have to feel, you know, less of or anything like that. Right. How do you think, like your diagnosis might've impact like those people around you, either like your family, your friends, or any of your patients, like, do you think it made a difference? Like, did you, did, what do you think happened?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: So I think it in the different areas like that, there's definitely been a, a difference in how it's had an impact. Patient-wise I try to use it as a helpful tool. And especially when there's behavioral concerns or learning concerns or anything like that, I try to keep in mind how my experience was with my physician and not say, oh, you're all right, you're your bed just work harder. But to listen and, and realize that individuals. And then of course the parents as being in pediatrics, know that person best. And if they're saying something's wrong, something's wrong. And so talking it out and trying to figure it out and, and letting them know too.
I have ADHD because I've had some that have verbalized or have shown that they're worried about this diagnosis and what, how this will impact them and what effect it might have on their future and telling them that their future is not over. In fact, it's maybe even easier to get to where they want to now, because they've been working extra hard and struggling potentially.
And so to provide encouragement and say, you know, I have this too, and I'm feeling. It's okay. You can do anything that you want to do. Anything is possible, you know, so I try to be open and honest there and provide support in different ways. And then with my own family, I think it's, it's been a great thing because we all have our own quirks and our personality traits.
And, um, I've certainly gotten to know myself. And then, like I said, my husband's wonderful. He's gotten to know me very well over the time too. And sometime can anticipate something that may be tougher for me before I even do. But knowing the scenarios that could be more troublesome for myself, kind of preparing for that or, or just, you know, if I get stressed out over something, he knows why, and we don't have trouble because of it.
I think that's been very helpful there with, with marriage and then with my own kids, my son was diagnosed with ADHD probably a couple months ago. And it's something that we've seen over the last couple of years and we've kept an eye on and we had agreed my husband and I that once we got to a point that it might be causing some difficulty, we certainly didn't want him to get to the point that.
And that was my big fear was that he would not enjoy school or learning or would get frustrated with himself. And I didn't want him to feel that like I did. And so as soon as we got to that point, we had the testing done and, and so he had started medication and just even seeing the change in him and the change in how he feels about himself too.
He's six. Like, it just, it breaks your heart, but I'm so glad now. And that's been, I feel like having my diagnosis has helped him so that he won't have those years of struggling as well. And then just relationship wise with friends and, and so forth, you know, we go, we go way back to before diagnosis time. And so they just, they know me.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And it's so good. Like you said, to have that diagnosis and to have that awareness, not just like you said for yourself, but like, to be able to be everything for your kid. Right. And to advocate, and to also, like you just said, be able to. To the parents of our patients when they do get a diagnosis and take that extra step to not just say, oh, it's just anxiety or it's just depression, or they're just being a kid or, oh, they're just stressed.
Right? Because sometimes as we now know, all those things could correlate and sometimes they can exist at the same time. And sometimes. Just ADHD, but they're still frustrated that it's making them depressed. Right. And so it's so good to have that insight. And like you said, now, be able to channel it and be aware that this is normal in the sense that it's genetic and how can we, uh, work with it. Right? Instead of against it. And so that you could support, have you come across any like resources to help yourself or to help your, your kid, uh, or any of your patients that you think that people should really know about?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Their habits, some books that are talked about and some other resources, there's some research that's going on too. I think the thing that's most helpful have been these stories or a little bit of research explaining because everyone's different. And I, I usually explain ADHD diagnosis similarly to an autism diagnosis in that it's very much a spectrum of how people feel and how people will react in certain situations.
And we're not all the same by any means what you may see in one person. You may not see another person with the same diagnosis. Doesn't mean, one of them doesn't have it, it, they do. It's just, there's a range in how you feel and how it affects you. There's also a huge range in what will help and, you know, so kind of getting to know yourself over time.
And so I always tell people to be patient with yourselves and, and, you know, over time this will will get better too, but certainly counseling and someone who is experienced with the diagnosis can be very helpful to help point those out. Um and then tools for those particular concerns. But just for myself, reading more about the diagnosis, talking with others in a similar scenario has been helpful too.
And then giving some of those resources, like to my husband to read or to those close to me to read so that they can see, you know, like if I go into a crowded supermarket on the weekend, I am stressed out. So stressed. And from that I can, you know, a shorter fuse. Kind of all over the place and distracted, and that's not, you know, in a bad mood or anything like that.
That's just how I feel because of so much stimulation going on around me. But someone else may feel fine with that. But seeing and reading different things that. So many scenarios and how someone may react has been so helpful in, uh, in showing that it can be with a diagnosis too. And not just, you know, me being a pain in the tush.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes. I know what you mean now. How are you with time? Like some of us, he attempt to like, not be aware of time. Like I know like my husband would sometimes ask me, how long is that going to take you? And I would say like 15 minutes and then. Okay. So like an hour and I would look at him like, are you crazy? And then like, sure enough above almost an hour later, he's like, you ready? I'm like, yeah. I was about to finish. I'm like, how long has that been? And he's like an hour and I'm like, oh, okay.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: I'm definitely not fantastic. I feel like the whole concept of time, it's very a variant, but I feel like that's one of the things I've gotten to know about me over the years. And so like, if I know, I need to say leave to be somewhere at nine 30, I have to tell myself nine 15, because then I will leave by nine 30.
Whereas that always used to be an issue. And it's hard because I get very stressed if I'm late. I don't like being late, so it's just, it's a lot of pressure, but certainly with tasks too, you know, I sometimes depending on the medicine does help a lot, but I can do the one task I set my mind to most times though, like if I want to, you know, put away something, you know, put a, hang up a code or something, I'll pick up that code.
That's probably lying on the floor from one of the kids and then keep walking and be like, oh, I need to put this away too. And oh yeah, I was going to do that. And so that one task that could have taken 30 seconds. Usually it takes more, my hands are usually full by the end of it, but certainly it, uh, it takes a little longer.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So one of the things that I learned, I actually, this past year, I, I got more curious and I invested in an ADHD coach myself so that I could understand what other strategies. And one of the things that they pointed out to me was that people with ADHD, we tell you the time that it's gonna take us to complete the task, but we do not factor.
Kind of like the pre-task and the com and the post task. And so we only look at like the middle, like if you're looking at a recipe, like we don't tell you, oh, I need to go gather all the ingredients. And then I got, gotta clean up the ingredients. And like, to us, we just tell you like the middle, like, if we somehow magically all the ingredients came and somehow magically everything after whatever you were going to do.
Magically taken care of. And so, so now having that awareness and having that explained to me, it's a lot easier now, because then now I can give almost a little better estimate, but still not quite, but it's still a lot better. And now I'm aware of it. And now I've actually used timers and different things to give me like an external cue.
I say this because a lot of people think, oh my God, like, how do they stay? So calm as a , you know, as a cucumber, if there's like an emergency going on. And it's because for us, there's only two times like now and not now. Right. And so, so if it's like, now it doesn't matter. It was just like, what was like five minutes ago. Right. Even though everybody's freaking out, you're just like, oh, it's okay. And that's also why we can't take. So long and aware of how long it's. So it's so good to have that external queue. And sometimes, like you said, it could be a husband or a friend just calling you to make sure like you completed a task or whatever you had set out to do right now.
Another thing that they also taught me, which you might want to implement if you're not doing is, the five minute pickup. And so it's supposed to be a fun way. Everybody gets involved. Like your husband, your kids, literally just for five minutes, like you put the timer and like everybody tackles like a part.
So like maybe somebody will put away the dishes or somebody will pick up the shoes or whatever, just for five minutes. And you do that every day. And if there's like three or four people, you know, That's 20 minutes, times seven and ends up saving you like two or three hours of your week, which is five minutes.
So yeah. And so it can make, it can be helpful. Like you just said, you picked up one thing, they should have been 30 seconds and somehow you ended up everywhere else. Right? Like
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Exactly. And we try to do that, you know, each day, especially. With having the kids and the dog and the cat and all of our other furry feathered kids.
And it makes a big difference, Trying to work with my son too, on that. My daughter's a little young she's three, but, but with my six-year-old and each night, like the playroom or, or his, his things that are out or getting his bag ready, or, you know, doing those types of things that that can be helpful. And I got to say too, I have a few different apps on my phone, but to do list apps and, and reminder ones and things like that too, which if I know that there's tasks I need to do, I set a time for it.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: And I have it remind me and remind me so that I make sure that I get it done at that time, that I know will be clear that it'll work for me. And so I don't forget, or don't stress out about knowing I have this to do. And, um, and that's made a lot of differences as well.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, that's very helpful that you understand, again, that you understand yourself and you're not judging yourself, but you are just becoming aware of how can I enhance what I need to do and make sure I have a way to try to do it, you know?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Exactly.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So do you think reflecting back, is there any specific, you think ADHD characteristics that has, has been so helpful in your success and becoming a physician? You think
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: I, you know, I don't know if it's the part with ADHD diagnosis. And myself, or just the years of struggling with it and, you know, trying to do the best I could and not wanting to give up and that trait stuck. But I definitely, you know, I don't want to give up on, on anything. I pushed myself and me to complete it and me to succeed, show myself, you know, sometimes that I can or know.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: I guess what I'm asking you is like, do you think, like, as a physician, maybe sometimes you're more like intuitive or if like maybe you think outside the box a little bit, or if you tend to be like flexible and on your feet, like, you know, sometimes ADHD can give us lots of different gifts.
Like we tend to be, uh, a little bit more daring, a little bit more impulsive. So times, you know, a little bit more spontaneous, right. Also.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Yes, definitely all of that.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: And I think you mentioned, to me, not, not now, but the you're going to go camping. Right? You get outdoors. Yeah.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Oh yeah. Yeah. We, we definitely love to stay active and, and do different things as a family.
And, so we're going camping this coming week. And, very fortunately I have off on Thursdays at the moment. And so I'm trying, especially during the summertime. each week do something with, uh, with one of the kids and where we get out together and they're active and get to spend that time. And we certainly keep busy, you know, and coaching my son's baseball and he does Karate and Cub Scouts. My daughter does dance and I do that with her and, you know, always busy, but it's a lot of fun too.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah. That's a little bit the beauty of it, like learning to do the things that are passionable for us. And that keep us you know, aligned with their family and with our goals. Do you have any big goals or anything that you're thinking the next five years that you're striving for either like with your family to travel somewhere or just with your practice or, or you're still thinking about those things
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Still thinking about those are good amount, always the family time and is really important to me and spending time with them, what we can do together and learn, and being there for them.
Is number one for sure. And similarly with my, with my patients, my kiddos in their families and supporting them and seeing how they all grow and change and succeed.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Do you work inpatient or outpatient or both?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Outpatient
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Okay, perfect.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: I love that. A continuity idea and seeing them grow. Yeah.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So if our listeners wanted to get in touch with you and ask you some questions, or just send you a hello, this was an amazing episode. How can they get in contact with you?
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Probably the best way. I guess, it would be an email to start with.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Sure.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer:  So the email had given you the DavisBrittany2@yahoo.com. It's a D A V I S B R I T T A N Y, the number two, at, yahoo.com. And, yeah, I'd be happy to chat or experiences or questions or anything. Yeah.
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Well, Brittany, Dr. Brittany, it was such a pleasure meeting you and learning about how you became diagnosed and how you have been able to take your own experiences and enrich the lives of everybody else around you. And likewise be an advocate for your patients and for your own family too. Continue striving and continue living a fulfilling life that we're able to share or gifts of ADHD with the world.
Thank you so much for coming today and to our listeners. Thank you for tuning in and please come join us next week as we continue to talking to the amazing physicians with ADHD.
Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Thank you so much again for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you.
 
Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh:  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.