Today we're talking ADHD in women in particular. And in just a second, we're going to get to the six surprising signs of adult ADHD. But first, I really want to dig into what's happening in an ADHD brain. And this comes from research from Dr. Ned Hollowell. It comes from Dr. Amon. I know that Huberman lab just did a bunch of podcast episodes on this, but this is how everybody talks about it. So the good thing about ADHD is it seems like the research that's been going on for decades is very conclusive about the prefrontal cortex and how ADHD impacts it. So let's talk about attention, okay? Because ADHD is not the inability to focus. ADHD is the inability to direct your attention in appropriate ways in appropriate settings. That's what it means. That's why you'll often see kids with ADHD that can play video games for hours. That was Oakley. I could literally be banging pots and pans behind this kid. He wouldn't even know it. He was so focused. But he had an inability to direct that attention in appropriate ways in other cases. And let me just use the example that I just gave you.

It's not healthy that he was so focused on video games that he couldn't hear pots and pans. That's not an appropriate use of attention either. And so let's unpack what attention is. So attention is a really important skill, right? You've got to be able to pay attention if you want to be successful at work, if you want to learn new things, you need to be able to direct your attention in relationships. I mean, just think about it. There are times where somebody's talking and your stomach hurts, or you want to get a bite to eat, or you really don't give a shit and you want to yawn or you want to interrupt them. Your ability to pay attention and suppress the urge to interrupt them or to yawn or to excuse yourself, that is the skill of attention, and it's critical for relationships. Otherwise, you're going to look like a rude asshole. So attention requires your prefrontal cortex to be able to switch between two neural networks in your brain. One of the neural networks is the part of your brain that is aware and paying attention to everything around you, okay? All the noise around you and all of your thoughts and your feelings in your body, okay?

So one neural network that your prefrontal cortex needs to control is the ability to. Shh. All the noise around you and all the noise within you. And I'm going to bring in an example that is used throughout the research with ADHD, and it's the example of an orchestra conductor. So your prefrontal cortex is an orchestra conductor, and I want to just bring in the sound of an orchestra warming up. You hear all the different sounds and people of an orchestra getting ready and unpacking and warming up. That's you in the world. And one thing that your prefrontal cortex does when it comes to attention is it lifts up the little sticks, and it points at the horns, who are making too much noise and goes, sh. This is called a top down function. It is able to tap into a neural network to suppress. Sh. Hey, horns, shut the hell up. Sh. And silence the noise outside of you. And silence the noise within you. Your grumbling stomach, your thoughts about what you're doing tonight, so that the prefrontal cortex can then tap into the second neural network, which is the ability to raise up and focus on something specific.

Hey, strings, it's time for you. Let's magnify and amplify you, because now the horns. Shh. Are quiet. We can now amplify the string section and hear it. And so that's the network that allows you. If let you crack open a book, you focus on the book itself, but you also focus on the words in your mind and what you're learning and processing as you're reading it. So your prefrontal cortex, when it comes to attention, has to do those two things, the sh of the distractions outside you and the grumbling stomach in you, so that it can turn toward what you want to focus on and direct your attention appropriately. If you can't switch between those two things of the sh and the focus, you can't pay attention. And anybody with ADHD, they're missing the conductor in the brain. You're not able to shh things. You're not able to spotlight on something else. In most settings, you have an orchestra that's warming up all the time around you. And that's what the experts mean when they say that you have a neurobiological disorder that affects the brain structurally and chemically, as well as ways in which various parts of the brain communicate with one another.

That's what they're talking about, the prefrontal cortex and the inability to switch between suppression of noise and amplification of focus. That's what it is. I can give you an example, because I'm realizing my prefrontal cortex could not fucking do this. I went to Dartmouth College, and they have this incredible library, Baker library, and I would always go to the stacks in the library to study, and I would carry my stack of books, and I would carry my notebooks and my pens and my highlighters, and I would commit to being there all day. I'm going to study. I would sit down, and as soon as I sit down and crack open a book, you want to know what happened? The orchestra started warming up, and everyone started chitchatting. I literally would be like, oh, my God. I think I'm hungry. I got to go to the bathroom. Do I feel like studying? I'm not quite sure. And then I'd hear somebody walking and be like, who's that? Oh, is that Emily? Hey, Emily. I was incapable of that part of attention that your prefrontal cortex needs you to do. I was incapable of suppressing the sensation in my body, suppressing the monolog in my fucking mind, and tuning out and suppressing the noises around me.

I would sit there for 8 hours and distract myself because this core function of my prefrontal cortex didn't work, couldn't do it. So, of course, I had trouble paying attention because I couldn't suppress my internal and external noise. In order to do the second part where the conductor, the prefrontal cortex, turns to the strings after it's gone to the horns and amplifies and ramps up the strings. Let's hear the first stanza. 54321. And then they go, right, and that is your prefrontal cortex ramping up and amplifying either your focus in your head, because if I've got the book cracked open, I can't be paying attention to what my voice is saying. I've got to turn on the part of the brain that can now focus on the words on the page, right. I've got to be able to focus on things in the environment, the book in front of me, the words that are being processed as I'm reading. So attention is controlled by the prefrontal cortex being able to shush and quiet and suppress one network that is tuned in to all of the outside and internal noise and to amplify another network in your brain that goes into a focus state.

My brain did not work that way. It was missing the conductor, and people with ADHD are missing a conductor that's working properly. And when you start to understand that, that, oh, my God, there's this conductor in my brain, and this is the way they talk about it in research. What you realize is this, because it goes a little bit further, your brain takes a ton of fuel. When you look at the research. If you and I were to simply sit still all day and do nothing, I mean nothing, not even read a book, just sort of lay on the couch, do nuts to nothing, simply being awake and alive. You consume 25% of your caloric intake when you start trying to focus. So, again, attention is twofold. It takes fuel, mentally, to suppress the internal fidgeting, the fact that you're hungry, maybe you have to pee. Your voice going, oh, God, I'm going to screw over this test. Why can't I focus? What's wrong? Oh, is that Emily over there? It takes a lot of mental fuel to quiet that network in your mind. It takes more mental fuel for your prefrontal cortex to then go, hey, strings, we're going to pay attention to you and to activate a different network that helps you focus on what's happening in your mind and focus on something in your physical environment.

This is why, after you take a test, you're exhausted, because you've drained the energy tank. And so what also happens for everybody with ADHD is the orchestra is playing, you're burning through fuel, because both networks are going. Your attempt to try to focus on something and your attempt to shut down the shit that you can't shut down. And so you're not only spinning your wheels by not actually being able to get done what everybody else can get done, you're also draining the energy tank. What ultimately happens is that you, if you're a woman, turn this against yourself. Guys are like, fuck this homework, and they get physical and they go do something else. Women aim it at themselves. And this is where it gets important, because this is about both being able to quiet certain neural circuits and enhance others and what they've found. This is from Dr. Amen, who's been on this podcast, one of the world's leading experts in the brain. He's done over 60,000 scans of brains. When he has scanned people's brain, he has scanned my brain. And when you look at anybody's brain scan who has an ADHD brain, what they find is there are what appear to be holes in the prefrontal cortex is very, very common, and it's a sign that there's not sufficient blood flow to the conductor.

The conductor can't work properly because it's not getting the blood flow that it needs. And he calls this a sleepy brain, that your brain is not getting the blood flow, the dopamine, the nora epirephrine, or whatever the hell it's called, because we all know I can't say it and that's why so many people with ADHD, because we're not able to have all of the neurotransmitters and the neurocircuits working properly. It's why so many of us chase dopamine dumps like shopping or alcohol or any other addictive kind of behavior. And it's also why it matters that women have a symptom of being hyper hypercritical. Because think about the two networks that the conductor in your brain has to be able to switch on and off. Yes, you've got to be able to switch. The ability to pay attention to the book and to the words in your mind as you're processing what you're reading. But if you can't turn off what researchers call the default mode network, if you can't shush the fucking horns as they're like, you're never going to amount to anything. Why are you always behind if you can't sh that you live with a default mode?

A voice in your head that is always active, that's always going, and that's always negative, and that's why so many of us develop such poor self esteem. It's why the outcomes are horrendous for girls that don't get diagnosed that have ADHD, because you internalize all this shit. So these are the six lesser known signs of adult ADHD. Number one is hyper focus. And this was a surprise to me because I remember seeing this in our son. I'm like, I'm sorry, this kid does not have ADHD. He just hates homework. I mean, he can sit and laser focus in on his video games, so clearly he can laser focus in on homework. That's not true. A surprising sign of ADHD is the ability to hyper, hyper, hyper focus in certain settings, but not be able to pay attention at all in other settings. And this has to do with what's going on in your brain and your prefrontal cortex in particular when you have ADHD, which we will get to in a moment, but hyper focus is present for me. I can hyper focus and get lost in my work. I can hyper focus when I have to give a speech.

Like, I literally have, like, those blinders on that horses wear, the big Clydesdales. I have tunnel vision. When I have to do something like that, it's like the rest of the world does not exist. Now, when I'm done doing something like that, I have a complete collapse. I'm exhausted. My brain, the gas tank is empty, but I can hyper focus, which would make you think, well, then you don't have ADHD. Well, here's the rub on it. ADHD is not the inability to focus. That's not what it is. ADHD is a disorder in your brain that impacts your prefrontal cortex and the two jobs that the prefrontal cortex must do around attention itself. And we will get into this because attention is both being able to tune out or suppress external and internal noise. And it is also the ability to ramp up parts of your brain so that you can focus on something effectively. And so it's way more than just paying attention to something. It requires a bunch of switching in your brain in terms of which network your brain is using. And we're going to dig into that. Don't worry. Second sign, that is a lesser known sign of adult ADHD.

Difficulty controlling your emotions. Say that again. Difficulty controlling your emotions. See, what happens is that when you struggle with ADHD, you're using up so much mental energy, trying to pay attention that there's no gas in the tank to be able to tolerate the emotions of being frustrated or tired. It's why I would snap at my kids all the time. It's why I would get this tone of voice when I'm frustrated with something and I just can't deal anymore. It's why I would get really emotional with myself and erupt at myself. Why the fuck did you forget her birthday again? What is wrong with you? She's your best fucking friend. Why haven't you bought Christmas presents yet? Why? You leave everything to the last minute. You missed that deadline again. So being eruptive at myself as well. The third really surprising sign of adult ADHD, and boy, do I have this one in spades. Impulsive shopping and overspending. It's like you're blind to it, and you get this huge rush for buying something, and then all of a sudden, you realize that was stupid and you didn't need it. And this has to do with what Dr.

Amon, who's one of the world's leading experts on the brain, says is your attempt to stimulate your brain with a dopamine rush. So shopping isn't the only addictive behavior. A lot of adults that have ADHD, and it's not properly being managed, have a problem with drinking, drugs, other addictions, impulsive behaviors, all tied to the structural issue with the prefrontal cortex. The fourth surprising sign is time blindness. Time blindness. You're terrible with time management. I am terrible with time management. I'm constantly late. I keep myself on track with reminders on my phone. I am the last person to get in the car for our family. I am always a minute late to the call. As hard as I try to be on time, it feels impossible to me. Another surprising sign is that many people with ADHD are actually very high functioning. On the outside, you look like a workaholic. You look very successful. Or if you're not working, you're just one of those people that's super duper, duper, duper busy. But here's the thing. Your busyness and your workaholism is scattered all over the place. And that desire to keep your mind busy is also due to the fact that you have problems in your prefrontal cortex suppressing the noise that is going on outside and also the noise going on with your critical voice.

And finally, this leads me to the big one. Adults with ADHD tend to be highly, highly, highly self critical. You assume you're always screwing up. You constantly beat yourself up for not being able to do simple things. You're worried that you're disappointing everybody. You're wondering why it looks effortless for everybody else but you. And this is the default mode of what your own inner dialog sounds like. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Mel Robbins. I got all six. I spent decades of my life beating myself up. Let me just explain some of the ways this played out in my life, because I think this will give you an insight into what you may be dealing with if this is, in fact, you. So, in relationships, I was plagued for 50 years with feeling like I'm not a good enough friend, I'm not a good enough girlfriend, I'm not a good enough sister, I'm not a good enough mom or wife that I should have sent more care packages. Why can't I remember birthdays? Why am I always missing the sign up date for school conferences? For this, for that? Why am I always arriving late for pickup?

If I were better at this or a better person like this plagued me. It plagued me. And here's the thing. Now that I'm diagnosed with it, I still do this shit if I don't put the systems in place. And what did that mean for me? Well, when it comes to birthdays, here's what it meant. I care about birthdays. I feel like an asshole when I miss somebody's birthday. And so I spent an entire day cross checking Facebook, which is where most people's birthdays are, and putting them on repeat in my Google calendar. And then that worked, sort of. But I realized when the thing goes off on the day of somebody's birthday. It just makes me remember to call them or text them. But there are people in my life I'd like to send a present to. So by failing again for a year, I realized I need to go a step further and put a week before notification that goes off. So I have time to actually get a present or a card in the mail. And so you start to set up systems because you realize this is just not the way your brain works.

It's just not wired to remember this shit. And that's okay. That's okay. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I just thought I was a shitty friend. I just thought everybody else figured this out but me. Another thing, work. When I look back at my work history, holy moly, I am a horrendous employee. Unless I am in an environment where I can move all over the place, I cannot work in an office. Why? Well, because I can't. The horns over there. I have this problem where if my kids are two rooms away from me and they are listening to TikTok videos, it's as if they're blaring them in my ears. I can't suppress that noise around me. And so any job that I had in an office, I wanted to die, because I could hear everybody at all times. I could hear the door. I could hear the elevator ding. I did not know that this was ADHD. I just thought I had, like, super ears or something. I thought everybody heard like this. And so when I think about the jobs where I was really successful, I was moving around, waitressing. Loved waitressing.

Bartending. Oh, I loved bartending. Working at legal aid when I was a criminal defense attorney for legal aid in 1994 as a young lawyer. I love that job because I would start the day in my office. I'd walk across the street to the court at 100 Canal street. I'd be in court bopping around all day. I'd be out to Rikers. I'd be back to the office. It was always changing. That was beautiful for my brain, what I do now, beautiful for my brain. No day is the same. I excel in what we do now because I am working in a place that works for this kind of brain. School. I've already explained to disaster. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I got into Dartmouth, so I scored really well in the saTs. And I came from a tiny town in Michigan, and not a lot of kids applied there. In fact, nobody had ever applied there, but I was the queen of all nighters, the queen of procrastination. I can look back now and realize why I almost failed this big engineering class at Dartmouth. It's because there were 400 kids in the class. I couldn't pay attention.

I couldn't organize myself. I was time blind. I missed out on so much because I was so busy thinking that I was a failure. And why couldn't I get this? And why couldn't I organize? And why couldn't I read on time? I don't even know how I got through law school. Daily life. Clutter everywhere. Literally. Papers everywhere. Kleenexes. Blow my nose, put them on a counter. Overspending. Does this sound familiar? You kind of overspend to compensate for other things. You feel bad about yourself, so you buy a new outfit, or you forgot to take something to the dry cleaner, and now you don't have a dress to wear, so you got to quickly order a dress, but then you don't like the dress. This is my life. And then the credit card bill comes, and you didn't think that far. This was my life. I should be the poster child for the container store, because until we did the episode that we recently did about decluttering versus organizing, I just thought if I just bought more baskets and I made everything look pretty, then I would be organized. But the truth is, I just have too much clutter because my mind doesn't organize.

And so you have to declutter before you can organize. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. But I think the biggest thing for me and why I wanted to talk to you about this is because of the heightened impact of the negative self talk. See, that's the thing that I was never able to suppress. Shh. Until recently. The critical, relentless voice that I constantly had harping in my ear, constantly criticizing what I wasn't doing, I had no clue this was related to ADHD. And the most important aspect of dealing with ADHD for myself is not to make myself wrong for it and not to hate the ADHD. Think about it this way. If you got diagnosed with diabetes, does it help you to hate diabetes? No. You basically say, oh, thank God, I know, because now I can help myself. Now I can do things to regulate insulin. Now I can do things to make sure that I am happy and healthy, and I have a long, successful life. And that's the way that I feel about ADHD. If you understand it and you know what it is, you can empower yourself to live with it, to have all the great things about it, to laugh at yourself when the stuff happens, that always happens with me.

And to really take proactive steps to embrace it and to cope in a positive way. There are so many interventions and modalities that help whether you're going to explore medications, which I've done, which have been life changing. I mean, when I got diagnosed with ADHD and I dug into it and started researching it, I immediately started tapering off anxiety medication, because I'm like, this explains everything. And I went on long acting Adderall. It changed my freaking life, because all of a sudden, I could go, shh. All of a sudden, I could direct my attention where I needed it to go. And I don't need it in every environment. Like, I don't take it on the weekends because I don't really care if the orchestra is playing. And in certain environments, like, whenever I have to give a keynote address and I'm standing backstage, I would never, ever take Adderall on that day. And here's why. The adrenaline that I feel, it's the neuroadrenaline. That's another way you can say that word. I can't say neuroepirepheren or whatever. The adrenaline that hits your brain, your prefrontal cortex, the go go of that, it makes the conductor work.

I literally have blinders on. And so the adrenaline in that situation makes the switching of the conductor in my brain, everything around me, I don't even hear the event happening. I literally am so focused on what I'm about to go do that the environment provides the chemical release that stimulates my brain to do what I need it to do. So, stimulants have been wildly effective for me and effective for one of our kids, not all of our kids. And it begs the question, why is it that a stimulant is effective for somebody that has something in their brain that makes them fidgety or makes them distracted? Well, it has to do with the blood flow and the neurotransmitters in your brain, which I'm not going to explain to you right now. We'll bring on a full expert like Dr. Ned Hollowell, who is the world's leading expert on ADHD. He's the goat. He wrote, driven to distraction. We can bring on Dr. Amon, who has scanned all the brains and can tell you why so many people with ADHD seek a dopamine dump rush from overspending or drinking or some of the other kind of not so great behaviors.

But we'll have an expert explain that. But one of the things that I think is really interesting is that it's important if you think that this is something going on with either a son or a daughter, that you get this looked at by a professional, because studies after study in the last five years have said and concluded that children with ADHD in particular have far, far better outcomes later in life if they are treated for ADHD when they're kids and they think that this is due to the fact that the stimulants and the dopamine and the neuro, or I can't say the damn word like neuroadrenaline or whatever the hell it's called, I can't even say it, that the adrenaline and the dopamine accelerates neuroplasticity. And so there's some theories out there that not only does it have better mental health outcomes, particularly for girls, because when you treat this properly, whether you're doing it, I think behavioral therapy, combination of medication, if that's the right thing, which can be tricky, or other more natural supplements, if that's what you care about. Caffeine is something that a lot of parents give their kids instead of some of the other stimulants.

That's a deeply personal choice. But I think it's important to know that kids not treated with drugs and behavioral therapy when they have ADHD have a higher tendency toward addiction and not great outcomes versus the kids with ADHD who are treated with drugs and with natural stimulants and behavioral therapy. And this is research in the last five years. I think it's important to say that I'm not telling you what to do, but in order to save your daughter from the profoundly negative impacts of ADHD on psychology and on anxiety and depression and eating disorders, there's a tremendous number of kind of coexisting diagnoses when ADHD is present. This is something I want you to take seriously and dig into and learn about and get educated about. And the best place to start is your pediatrician, if you're an adult, going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. This is me. This is me. This is my sister. This is my daughter. This is my boss, this is my colleague. This is my friend. Great. Send them this episode. Attached to this episode, like all episodes, is a plethora of resources.

And one of the resources that we are going to link to is a self assessment. This is not how you get diagnosed with ADHD, but this is how you can learn more about ADHD and sort of the surprising symptoms and impacts so that you are more empowered to go seek something. And I would start with your general practitioner and ask them where to go. That's the best place to start. Or with a therapist. You can also start with a lot of the online talk therapy platforms, and we've talked a lot about the research showing the lost generation of women, of which I feel like the founding member, that if you are between the ages of, I'm just going to say, 20 and 75, you may be in this generation of women who were either called a tomboy or called aggressive, or called scattered or daydreaming, who are really, really hard on yourself. You developed anxiety or depression or an eating disorder, and you've always wondered, what the hell is wrong with you? I'm encouraging you. If any of this was resonant, please go talk to your primary care doctor. All right, that's a lot. I feel like the gas tank in my brain, is it empty?

So I am going to get up and go for a walk outside. I cannot wait to hear your reaction to this episode. I know that you're going to share your stories, and I would love to do a ton more episodes about this. I want to talk about the medications out there and what they do and why and how they impact your prefrontal cortex. I would love to dig more into non medicine, prescription drug, whatever, non stimulant interventions. And again, I know I've said this a number of times. I'm not trying to diagnose you at all. Okay? I'm not a doctor. I feel like I'm an expert in this topic because of lived experience. I have watched our daughters and our sons struggle. I have lived the struggle. And I feel so much more empowered now that I know what I'm dealing with. And I think the benefits, now that I can address it effectively and in a healthy way, far outweigh having a normal brain, an on ADHD brain. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I sure as hell wish I would have known about this sooner because I know it would have prevented unnecessary headaches and heartaches and suffering in my life.

And I would like to think that it would have helped me make way healthier and more empowering choices, particularly when I was struggling profoundly during college and law school. I'll just leave it at that. What can we do to improve our memory? Dr. Avon?

Well, improve your brain. It's like the most important thing. Think about this, Mel. 50% of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia. Those are odds I am not okay with. And if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the eleven major risk factors that steal your mind. And they know we don't have time to go in it. But the mnemonic I have is bright mind. So for example, maybe the most important thing b is for blood flow. Whatever you can do to increase blood flow to your brain, you're going to be happier, your memory is going to be better, and you're going to be more sexual because whatever is good for your brain, good for your heart, is good for your genital.

So is that the brisk walking?

So you want to avoid things that steal blood flow, caffeine, nicotine, being sedentary, having any form of heart disease, and then you want to do things that enhance blood flow. So walking, raw cacao beets, the supplement ginkgo, these things all increase blood flow. Cinnamon, oregano.

Wow. Okay, I want to hear the r though. Bright mind. I know that there's eleven, but give me two or three of them.

The r is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So constantly engage in new learning. The I is inflammation, but the one maybe to talk about more is the t. It's toxins. And we live in a toxic society. Right. Here I am in Florida. I just talked about all the fish off the coast in Florida. On average they have seven pharmaceuticals in their tissues, but just the products you put on your body. I have all of my patients download the app think dirty. It allows you to scan all of your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of one to ten how quickly they're killing you.

Oh my God.

We saw this year that the FDA took off a number of sunscreens off the market because they were associated with cancer. How horrifying is that, right? You're thinking you're protecting yourself from cancer. The toxic products are giving you cancer, so think dirty. But also we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a health food. It's not, it's toxic to your brain or Marijuana is innocuous. It's not. It damages your brain and it's these little lies in our society that is really promoting the disease we are just flooded with.

So you've been a psychiatrist for 40 years. What are five things you'd never do because it's bad for your mental health and your brain health?

Well, I never believe every stupid thing I think, and I think that's really important to know. I'm going to get these crazy, stupid, awful thoughts and I know how to manage and dismiss them. I would never say everything I think. Some people come to me and say, oh, Dr. Amon, I'm brutally honest. And I'm like, well, that's usually not helpful. Relationships require. I would never purposely stay up late and screw up my sleep. I would never eat everything I want, and I would never take medicine just based on symptom clusters. Like, I'm depressed or take an antidepressant. I think that's all insane. I always want to look at the brain and then target whatever treatment I need to how somebody's brain is functioning.

Yeah. The one thing I forgot to ask you, because right now, as you and I are talking, we've just turned the clocks back. But this time of year, when it gets darker earlier and it's colder, I notice, like, my mood drops and I feel, like, sad. What do you do? Whether it's because of the time of year or because of chronic stress, you feel this sort of languishing or heaviness set in. What are three things that you would recommend that somebody do to boost their mood?

So, morning bright light. I think that can be really helpful. So a bright light therapy lamp for 20 or 30 minutes in the morning exercise. Don't overdo the caffeine. And it's really important. We haven't talked about this yet. Turn off blue light when the sun goes down.

What is blue light?

Constantly flooded with blue light. And in the morning, it's fine. But after dark it's not because it decreases the production of melatonin. So you get it from your laptop or you get it from your phone, or you get it from whatever gadgets you might be looking at. And so after dark, either put blue light blockers on your gadgets or just turn them off and go read a book.

Okay, great. And I also didn't ask you this. How do you know if your dopamine.

Levels are low, if you're tired, if you're unmotivated, if you can't concentrate and you find yourself more impulsive than it's good for you.

And finally, let's bottom line, because you are the master at elite brain training, if you could leave everyone with just one thing that you would like them to start doing today to create better brain health, what would it be?

That mother tiny habit? It's whenever you come to a decision point in your day, just ask yourself, am what I'm doing good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information and love. I mean, I'm serious about this. Love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason you're on earth. You're going to start making good decisions for your brain, and then everything in your life will be better.

So I'm going to try to extrapolate this for people that are brand new to the idea of healing, of trauma, of nervous system dysregulation, by asking you a question, do you believe that the majority of breakdowns or mental health issues that we face as adults go back to the issue of stress, trauma, hyper vigilance that you experienced during childhood?

Absolutely. And that also is to include, however, the structural brain neurological changes. This is where we can, I think, as a field, get caught in a little bit of the chicken or the egg, because, again, because stress does imprint on us biologically, genetically. A lot of us do then see or born with even structural changes in our brain. Imbalances in neurotransmitters. Again, the field is still the psychology field, that is, and the medical field, if I'm being perfectly honest, is still learning, is still evolving, is still growing. And it took until within the past decade for us to realize that one of the number one things I'm sure maybe some listeners have heard of neurotransmitters, right? This idea that when you're diagnosed with a mental illness, whatever it might be, your neurotransmitters are off a hormone in your body that impacts our mood. While that is absolutely part of the story, for a very long time, we located the neurotransmitter production and maintenance in our brain. And now we understand that it isn't just our brain that creates and produces and uses neurotransmitters, it is our gut, right? So now we have another whole part of the body that is impacted by decisions that we're making.

Food we're eating, pollutants that are in toxins that are in the food that we're eating, habits around eating the food that, again, were passed through generations. So to simply answer your question, we can't localize it to just one exact factor, in my opinion, which is why I'm such a proponent. And I've shifted the way that I work and think and practice and teach into a more holistic model, because it's all of it. And the reality of it is there are structural changes, there are imbalances in our nervous system, there's dysregulation in our nervous system, and imbalances in our neurotransmitter, I should say, that are creating then the symptoms that are resulting in diagnoses. And my hope is to take the whole picture into account and to give people the opportunity to explore the deeper underlying causes, because that's the area where we can begin to intervene by making new choices, by creating a different internal environment for ourselves, by creating a different external environment for us to live into, can then help us resolve some of those long standing symptoms.

So I'm going to give you a personal example, okay? Because I think it will help people start to process where we're going to go with this conversation by thinking about this example. And I will be the emotionally immature parent in the example. Okay? So we have a daughter who has just started to talk openly about the fact that she feels very stuck in life, in her words, that she does not feel alive, that there are very few experiences happening in her day to day life where she feels truly alive. And the other thing, and this is sort of a little joke, is that we say we love you because you don't take yourself that seriously. She's really, really funny, but you take everything else so seriously. So she is the typical hyper vigilant. On top of everything, stressed out. Got to get everything right. And when I apply your work to this situation, knowing that she's talking to a therapist, I say that as her mother, when she was born, I had severe postpartum depression. I had an incredibly traumatic birth, and I was, in your words, emotionally immature, which means I personally, as a new mom and just as a human being, at the age of 29 or 30, I could not handle my emotions.

I screamed, I vented. I was very unpredictable. And on top of it, for the first eight weeks of her life, because the postpartum depression was so severe, Dr. Nicole and I was so heavily medicated because it was a dangerous situation psychologically and physically for me. I couldn't take care of her. And she has now that she's an adult and in therapy, and she just did some really interesting guided psychedelic therapies, has had now a memory of that period of her life as an infant and really being in distress, wanting me to come and just remembering my husband coming and one of our close friends that would sit with me while my husband was at work, while I was very sick. And she also has had this sort of experience in therapy of realizing that I really wanted to be there. But that core experience very much cemented a kind of experience of the world for her. And I, of course, was just passing down the lineage of stressed out, volatile, intense, not that warm kind of behavior that I grew up around. When I look all the way through my lineage of immigrant working in coal mines, domestic servants, farmers, like, work, work, hard work.

And I look at her. And as she's talking about a job and she's talking about doing this, and I'm thinking, actually, this is about you healing. I hate to say it this way, so please correct me, but I feel like the damage I fucking did to you because I didn't know any better.

I want to commend a couple things here, Mal. First, your honesty in sharing these experiences and also the environment that you've since created. It sounds like to the extent that your daughter is able to begin to share these realities, these conscious awarenesses that she's having, because that is a gift, to be able to communicate honestly with those closest to us, especially those that might have been a participant in whatever the circumstances that we lived in our past, in our earliest life. That is such a gift because few families, I think, have at any time, and I know my family in particular now, we're just recently starting to be able to share things with each other in honesty, share what our different realities. I have two other siblings are and allow that to be the case. So that is absolutely something to celebrate. And the reality of it is when we don't have the resources to take care of ourselves, and when we're stuck in this dysregulation that we're talking about in our nervous system, we're stuck in a survival mode in and of itself, of our own. And so my heart, I actually felt myself welling up an emotion hearing you share that story for not only your daughter, for you as well.

Like you were sharing the awareness that she had of you wanting to be present. And I think postpartum depression is one of those rarely talked about experiences that is. So I think a lot of times it's highlighted on how it is for the child of that disconnection, though, how painful it is for the parent who in their heart wants to be. And I think this is the case with all of us, with all parents, is there's a lot of well meaning, well intentioned individuals that are of two minds within themselves, if they're even aware of it or not, of wanting to do, to show up in whatever way and attuned and connected in a loving way, oftentimes wanting to reverse patterns that they know didn't serve them from their own childhood, yet not being able to. Because the reality, and I use the term survival mode to really highlight the reality that when we're in survival mode, and this is all just driven by our nervous system. So it's not anything logical. Our survival is our priority, which means that a child, a loved one, a partner isn't where our attention and our resources need to be allocated at that moment.

It's quite literally in us getting through the next few moments of life. And this might sound dire, which is why, again, I'm just offering that this is all driven by our ability to survive, by our evolution as a human. So this is, again, where we are of two minds, where we might desperately want to show up, to connect, to be attuned to our child and our body might not be prioritizing that child at all. It might be prioritizing us and our survival and us making it through the next moment, however difficult that moment is. And so again, I just want to thank you for your honesty in shining the light on a topic as this, because I've spoken and worked with in my past practice, a lot of women who were so shameful about the experience of having that deep rooted depression even of this is another controversial, I think, thing to admit of maybe being of two minds about how it is to actually be a mother.

Right.

There might be a very well intentioned part that does want to show up and does want to be in care of a child. And the reality of needing to be in care of someone else for 24 hours a day is very difficult. It's very challenging, and there might be then conflicts in and of itself. So again, I want to commend you for your honesty, and I want to commend the environment that's being created in your home where these things can be talked about. Because I think the more we're able to, again, be non judgmentally honest with ourself and with other people to relieve ourself. Like you're even sharing. When I look back in time, I see the same patterns just like I experienced with my mom when I look back at her family experience. It's cold, it's disconnection. She literally had a father who came home from work. He was the financial support of the household, put up his newspaper, and quite literally ignored the children. So it's not surprising that the mother then, emotionally, that I was born into, didn't have the tools to emotionally connect, no matter how much she wanted to do different and knew that that was a painful experience for herself.

She was locked in her own survival mode and was just simply unable to.

Yeah, I agree. And in sharing the story, it actually is somewhat liberating for me because I don't want to pass down that generational cycle or trauma of being in survival mode and having a conflicted relationship with giving and receiving love and what I can so profoundly see is that since I'm catching this in myself at 47 and I'm still working on it, my kids probably, I'd say, at least six or seven times a week. Go watch your tone, mom. Watch. Your tone of voice for me, is when my emotional immaturity kicks in, when my inability to tolerate something. You know, Mel Robbins is now her eight year old self, because her tone of voice goes nasty. Just like I heard in my household, the tone of voice in the adults around me go nasty when I was eight years old. And so I want to make it very clear as a takeaway for people that if you are resonating with this idea of being in breakdown or feeling stuck or feeling disconnected in your adult life, first of all, we all go through it, if not a couple of times, right? A couple of big breakdowns.

Everyone goes through, so it's normal. But it's good news, because you're awakening that your current way of living, on autopilot or being shut down, or, in the words of my daughter, not feeling alive, that's not how you're wired or meant to live. And so this moment of consciousness is an opportunity, and I will also highlight that through my own example. The first place I want you to look is I want you to look at Dr. Nicole's work, because what she's saying is the first place to look is in your childhood and how you have gotten to a point as an adult where your ability to tolerate discomfort emotionally is no longer serving the kind of life you want to live. And I'm willing to say, through experiences I did not mean to create for my daughter, I taught her hyper vigilance, like she had to become the adult I wasn't even able to be present. And I feel terrible about that. Do I wish I could go back and wave a magic wand? Absolutely. And I know for both of us, there's this huge opening present for both of our healing, not to mention our ability to have a mature, loving relationship on our own terms versus being in a relationship that is driven by the patterns of our lineage and what we were taught when we were children.

Does that make sense?

Oh, 100%. I'm shaking my head very ravenously over here because also, I think it's important for me to state as well, is I still have moments where, for me, my reactivity comes out as passive aggressive, snarky, underhanded comments where I'm not able to directly say it is how I feel to another person again, because without that attunement and childhood, without that safety. I learned the act of suppressing it, of going away on my spaceship and not ever saying what was really wrong. I also have a habit of disconnecting from my loved ones my relationships, of literally going and walling myself off in my bedroom and then holding them responsible for not coming in and not being connected and not supporting me when I need it. And I like to use this visual. It says if I have my hand held out in front of me and I'm demanding, sometimes even with daggers on the end of it, and then demanding someone come and give me a hug. And again, all of this for me, you said something really beautiful that I think is important to touch on. All of this goes back to, for me, the inability to be emotionally connected, to give and receive love in my childhood.

And as counterintuitive as that sounds, especially for all of us in relationship, many of us, few of us, I should say, in adulthood, actually have had that lived experience of giving and receiving love for being who we are, for just sharing how it is for us, what we think, what we feel with another individual. So while we might. And this was so much of my life for so long, all I desperately wanted was to be connected. I would leave partners because you weren't able to connect with me. I didn't feel close to you. And it took until the awakening that began in my early 30s, because it was several years of time before I was able to see myself as holding those daggers out, see all of the ways I was disconnected from my own authentic emotions, not sharing them with other people. So how am I going to be deeply and authentically known to someone else? I never gave anyone the opportunity because for me it felt so scary, so vulnerable, so threatening that having those daggers out and blaming you for not coming closer was that safe zone. It was just a replication of that early experience, again, that was created in my household with all of my family members, but namely around my own mom, who wasn't equipped, didn't understand, probably had a deep rooted desire like I was sharing earlier, to be emotionally connected, but didn't know how herself.

Yeah, I mean, we only can do what we've been trained to do until we wake the hell up and heal ourselves and teach ourselves to do something different. I love also that homecoming is not only therapy, that there is a deeply spiritual aspect to this. So how would you describe the difference between therapy and spirituality and the work that you need to do in both areas?

That's right. So, unfortunately, many people who are in the mental health field did not get trained to incorporate spirituality. And so there's research that shows, on average, mental health professionals endorse a lower level of spirituality or religiosity than the general public.

Really?

Yes.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I think a part of that can go with higher levels of education that a lot of times people can disconnect, as with education, can feel like they need to prove everything. And spirituality is beyond our proving or our being able to manipulate it. Right. So it's like, it's not concrete. Right. And so that's in the field of psychology. The founders in the field were often people of faith, but then there was this move in the field where we wanted to prove we're a science. So if we want to prove that we're a science, then we can't talk about anything. People find spooky or soft or in some other realm. And so then there has been a neglect from it, from that area. And then I think the other part of it has been the recognition that some people have been harmed in spiritual spaces. So then some therapists will over generalize and think that it is all harmful, as opposed to whenever you get people together, you're going to have some good and some bad, some things that are healthy or unhealthy.

What is your definition of spirituality?

It is an awareness of the sacred beyond what we can see.

Oh, I love that definition. And now that we're on this topic, it occurs to me, how could you possibly heal without pulling faith? Yes. And a belief that something that you have not experienced is possible.

That's it, 100%. Because I even say, to be a therapist, social worker, life coach, any of these things, you have to have faith. And for people to show up, there has to be a faith that there can be more than what I have seen and what I have experienced. It's like when I'm counseling people who have only had unhealthy relationships, and I have to say, just because this one is better doesn't mean it's good. Right. If you just used a bad treatment, if people call you back, you're like, oh, they call me back. And it's like, that was nice. But there's more, right?

There's more. Yes. So we've kind of started stepping toward this awareness. How do you combine the spiritual practice and the belief in something that you may have never experienced or seen.

Right.

With the work to start to heal, or, as you say, reparent yourself in the physical space.

That's right. So a part of it is what gives us the motivation to do the work, because a lot of times we're operating based on evidence, which is what we've seen. So if I've only had bad experiences, my parents abandoned me, this person left me, this person mistreated me. If I believe that is all that exists, then the conclusion would be I am unworthy. That's the only possible right conclusion. Because this idea, this victim blaming, self blaming, of if I deserved better, I would have received better. And you will hear people blaming other people for being mistreated, they'll say, oh, well, you must have allowed it. And so in order for me to come to a different conclusion, that I am worthy of what I have not yet experienced, I have to have the belief of the more how the heck.

Do you do that? Your whole life you have experienced either abuse or mistreatment or discrimination or violence. How do you when you have evidence that does make you feel unworthy? Because I'm sure you get these dms and these emails all day long. So do we. Of people who so want to believe that they are worthy, that something is better, that they can change your life for the better. And you and I can sit where we are and go, of course you can. I have so much evidence that it's possible. It's both spiritual and I could argue the case, yes. But for somebody who is sitting in the disbelief, how do you cross over to belief?

Yeah, so it's a couple of levels. One of them is to get people to reflect on what do they believe all human beings deserve?

Well, I believe I'm a chicken and all I see are chickens, and I believe I'm on the ground, you know what I'm saying? Like, we go back to this. How do you possibly convince yourself that you could be an eagle if you've never seen one?

Yes. So what we connect with is disrupting what we call the cognitive distortions.

That's a big word. What is cognitive distortion?

So your false thought, the lies, okay? The lies you told yourself and the lies other people told you, what if, well, let me give you an example, okay, please. Lies. So for people who were molested, yes. They either were told directly or indirectly that that is their fault, right? That it's because they developed early or it's because they shouldn't have been over there or whatever it is that somehow that's on you. And so we have to demonstrate that that is a lie. So how do I demonstrate that that is a lie? Does every girl who develops breast early deserve to be molested?

Of course not.

So you are not an exception to that rule.

Oh, yeah, I see. Yeah, I can see another lie because I'm a survivor of that kind of abuse. It's the sh, don't tell anyone or you'll get in trouble.

Yeah. And what I learned about that, I say, from my own journey is I was taught that keeping quiet kept the peace until I realized whose peace is it keeping? Right. The offenders at peace. The people who don't want to deal with it at peace. And I, in this little body, am holding all of the war, so I don't want to hold it anymore.

Wow.

Yeah. This is what we're taught. You're going to upset things. You're going to upset people. Nobody wants to hear that. And yeah, there's no peace.

Whose peace are you keeping? Yeah, you're making it easy for everybody else as it's slowly destroying you.

Absolutely. And often then they're doing it to multiple people over the course of years. The silence gives freedom for it to continue.

How do you counsel people who in the process of starting to come back home to themselves, to learn to fly, to stop holding the peace for other people around you? How do you counsel people to then go back into their life? Let's just say it's a relationship where you have somebody that you're dating or in relationship with and there's alcohol or drugs. You've had the conversation, you've gone around and around and around, and you're the one that's not saying anything. So you're keeping the peace for them.

Right.

How do you handle that sort of disruption in your life now that you're starting to. Because it's scary.

Yes.

The homecoming process can also be scary because you're going to have to confront.

Things and it's going to require some losses and some people are not going to be happy with the new you. People like the silent you. They like the compliant you. They like the doormat you. Who wouldn't like that? So when you start getting some opinions and start getting your voice and not wanting to do some of the unhealthy things you've been doing, not everyone is going to celebrate. And that will be important for you to see who wants me whole and who prefers me broken. And then I will have to start making some adjustments and there are a range of ways we can do it. So, like in the work chapter, we say there's one path for if I want to stay on this job and how do I restore myself? And there's another path where I need to leave this job and in relationship with people, whether romantic or otherwise. Some I will have to end, and some it will have to be different because I'm different. And there can be a grieving there.

Wow. In your new role, you are really wanting to bring access to therapy, to mental health support, to the process of a homecoming for people, to as many people as possible. So what is therapy and why is it important?

Yeah. So therapy is when you have a trained, licensed facilitator who understands how to journey with you from where you are back home to yourself without judgment and with compassion and without needing you to take care of them.

Oh, that last part was the big one.

That's the big one. That's why your friend is not the same thing. Your family member is not the same thing.

Wow.

Yeah.

I had always said objective and licensed, but the fact that you just said you don't have to take care of them.

That's right.

Wow.

Yeah. That's the huge part. Especially for those of us who have tendencies toward taking care of people. Right.

Yeah.

So then in your other relationships, you'll say, I don't want to burden people, or, I know they have a lot going on, so let me just pour into them. Well, this is the space where you don't have to give, you don't have to be on. You don't have to do that. I tell my clients I'm good. I have spaces outside of here that are for me. So you don't have to worry. I have the capacity to hold it, and that's what we need.

And you also have the tools.

Yes.

To help us recognize and call ourselves out where we're being a chicken.

Right.

Where we could be an eagle and how to take flight.

And I will say it is so important to have the tools and the understanding because people who don't will often blame. Let's say if you have a child who's depressed and their parents just call them lazy.

Yes.

Right. They don't understand what they're looking at. And so that's a part of what's important as well, is perspective and insight into what I'm seeing.

If somebody in your life is struggling, I'm just going to send my husband to therapy. Just going to send my kid to therapy. Does that work?

So there is a benefit of individual and family.

Okay.

Right. Because I'll say, especially with children, what I saw when I first started was people would drop off their child and I would spend like an hour building this kid up. And then they pick them up, and in the parking lot, they're cussing the kid out they didn't even make it home. Are we just going to do this every week? And so now I'm seeing what the real dynamic is. So with couples, I will say there is a part of our work that is individual. Let's say if I'm working with a sexual trauma survivor, there's a part that is that person's journey. But then there's a part for the couple to say, like, what will the intimacy be like for us, given the history? And how do we support each other and have patience with each other? And I want to name as we're talking about people, is not only self care, but community care.

Let's talk about that. What does that even mean? Yeah.

So we heal in relationship to other people. There is something very liberating and healing in being known. Like, you reveal yourself and people still love you. Right. That people still choose you, that you feel seen and heard and supported. There's emotional social support, which is like someone I can cry with, someone I can share my good news with, someone who I can vent to. But then there's also instrumental social support. Are there people who can help me in concrete, practical ways? And it's important that we know which friend or family member is good at what.

Right.

You may have a relative who's not touchy feely. Right. They're not good with the tears, but they can help you find a job. Right. So that's another type of support.

Yeah. I'm surprised and saddened by the number of people that will reach out when they hear you say that and say, I have no one. When you have somebody that you are working with who is telling themselves the story that I have no one, what are the rituals or the tools or the tactics? Because you give homework in this, every chapter has homework. I would imagine every counseling session that you do as a therapist has homework. So what would the homework be? If you're somebody who says, I have.

No one, then one of our goals will be to make friends and first get their buy in. Can we say that that's a goal for you, is to make friends? And so then we have to think about, where are we going to get these friends? Sometimes it's brand new people. So it may be you sign up for a cooking class or you join a book club or you join a political organization or your yoga group, and then sometimes you have people, but you have kept it very surface. So then I want to deepen my relationships. And the surgeon general has been talking recently and issued the advisory about loneliness and what I like to tell people is loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. Some people when they hear you say you're lonely, they just say, you need to love yourself. And I like to say that's not the same thing. You can love yourself and still desire a connection to other people. So that is not an automatic absence of self love. And so then if I have acquaintances that are all very surface, then to deepen it, am I willing to go deeper?

Because again, I can start to shift the tide when I talk about deeper things, then other people will often meet me there.

Wow. Hey, it's Mel. You so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe. Wow.