Why Your Brain Feels Different in Perimenopause - ADHD, Hormones & RSD with Kate Moryoussef

Welcome, I'm Katherine Morgan and you're listening to It's Not About The Money, a podcast for anyone ready to feel safe, seen and powerful in their relationship with money. So ADHD, perimenopause or both of these things, if your brain fog right now has turned into missed deadlines, exploding laundry piles, impulsive midnight Amazon cart purchases, this conversation might just save your sanity. I'm really excited today to be joined by a good friend of mine, Kate. Kate is a ADHD women's lifestyle and wellbeing coach.

She is an EFT practitioner, the host of the most incredible podcast. We're going to share more about that later with you and also author of the ADHD women's wellbeing toolkit and mum of four amazing, beautiful, uniquely neurodivergent children. We're going to spend some time talking today about women's health, hormones, and also an area that I was only very recently introduced to called RSD and how significant that can be for women navigating this. So welcome Kate to today's video and podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to be here and looking forward to this conversation. Kate, I want to just go into a little piece actually to begin with about your own experience because similar to me, you had a late diagnosis at 40, didn't you, for ADHD.

Can you just tell our listeners a little bit about what was your own personal experience of having an adult diagnosis? Yeah, so I was diagnosed over four, five years ago now. That was in 2020 and it was definitely something that has completely changed my life and allowed me to see myself, my childhood, my family and my children and everything around us. There's a whole ecosystem around us in a completely different light and so I'm so very grateful to have had this awareness and this understanding.

It came off the back of wanting to help my daughter who was nine at the time and help her get that support that she needed. And, you know, we'd gone around the houses looking for, you know, different assessments that could help her with her, you know, her time at school and processing and her language and all sorts of things. And we never really got there. We went for all different types of assessments and nothing came back conclusive.

And it was when I was homeschooling her during the pandemic that I was seeing with my own eyes, you know, ADHD play out in so many different ways. And I started putting the symptoms into, you know, Google, what I could see. And, you know, straight away came back, you know, ADHD in girls. And for me, that was just like, wow, you know, not only is that her that I'm, you know, helping and understanding, I'm recognising this in myself.

You know, my two brothers were diagnosed at a much younger age, you know, back in childhood. So back in the, you know, late 80s, early 90s, they both got an ADHD diagnosis. That's quite unusual. Yeah, my younger brother was, yeah, he was, he was diagnosed in the early 90s.

And my older brother was diagnosed definitely in the late 80s. They were one of the first, you know, definitely to get that full, you know, ADD, what it was called then, diagnosis. But, you know, I was the girl and I was the one in the middle and I was not disruptive and I wasn't naughty and I wasn't explosive and I wasn't impulsive. You know, all those external traits that you often see in boys, you know, they were sadly kicked out of schools.

They weren't supported. They were, you know, labelled naughty and disobedient and disruptive and all those very, very negative connotations. And I was the girl in the middle that didn't cause any chaos. And my parents were just, you know, could focus on the boys.

But a lot of my symptoms, you know, like so many women and girls were internalized, were repressed, were not understood, were not helped, were not supported. But there was lots of indications and lots of signs throughout my whole childhood and life. And, you know, throughout my whole, all the different chapters, especially those hormonal chapters that would show me that there was ADHD there, you know, from a very young age. I mean, the journey you've been on literally parallels my entire own experience.

Really interesting that I was diagnosed at 41 because I was going down the path route for my two boys who were also during lockdown experiencing, just before lockdown actually, were experiencing really significant emotional regulation and sensitivity challenges. And actually lockdown for us was a really positive time. Having them at home was the best thing that could have happened for us. I know that it wasn't always a great experience for everybody, but from an emotional regulation perspective, it was a lifesaver, really.

Kate, how did you feel about having the actual diagnosis? Because I know a lot of our listeners are maybe listening to episodes on podcasts, or they might be thinking, I might have ADHD, but I don't know. Is it worth getting diagnosed? What would you say to anyone who thinks that they may be neurodivergent, whether that's ADHD or autism?

How was that diagnosis for you what did it help you to do? Listen I found it on the whole a very positive experience because for me I needed that validation and that recognition and I just I finally had answers you know I always say about my poor husband you know we've been together since I was 21 you know I literally met him in my last year of university and I couldn't even get my dissertation done in time you know he was helping me um in the small hours write it print off you know I'd left it till the very very last minute I was completely overwhelmed I didn't know how to do all the citations and all of like I knew all that I wanted to say but to get that dissertation done printed on time was horrendous I actually even think I got some form of extension and I don't even know how I managed that.

So from that moment, he has seen it play out. But, you know, I've had four kids and with each child, I've wanted to fulfill my potential, you know, through work. But there's just been so many obstacles, you know, so many things in the way and so much my self-esteem and my self-worth took a huge knock. And he couldn't understand why there was so many sensitivity and emotional issues so many things that I really struggled with with overwhelm or executive functioning or even just the organization side of things um he really has been a huge help and structure and scaffolding but he's also seen it play out in lots of positive ways with you know business and entrepreneur my entrepreneurial creative side and just so many ideas and things that I want to do and execute and have done you know he seemed to have an idea and within two weeks fully executed it in like a massive hyper focus and he's just like what the hell but that going back to the diagnosis that that was answers and he never had those answers for me and so I was so grateful but then you know as so many women go through there's that process of grief and sadness and anger and just like resentment, resentment about the fact that like, why did no one pick this up?

No, why did no one, you know, support me? Why, you know, did no one tell me about this? So there's a bit of healing, there's grieving, there's going through that sort of like that process of emotions. But on the whole, it's like, oh, now I finally understand myself.

And, you know, even when I got my diagnosis five and a half years ago, there wasn't a lot of information and resources out there was just emerging. It was just beginning. There was one or two podcasts and I wanted to get the answers. I wanted to find out more.

And that's why I began my podcast, because I thought, well, no one's asking the questions. You know, I'm a very naturally curious person. Again, you know, a huge ADHD trait. And I thought, if no one's going to ask those questions, it's going to have to be me.

And, you know, it's been a hyper focus for four and a bit years now of the podcast, you know, every single week releasing episodes to try and get this information out there and the nuances of how ADHD shows up in women and girls. We're ensuring that women are getting this information because they're not getting it from their healthcare providers. They're not getting it from their GP. They're not getting it from their hormone specialists.

They are not getting it from their gynecologists. And we see how much all of this intertwines, you know, even just our physical health, you know, if we're going to a physio or we're going to any type of healthcare specialist, they're not neuroaffirming or they're not, you know, neuroinformed, we're not getting the full picture. And so through the podcast, that is why I've wanted to give women that full picture so they are empowered with more information so they can help themselves, they can heal, they can understand past generations.

There's so much generational healing. I know you work a lot with that and help our children because we want to break those patterns now. We want to be able to move forwards and we're still not there, you know, we're still very much far, you know, far away from this picture of clarity, but we are definitely much further than we were five years ago. So that's what drives me and keeps me going.

And yeah, I'm very happy I got that diagnosis. And how does, for you, how did the perimenopause menopause piece come into this for you Because I think this is something that isn spoken about And I know that I was on your Instagram account just last week and you were speaking about this new series that come out called Balance and I'm halfway through watching this myself and I know that you commented on how actually there it was a fantastic series but there were some elements missing around the connection with perimenopause and specifically ADHD yeah what was that journey like for you and why is it so important that people acknowledge the link between these two things.

Yeah, I mean, it's a huge, huge connection. And it's often the biggest connection for women because I've not spoken to one neurodivergent woman diagnosed or self-diagnosed who hasn't suffered hormonally with women's health issues. And all the many things that come with that, such as migraines or gut issues or endometriosis, chronic pain fibromyalgia many different things um and it's very much to do with sort of like an inflammation is it you know a lot of people think there's inflammation there um due to many reasons however the hormonal side is very often you'll have a girl who presents with adhd symptoms and very early on age two three four five whatever that might be and they're sort of manageable and it's something that you can you know can deal with and when puberty kicks in all of a sudden things are ramped up and rsd you know sensitivity emotional regulation all the things that we were coping with as parents or they were coping with all of a sudden feel much harder much more challenging and much more apparent you know friendship issues meltdowns all of those things and that is the the hormone driving that and we know there's an estrogen and dopamine connection we also know that neurodivergent women and girls have more extreme hormonal fluctuations and more extreme hormonal sensitivity and it's all connected with the brain which we know with adhd is neurobiological so everything the brain connects with our gut it connects with all parts of us you know our vagus nerve our nervous system so what we need to know about adhd is not just a concentration problem, a focus problem, an organization or a working memory problem.

This is a full body experience. And it's so important that we understand this is a full mind-body connection. And hormones are so, so important. So we've talked about puberty, then we talk about, you know, pregnancy and childbirth, you know, all these big chapter moments.

A lot of women, again, neurodivergent women, whether they're undiagnosed or, you know, diagnosed, they suffer with things like postnatal depression, difficulty, you know, physically, you know, with symptoms as well. There's some very small amount of research with regards to sickness, you know, we're more likely to have sickness with pregnancy. That's sort of, you know, again, we don't have enough research. This is the problem.

We don't have enough. It's all anecdotal. And then we're moving from postnatal into perimenopause. And we're understanding that perimenopause seems to come earlier and it seems to come harder with neurodivergent women.

And then on top of all of that, we've got our monthly cycles. So we also know there's a statistic around about 50% of neurodivergent women also suffer with PMDD, which is a much more severe, you know, PMS is, you know, post pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder is what it's short for. It means that for pretty much two weeks of your cycle, you feel absolutely wretched. You feel horrendous.

Unfortunately, there's suicidal ideation with that. This is not something to be dismissed. This is not something that can be invalidated. And this is something that must be talked about because this is women's lives, women's health.

And often it's happening at least 50% of our life, we are dealing with these hormonal fluctuations, which are much more extreme and dominating than norocupical women, their experience. Well, there's so many questions I want to ask you here. Can you just explain for anybody who hasn't come across RSD what that is and how does that affect us as women? Yeah.

So RSD is rejection-sensitive dysphoria. It was coined by a psychiatrist called Dr. William Dodson, who is an older gentleman now, but he started recognising that in his clinic, and I think he started doing quite a bit of research, that there was a much higher proportion of the people he was seeing with ADHD who were also very, very emotionally sensitive to things like rejection, feedback, criticism, friendship, relationship dynamics, anything with regards to, I guess the perceived or the actual feeling of not being wanted or rejected and that can show up in so many different ways you know it can show up in friendships relationships social environments work in so many ways and it can play from a very very young age so if you have a child that is one of those children that really notices those those friendship dynamics and feels very very very emotionally hurt after something that's happened at school.

And that has been a consistent area in your life that you feel it. And it can be a very visceral bodily reaction as well. And it can feel like something that is so overwhelming that you can't get past. You can sit with it often for weeks, years.

And sometimes it can just be so all-consuming that you can't move, you can't think about anything else. You just feel so devastated by that rejection. And that is something that we see is very, very common in this neurodivergent community. And so many people have been said, why are you so sensitive?

Stop being so touchy. Stop taking things to heart. Like, just get over it. Why can't you move past it?

Like, we hear all of this. I'm nodding my head like, yes, I remember hearing all of those things. Yeah. And it can feel, again, really, really invalidating.

But when we understand RSD, you know, I've got a whole chapter of it in my book because it's so part and parcel of this. And it feeds into things like people pleasing and perfectionism and not feeling worthy and overworking and loads of different traits. Again, we see very often with ADHD women who don't understand what's driving these traits, not understanding why it's so important that they feel safe in friendships and safe in relationships. And their nervous system often is so sort of hypervigilant to this.

yeah, it's like hours worth of trying to understand all of this. But I think awareness is definitely key. Did you experience RSD yourself? Yeah, I mean, listen, I've experienced it so much.

And I've seen it play out in my family. I definitely, I think it's made me a much more empathic person or empathetic person. Because the thought of leaving someone else out or excluding someone or bullying like if I hear about bullying I get so so deeply upset like I've said to all my children like if I ever hear you know children obviously are children and these things do happen but it's just like you must never make anyone feel like that because you know how bad it feels right and that just sensitivity that drives us as well so of course you know even as an adult you feel ridiculous like you're a grown woman is like they went out for coffee without me and why didn't they invite me and it's like get a grip but at the same time now I'm able to say if this impacts you because you are much more sensitive and you are much more empathic and that can really really help with the job that you do and the way you care but it also has a bit of a negative impact on us because we care so much and it is very much about finding tools and strategies that work for us and again you know I have that in the book because I realize yes we can understand it and we can be aware of it but how do we move through it and many of us just maybe have like built-in scaffolding you know strategies that we've kind of come up with ourselves but sometimes we don't and it can freeze us in the moment and it can freeze us and it can be all-consuming it's you know like holding on to resentment or pain or anything like that is not good for our bodies it's not good for our health.

So I try really hard to move through it. And I think this is a great time actually to talk about the connection of the nervous system and emotional freedom technique, which I know you are also an EFT practitioner, the same as myself. And I discovered EFT five years ago, I think it was now. And interestingly, at the time when I started using EFT, I didn't use EFT because I wasn't diagnosed at that point but I when I started understanding the nervous system the connection with emotional regulation and the vagal nerve and all of the the the dangers really of holding emotion in the body it was literally like someone had given me a magic tool that I couldn't believe why nobody else that I knew knew about EFT and was using EFT and I know that you also have been teaching this with your youngest daughter and I also did the same with my two children and they sometimes would come home from school and say mum I've been doing that tapping thing in the toilet because I had this argument with a friend and I was feeling really upset and I went into the toilet and I was doing some tapping and I felt so much better afterwards so I know that your journey is quite similar to mine in that way and I would just love to for our listeners to understand what is emotional freedom technique and how is that connected to the nervous system and therefore how does that help women who may be resonating with rsd or perimenopause or yeah Yeah I mean I think EFT is a really good tool for RSD I mean not to use all these acronyms but it's definitely, I've actually done a couple of workshops on that.

You can find it on my website because I found it such a good tool to be able to acknowledge it, accept it, and then move through it. So I agree with you 100% with I was the same. I actually trained in EFT before my ADHD diagnosis because I was anxious. I felt overwhelmed a lot.

I felt like I needed a release. I needed to be able to process. And I couldn't work out why I couldn't do all those things. And I tried therapy and all sorts of different modalities.

And I tried, I actually had it done on me because I'd gone through a bit of a trauma. And the person who I was having therapy with said, do you mind if we try this? And I was like, I don't even have a clue what this is, but let's give it a go. And I found it so effective and it was so quick.

I was like, this is amazing. And I felt amazing afterwards. So I immediately, very ADHD, found a practitioner who was training and I went and trained in it. And I was just, this is incredible.

I went through all the different stages and I started to realize how much it was calming and regulating me but it was also helping me sift through all that noise that was going on in my in my head and my brain and allow my body to feel calmer and so then I started once I got my ADHD diagnosis and I was coaching I was like I need to integrate this and I want to be able to talk about why I think this is really powerful for ADHD and no one was talking about this I was like I can't be the first person but I googled EFT for ADHD and it was like there was a few couple of resources and that was it so then I created some resources and workshops and I realized there was a lot of people that were also finding EFT really helpful and it basically works with your nervous system it works with your your brain it calms your amygdala down which is that sort of fight or flight part of our brain that is like the lighthouse that wants to look out for danger and it's that hypervigilance and it's very helpful if you are in acute danger.

It's not so helpful if we're living day to day just with our nervous system and sort of hypervigilant sympathetic mode. So it helps bring down the cortisol in your body. It calms the amygdala and then it brings our nervous system from that sympathetic state back into parasympathetic, which is our calm rest and digest, which allows us to think with more clarity. It gives us new perspectives.

It gives us compassion and self-acceptance. And that's very often what we're working with. The whole fundamental of it is leaning into self-acceptance, leaning into self-love and compassion. And then from that place, when we're in that kind of calmer state, we're able to see things differently and let go of things.

Or on the flip side, we're able to release things from our body and our nervous system. So a lot of people will have, again, like a bodily reaction, like a visceral reaction of like crying or yawning, or they'll feel like pain that was or tension in their shoulders move or be released. So, you know, I tell a lot of people, even if you don't know what's overwhelming you, just tap on that tension in my shoulder, that tension in my shoulder, and it can be very helpful. I wonder if we'll pop a link to some resources around EFT in the notes.

And I've also done some separate videos and podcasts on this myself. So we'll pop a bunch of resources in there for people listening right now. But I wonder if we could just do a little quick demo just to show people what this would look like in practice. I know this is something you do regularly in your daily rituals and routines.

And for myself too, I use it a lot, especially around money and money anxiety that comes up for people. So I wonder if we could just do a little quick demo for those people who are watching this on YouTube or Spotify. If you're listening over on the podcast audio, then come and hang out with us over on one of those channels to have a look at what we're doing. um we'll go kate goes more into the various tapping points in her free training video so i'll pop that in in the show notes but we're essentially what we're doing is we're tapping on these meridian points aren't we kate so we're tapping on these points that connects everything to our kind of electrical system in our bodies and i know that most eft practitioners will start on this kind of karate chop point on the hands and we will go into a typical kind of setup point here so maybe kate do you want to show people what your setup phrase might be if, for example, you were experiencing some overwhelm in your day?

Yeah. I mean, I think, like you say, we're all quite different with the way we start things. But essentially, we start with this place. And I always say, don't over complicate it.

Don't worry. You can't say the wrong thing. So if you are just right now, you're feeling overwhelmed, and maybe there's just so much going on, you're not quite sure. Just say, am today, I'm feeling overwhelmed and I'm not sure why.

And there's just maybe so many things that's overwhelming me and that's okay. And even though I'm feeling overwhelmed and I'm not sure why, and maybe there's just so many things that are overwhelming me right now, I'm going to send myself some love and compassion and just meet myself where I'm at. And then we'll do that last time even though I'm feeling so overwhelmed I'm not even sure what I'm doing here tapping on my hand I'm just going to send myself some love and some acceptance and deep self-compassion and give this a go so then once we've tapped here we move to the face now like as you said We've got meridian points all around our hands, face, upper body.

And we can just say all this overwhelm. All this overwhelm. We're going to tap on the side of our eyes. I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Maybe I know why. Top of the lip. Or maybe I don't. Maybe it's just all come together at once.

and I can just feel my body and my nervous system just feeling overwhelmed. It just feels like a lot. We're tapping on the side, kind of where our bra strap is. Now, sometimes some people tap on the head.

Some people don't like it. I don't like it, so I tap on my head. But if you don't, you can come back to the collarbone, and we can just go back, go back to the face, and we just say, maybe I do know why I'm overwhelmed maybe there's just so much going on and I'm trying to do so much maybe I've taken on too much maybe I've said yes too much or maybe I'm just holding so much for so many people whatever whatever is going on for you it's important you state that so if I'm saying something right now that doesn't resonate please just change the words but you can literally just keep tapping on all this overwhelm yeah all this overwhelm and we just keep tapping and then what will happen is that while you're tapping you might start noticing the thing that is tipping you over what is caused that overwhelm what it is that you have said yes to that you didn't want to say yes to or who's contributed or what's contributed and you can give yourself that love and that self-compassion to say that's okay that's okay one of the things i love about this is that This setup statement, there's a few variances of it.

And you've probably seen me in some of my work, anyone who's watching this, tapping on slightly different points. And there's different variations of this. In the EFT clinical procedure that I learned, we go from the side of the hand onto the top of the fingers. Yes.

And then we move from the fingers to the top of the crown here on the head. And then down through all those points that Kate's just shared with us. And there's no right or wrong way of doing it. It's just different meridian points around the body.

and one of the things I love is just as Kate shared there is to talk out loud and say you know even though I am feeling all this overwhelm I deeply and completely love and accept myself yeah or you can say even though I'm feeling all this overwhelm and this is another meridian I love that point yeah I love that point that point there is a great point I often do that and I teach kids this one because you can kind of do it under the desk or whatever but these these are from what I learned these are kind of like main channel connectors yes they can kind of you know connect so even I mean exactly what you were just saying I think that we don't have to get to you know yes if you're working with a practitioner you get into the depths and you can go through you know things like PTSD and trauma but if you are just wanting to regulate I often even just say just tap and breathe yeah just close your eyes and give yourself it's like a a two-minute meditation of just I love the tapping points um so guilt and shame are directly connected to these two meridian points so if you're feeling like guilt around money or shame around money guilt is under the nose and shame is here on top of the chin so I really like those two and what I always feel I always feel that my if anyone ever says to me where the most sensitive part My top of my lip is my sensitive part Oh interesting What's the top of the lip is the guilt.

Yes. I feel guilt all the time. I'm riddled with guilt. That makes sense.

I need to work on that then. All this guilt. But that's the interesting thing is that I struggle with guilt and I could literally just tap and go around and just say all this guilt why do I feel so guilty all the time focusing there's guilt and I don't know why but I do know why because I know why I feel guilty um my husband often says to me why do you feel so guilty all the time and he's like what do you you know why do you do and it's just like as women and I think as neurodivergent women we hold a lot very often we are the fixers we are the resourceful ones we're the ones that want to help support we've talked about people pleasing and perfectionism um we were often been the if we're the girl in the family and there's been dysfunction and chaos potentially you know financial breakdown or addiction or criminality like we see this picture in undiagnosed adhd families which is why getting a diagnosis is so important because it helps break those patterns with awareness um and you might be holding a lot of trauma from being that fixer from being that person that had to hold it together um help other people who weren't as capable as you were for many different reasons and it's it shows up so differently and and i think that's so important I'm going to be tapping on my guilt.

But it is a terrific toolkit. And what I love about EFT as, you know, as one way that may be useful to support your nervous system is that it's completely free and it's very self-empowering to be able to have your own toolkit in your fingertips and not just around money and not just around dysregulation. But, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about a woman's cycle. And I know there's a great bit in your book, Kate, that talks about the different stages of a women's cycle are there any other useful tools or tips that you wanted to share Kate today that have been helpful for you as you've navigated this journey yeah I mean listen I wrote the book you know the ADHD women's well-being toolkit for that exact reason because I wanted to put everything that I've learned you know from the podcast from speaking to incredible guests from my own learning my own you know sort of teachings that I've you know I've gone through um blend it all together and my life experience but also working with the community and all these different things I wanted to put it together so women can find you know have a book have a resource that they can dip in and dip out of and you know I talk about RSD anxiety anxiety burnout huge we've not even really talked about that.

But I also, you know, at the first part of the book is sort of like really focusing on the challenges because it's so important that we go in there and we recognize everything that we've dealt with, all the different, you know, challenges throughout our lives. But then I move through to a place of like, let's be solutions based here. Let's be solutions focused because there's so many ways that we can help ourselves and then lots of well-being and lifestyle ways of leaning into things like mindfulness and joy and creativity and connection and movement and looking after ourselves from a nutritional perspective.

Again, like you say, so much of this is free. I talk about medication, but that's not an option for lots of different people for different reasons, whether you are self-diagnosed or perhaps you don't, you've tried the medication, it doesn't work, or you don't want to try the medication. I talk about hormone replacement because for me that has been very, very helpful. And I hope and pray that as a first line that we're seeing more psychiatrists and doctors helping women with their hormones so their fluctuations aren't impacting their ADHD as much.

So a lot of women can live with their ADHD symptoms if they can be managed through a lifestyle and well-being. And many women can do that, it's when the hormones plummet and they fluctuate and there's lack of consistency that our mood, our sleep, our relationships, our cognition, everything is impacted. You know, you cannot live with these hormones up, down, up, down and feeling so extremely. It's just not conducive to a life of thriving and living well.

And especially if we're working financially, financially, looking after children, we need more stability. So I try and bring this into the book to give women, you know, whatever, $14.99, the tools, but if their GP goes, well, there's a waitlist of four years, or you need to pay £2,000 for a private diagnosis, and that's not an option. And then the GP just says, I can't help you, go on some antidepressants.

I wanted something to offer women that they don't feel helpless and disempowered. And I truly believe that through the book and through the podcast and different resources, women can help themselves in a way that many doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists aren't able to help them right now because of the wait list and sadly still the lack of knowledge of ADHD in women and autism and the combined traits. You know, there's so much of that now. We know that autistic and ADHD traits work together and some women relate to being ADHD.

Some women are diagnosed autistic and have ADHD traits. It's still emerging and there's still so much that we don't know. But I would say empower yourself with information for sure. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it.

There really are some phenomenal tools in that book and I would highly recommend anyone who's in the book as well we've got a whole thing on EFT because I wanted to include that as a tool as a regular as a regulation tool as well we talk about so I don't know how I wrote it I genuinely don't because people said to me how did you write a book with ADHD it was probably the hardest thing and I think I was so in it and so I was in such a hyper focus but my nervous system oh my god I literally couldn't do anything without thinking oh please put that in I really need to write that and then when I finally delivered that last manuscript I think my nervous system almost went into kind of like paralysis burnout because it'd been a year of that's all I could focus on so it's actually taken it's taken me about six months to recover and we've got it's so important that we talk about this, you know, with ADHD women, we put so much into our work and we know that workaholism is very connected over working.

We want to create impact, ambition, all of that. And it can be so all consuming that we then burn out afterwards. Completely. We're surrounded in a society where we're taught that if we're not do, do, do, do, especially as a business owner, then we're falling behind somehow.

You know, I think that we need to be having more of these conversations about growing sustainably and having seasons of rest. I took nine months out last year. That was my season of rest. That was okay for me to, to do that.

But yet society still tells us that, you know, well, if you're not making more revenue every year in your business, you know, then what, you know, that is such an important conversation. And I know that, well, I would love to get you back on, on the show, Kate, to, to, to dive into some deeper pieces around this. So much to say. But I just wanted to say personally from someone who has benefited from your work and your podcast especially has been an absolute like gold mine of information and resources, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.

And I would highly encourage anybody just to go and go onto Kate's website, download all the toolkits, go read the book, listen to the podcast because honestly there's so much information in there that really really supported me so I just wanted to say thank you for taking that time out to write that book because I know it's going to help so many people thank you so much and yeah I look forward to you coming on our podcast and my podcast because I think we're going to have a lot more to talk about especially around the money side and our worth and working with our nervous systems because all of this that we've talked about is all connected.

And, you know, just talking about sustainable growth and understanding why it's okay to take a break and not to be in doing mode all the time. I think we'll have loads, loads to talk about. Loads to talk about. Thank you so, so much, Kate.

If there was just one thing you wanted to just share as we close this today, to anyone listening who's navigating this, what do you want them to hear? that you're definitely not on your own. And there's so many women out there that have lived, you know, undiagnosed, not understanding themselves and they're getting these moments of this epiphany of like, oh my goodness. So just go easy on yourself and you can't know it all.

I definitely wanted to just learn everything in like two weeks and I realised that was not a sustainable way. So just go easy and then just start, you know, delving into things that work for you, whether it's a podcast or a book or just looking into it on social media. But yeah, it's definitely a journey. But I think once you have that awareness, that understanding, you can never go back to life as it was before.

It's kind of like a 2.0 version of yourself, I think, after you get that understanding. Yeah. Fabulous.

Thank you so much, Kate, for joining us.