Danielle Elliot: The rise in ADHD diagnoses: Why women? Why now?
Apr 07, 2025
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Episode 197 with Danielle Elliot.
“I would love to see the conversation move towards less questioning of women when they talk about having ADHD.”
Danielle is a health and science journalist, documentarian, and creator and host of Climbing the Walls, a new 6-part podcast series produced by Understood.org that releases April 9 (in 2 days!).
Danielle was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 36 amid a surge of ADHD diagnoses in women since the pandemic. In her podcast series, she travels the country speaking with mental health professionals and women with ADHD to get answers to her big questions, like “Why women?” “Why now?” — and are we as a society equipped to support these many recently diagnosed women?
In today’s interview, Danielle shares her own diagnosis story as well as what she discovered throughout this investigative journey. She shares what surprised her most, and where she feels the conversation around neurodivergence — especially among women — needs to be headed.
Website: danielliot.com ; https://lnk.to/climbingthewalls
Instagram: @understoodorg
Links & Resources:
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Episode edited by E Podcast Productions
Danielle Elliot 0:00
Yeah, I would just love to see I guess. And then the next stage of conversation is sort of for societal level adjustments, as opposed to expecting women to figure out the treatment completely on our own and fix things, whereas it's like there's a lot of things around us that could be fixed too.
Katy Weber 0:21
Hello and welcome to the women and ADHD podcast. I'm your host. Katy Weber, I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 45 and it completely turned my world upside down. I've been looking back at so much of my life, school, jobs, my relationships, all of it with this new lens, and it has been nothing short of overwhelming. I quickly discovered I was not the only woman to have this experience, and now I interview other women who like me discovered in adulthood they have ADHD and are finally feeling like they understand who they are and how to best lean into their strengths, both professionally and personally. Hello and welcome back. Before I say anything, let me just get this part out of the way. You have chosen a great episode to listen to, so sit back and buckle up. This interview is probably gonna go down as one of my favorite episodes ever, and I'm sure you'll see why very shortly. So I'm not gonna waste any more time. Let's get right into it. Here we are at Episode 197 in which I interviewed Danielle Elliot. Danielle is a health and science journalist, documentarian and creator and host of climbing the walls, a brand new six part podcast series produced by understood.org that debuts on April 9 this week, Danielle was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 36 and like many of us, in the midst of a surge of ADHD diagnoses in women since the pandemic, her investigative series weaves together the science with Many candid conversations with mental health experts and everyday women talking about their lived experience, including Danielle, she sets out to get answers to some of her big questions around the surge in ADHD diagnoses, like why women and why now, and what has going undiagnosed for so long Cost women in our conversation, Danielle shares her own diagnosis story, as well as what she discovered through this investigative journey. She shares what surprised her the most and where she feels. The conversation around neurodivergence, especially among women, needs to be headed now I want to note that when I spoke to Danielle, I had only been granted early access to Episode One of the climbing the walls series. So I'm just as excited as you are to hear the rest of the six episodes, episodes one and two released this week, and then each subsequent episode will be released weekly after that. So after this conversation, make sure to head to my show notes to find a link to subscribe to the climbing the walls series. Okay, without further ado, here is my conversation with Danielle.
Danielle Elliot 3:02
Well, Danielle, thank you so much for joining
Katy Weber 3:05
me today for what I hope will be a very informative, jam packed interview, as is given the fact that I have about 18,000 questions for you. But let's start with your diagnosis, which was, we were 36 at the time, and you mentioned in the first episode of climbing the walls that you had Googled rejection sensitivity, or it was after a breakup. And you know, I always joke that I'm like, we all remember where we were the very first time we heard rejection sensitive dysphoria, because it was like a gut punch. So tell me about like, what were some of the symptoms that you were noticing in your life that made you think I should really look into ADHD? Yeah,
Danielle Elliot 3:49
so it really was that specifically, and I get into this in climbing the walls, but specifically the night of the breakup, I think the way the conversation went, it was like three months later, I was still thinking about it, and I couldn't understand the way I reacted that night and I started, I honed in on the word rejection, because sort of a background is just that the relationship was reaching a natural end, and we had both been going back and forth, like we had a lot of conversations about whether we should break up. And it wasn't, I wasn't blindsided. I think I was just surprised in the specific moment when it happened, and I honed in on rejection, and then I Googled strong reactions to rejection, because I'm a science reporter, and I'm kind of always looking for, I mean, I'd been spending all this time trying to figure out what happens to your brain during a breakup, like, why am I still feeling these things? Because they didn't seem logical to me. So I was sort of looking into the neuroscience underlying all of it, and I typed in strong reactions to rejection, and immediately this article popped up about rejection, sensitive dysphoria, and I had never heard of it. And at first I thought, Is this a real thing? I've never heard of this. What is this? And as I was reading it, it was like I was reading about myself, specifically on that night that we had broken up. And I think there was one line I quote it in the first episode of climbing the walls, but I'm not going to get the quote perfect right now, but it was basically a sudden urge at the perceived loss of love, and I was like, because I was thinking, I've been rejected at other points in my life, and I've never, kind of flown into this, like out of body experience, and this is my first real breakup. This was my first real relationship, I would say. So it was just really interesting to read that line. And then I kept going through the article, and the last section of the article said, is it something along the lines of most people with ADHD experience rejection, sensitivity, and that's not an exact quote, but it was along those lines. I read that line, and I just thought, Do I have ADHD? Is that actually what's happening here? This is and it just so and then that night, I spent time reading about about ADHD, and especially how it shows up in relationships. And so many things clicked. So it was, it was truly that article about rejection sensitivity that felt so familiar that I I can't ignore this like this is, I think once or twice I had seen like something I had been off of social media for a while, which I actually get into in episode three of climbing the walls. But one time, and I had gotten off of it in the pandemic, and one time in april 2021 I had re activated, right? Yeah, I had reactivated my account, and I got an ad from a company called done, and the things that describe sound familiar? I screenshot it. And honestly, it wasn't until February, almost a year later, February of 2022, when I read about rejection sensitivity, that I remember that I had taken that screenshot. I was like, you know, this clicks with that ad that I got, and it all sort of, I meant to look into that, right? Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, right. That's been on my list for almost a year. Maybe that was January 2022, whatever it was, it was almost a
Katy Weber 7:08
year. That's very relatable. Did you notice talking to other women who were diagnosed in adulthood? Did you notice many of them related first to the emotional side of ADHD than what is in the DSM. You know, the you do you feel run by a motor or whatever those ridiculous questions are for kids, like, Why do you think so many of us relate to the emotional side? This is a huge question. I'm realizing, as I'm saying it, I'm like, why? Again, it's like that, what is it? What's behind all of this? Right? But, I mean, I feel like for so many of us, it is the emotional stuff. It's the like, Why do I go from zero to 100 so quickly with rage and sensitivity and just all of that? Like, what is that about? And yet it doesn't seem to be discussed at all. You know, so many clinicians don't really even look at the emotional side. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about that
Danielle Elliot 8:05
I absolutely think that. I mean, even sometimes you can hear it in the way women react, like if I'm speaking to a woman who I'm hearing her describe things that I know now are associated with ADHD, but that I didn't know before. Sometimes even if you say, Have you considered ADHD, they're like, no, no. I they sort of have a reaction that I would have had three years ago, which is, like, No, I get things done. I do like, I can figure it all out because we've all coped with it for so long. But when you start describing those emotional things, especially the amount of ruminating, I find people, especially women really relate to I spend the entire night rethinking the conversation I had that day, and I can remember doing, I mean, personally, I can remember doing that at least as far back as seventh grade. There's like one very specific moment in seventh grade when I remember that night, like laying there all night thinking about a conversation and replaying it in my head. And so I think the short answer is, yes, I do find personally, and again, I'm not an expert with understood.org but in my personal experience with ADHD, and in talking to other women with ADHD, when you start talking about the emotional impact, there's sort of this light bulb moment when women are like, Oh, that's part of AD, like I had no idea. Like the rejection, sensitivity, the rumination, the just kind of constantly feeling, like thinking you'll catch up to certain things and not catching up to them, or catching up to peers of the time line on which they're doing certain things, but then feeling like there's something wrong with you because you're not doing them on the same timeline, and I feel that way, whether it's dating or career, whenever you talk to women about whatever their priority was, there's a sense of having felt like they were behind. I think that's all part of the emotional part. So I would say, yeah, that when I talk to women with ADHD, it's definitely the emotional side that that has impacted them the most. And. Where they relate the most. Yeah,
Katy Weber 10:01
right. I think the one common question among all of us is, what's wrong with me? And I think you right. I think you summed it up perfectly, which is that feeling of having to catch up, like, thinking on some level, like, isn't this everybody's experience? Isn't this the universal female experience? Or, you know, being socialized as a woman? You know, I often have that question of, like, is this ADHD, or am I an angry feminist living in America right now, right? And like, I sometimes it's hard to tell the difference sometimes, because it's like, how much of this is universal experience versus how much of this is like me working extra hard and and one of the things I really struggle with a lot is that idea of, like, you know, well, everybody has ADHD and then feeling really personally attacked by that comment, because it, it questions my suffering, right? And it's like, it questions how, like, then I'm put in this place where I have to, I have to explain whether it is clinically significant, and how do we even begin to figure that one out.
Danielle Elliot 11:01
How many times have you heard at least I know that. I personally have heard so many times. Well, every woman struggles with that like, Well, yeah, there are massive societal issues and like us, and there's massive issues, and there are reasons why every woman struggles with that, but they do struggle differently, and it's hard to get into the nuance and describe the difference in the struggle, because everyone's only had their own experience. So it's hard to say, like it, yeah, I guess it's all relative, but yeah, that part is it's difficult to try to have to defend it too. I found myself sometimes, then just not even I find myself now, sometimes not even mentioning it, but instead just saying, oh, sometimes I have a hard time showing up or showing up on time. I mean, rather than saying, Oh, I have ADHD, like, when I was first diagnosed, I started trying to describe things and like, Oh, please don't get upset if I don't respond to that text. I'm learning what it means to have ADHD. And once I fully understood it, I stepped back and decided I didn't need to explain myself to anyone. Like, if they wanted to learn what it meant to have ADHD, they could, but otherwise they could just continue to be friends with me and kind of accept me as I am, you know,
Katy Weber 12:07
yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that is so fantastic about the diagnosis in adulthood, is that it's like, it's it's an explanation for us, right? It gives us permission to be different and to not have to constantly apologize for who we are, and so yeah, a lot of the time it's like, I'm just gonna say this is what I do, or the you know, that I might forget this, or I'm gonna need this in writing, or all of those things exactly, and not feel shame about that anymore, right?
Danielle Elliot 12:31
And not feel shame and feel Yeah, I sometimes think that the greatest thing I've that's come out of the diagnosis for me is the level of self forgiveness, because I used to berate myself for doing things wrong to a degree that was just not healthy. There's just no way it was healthy. And now I'm sort of like, Oh, I did it that way because I have ADHD, and that's just how my brain works, and that's that's what it is. And it might not meet everyone's expectations of how women are supposed to do things, whatever that means, but it's how I do things so and I've sometimes I've wondered, I wonder if you've had this question for yourself at all, but I sometimes wonder if it's also a level of self acceptance that comes with reaching your 40s, or your late 30s and 40s where you're also like, well, if people are going to be upset with me, then let them be upset with me. But this is what it's an interesting time in life to be diagnosed, right? Because you're sort of like, reaching a point of, well, this is who I am, no matter what I don't know, yeah,
Katy Weber 13:30
exactly. It's like, you reach that point where you're like, I'm tired, I don't want to apologize anymore for who I am. So Right? It's like, yeah, there is, I think there is a real reason why so many of us are getting diagnosed in our like, 30s and older, right? Because we're reaching that phase of like, you know what? Screw it.
Danielle Elliot 13:46
I'm just not going to try that much harder anymore. Yeah,
Katy Weber 13:51
so, yeah. So I'm really curious, because you set out with climbing the walls to find out a lot of the questions that I've been asking as well for years, which is like, what is it? First of all, do we all have ADHD, or did something else happen? Like, you know, for me, because I was diagnosed at the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and so I so much was happening at the same time. There were so many variables that it's been very difficult for me to figure out. Like, was it, you know, was it Tiktok? Was it locked down? Was it perimenopause? Like, what were all of those factors? Was it all of the above? And so I love that you really, like, you're diving in there and saying, like, why women? Why now? Why during the last few years? And also, is this ADHD or like, are we talking about something else that's broader? So were there any things that really surprised you that you weren't expecting to learn in creating the series?
Danielle Elliot 14:52
I think there were a few things. I think it was sort of like each episode digs into another one of these questions. Because I think to me, it was. Almost. I started out really surprised that people kept whittling it down to one or two sentences that tried to say, like, you said, like any article I read, I was like, oh, it's Tiktok. I kept thinking, it can't be just one thing, like, there has to be something. I was really shocked by. And, you know, I feel naive even saying this, but you know that research into women's health has been lacking like, I think we all sort of know that at this point, but I was shocked by the degree to which, like, even though some of the research had started to catch up when we're talking about girls, even when you talk about adolescent girls, the research wasn't there. When you talk about young women, the research wasn't there. Like I was surprised that it wasn't there at truly any point. I was really surprised to realize how much still isn't talked about, because you sort of need enough women to reach a point in life and be asking questions, for researchers to even start exploring those questions. And there's a question that one of the women asks in Episode Six that I had never even considered, and it made me realize, like we just don't know, and it had to do with one of the women I interviewed was she's known about her ADHD for a long time, but she's now undergoing cancer treatment. That's the final episode, and it focuses heavily on hormones and what we do or don't know about female hormones and how they interact with ADHD. And I know we all want answers to that, but I hadn't even considered that women with ADHD who are post menopausal might want answers about or pre menopausal actually, like I hadn't. I haven't talked to anyone who's gone through breast cancer and needs to consider different types of treatment. But the woman I spoke with was very concerned with how an estrogen blocker to treat breast cancer would impact her ADHD brain. And I was like, there's just so much that we still don't even know. I think that was my biggest surprise. I guess is where I'm going with this answer. I'm rambling a little bit, but yeah, that was, it was how much we haven't even considered researching yet because we're so far behind,
Katy Weber 17:08
you know, in some weird way, it gives me a lot of comfort when I do interview a psychologist or a psychiatrist who has 12 books on their you know, docket, and like, when I ask those questions, like, what are we really talking about here? Right? Yeah, they don't know, right? And that's what always still fascinates me so many years later, and why I think I've been able to continue like talking about and and thinking about neurodivergence, is because it is so it's like, I just feel like that meme with Charlie with all the red string on the wall, right? Because it's just so fascinating. And there's so many things that come down to theory and conjecture, and, you know, not even talking about the hormones or the misogyny in in research, right? Like with the fact that, and I'm so glad you brought Sarah sold it on, because she is absolutely my favorite expert, and she's so wonderful, and she's such a, you know, she's such a pioneer. And, like, the fact that she was like, Yeah, you know, it's not like, they just found out about women, like, they've known for decades.
Danielle Elliot 18:17
Yeah, they've known and, like, that's one of the explanations that I heard that was one of the first real shocks for me was even realizing that there is a book from 30 years ago that describes the experience in a way that is still extremely accurate and relatable, you know. So every time I saw a headline that said, we just haven't known or saw a major media outlet writing about the way that diagnosis is on the rise, because we simply haven't understood it. Just it just upsets and now, when I see it, it just upsets me, because, like, right understood, but we haven't listened. Is, I think, a more accurate well, and then I you know, one of
Katy Weber 18:54
the things that I, like you know over the trajectory of my knowledge over the years, through this podcast and interviewing regular women and interviewing experts like it's, you know, I feel like there's so many aspects that are playing into this, in terms of the rise of autoimmune disorders and young women. And you know how dysregulated nervous systems are affecting our you know diseases. You know, how the rates of disease in women? And I'm like, It's all connected, right? Like
Danielle Elliot 19:24
the interconnected nature, like, in terms of it's all in our body, and it's all connected, yeah,
Katy Weber 19:28
right? And, like, all of the ways in which women are, you know, our bodies are translating and manifesting stress and trauma. And then it's like, okay, if, how do we even begin to parse the, you know, the insanity of female trauma in somebody's life. So it's like, I don't even know where, where we go with that one. Yeah,
Danielle Elliot 19:50
no, I've written in previous stories, I've written about treatments for autism that begin in the gut, rather than the brain, and I think that we're starting to see. Uh, just, just to, not to get too deep into this, but sort of the it's all connected, and you can't only treat the brain or only treat the gut, or only treat any like it's and I think a lot of it relates back to stress, but I'm going off on a tangent. We can,
Katy Weber 20:14
well, that's what I mean, right? I'm like, I feel like it's so endlessly fascinating to me in all the different directions, the more I learned, the less I know. And I actually said that once to load up works go glint, who's, don't know if you came across her at all. She's a psychiatrist researcher in,
Danielle Elliot 20:32
I gotta say, Sweden. Is she at the goddess lab in Sweden? Yes, yes. Okay.
Katy Weber 20:37
I was interviewing her, and I was like, the more I the more I learned, the less I know. And she was like, Absolutely, like, she was like, the one, like, brilliant scientist who validated, like, it just gets more confusing the deeper you go. Did you find that with the
Danielle Elliot 20:51
series? I did, yeah, and I actually, I was just gonna say, I think the research coming out of the the goddess lab is some of the most valuable research I've seen in the years, and I'm excited to see what they have in the pipeline, because, yeah, their work has so far been, I think, phenomenal, or it shed a lot of light on experience. Did you feel like when you
Katy Weber 21:12
set out to to investigate the why women, why now? Did you feel like you got the answer you were looking for? Or did you feel like the more you researched, the less you understood asking for a friend? Yeah,
Danielle Elliot 21:27
I think I definitely got closer to most of my answers, but also have some big looming questions that I want to spend more time on that the lifespan of the making of the podcast couldn't have sustained, but there are things that I really want to keep looking into and just understanding, and not necessarily all related to ADHD, but kind of just related to brain function in the way we're living our lives now, if that makes sense, Like influences on, not on whether or not it causes ADHD, but how it impacts people with ADHD or potentially compounds difficulties. That's the question that I feel like I now don't understand at all sometimes, after making the show, the short answer to your question is, really, I do have more questions than I started out with, but I've also answered some of them in a way that I that were satisfying enough for me, and I hope are satisfying enough for listeners.
Katy Weber 22:27
Oh, that's great. Did you feel like an answer to the giant eye roll that we often get from the media of you know, everybody thinks they have ADHD right now, enough already. Like, do you have any more clarity around what is and isn't, I guess, diagnosable? ADHD, kind of getting back to what we were talking about before, especially for a woman who sort of is in that feeling of like, I think I might have it, but I also don't know, everybody's misdiagnosing or over diagnosing or feeling kind of like questioning herself. I
Danielle Elliot 23:05
feel like I have more clarity on it after speaking with all the experts that I spoke to for the for the research as I was researching the show, and then also the interviews that ultimately made it into the show, I think there's also a lot of questions among researchers. I think I would leave that one to the experts, [email protected] or like, I think some of those questions are answered in especially in episodes four, five and six, but I think they're even still trying to figure some of that out. And like, what qualifies as I want to make sure I get the wording right, but clinically diagnosable. It's one of those things where it's like, science is science, but there's still some disagreement among scientists on some of that. That's sort of where I've landed with it well, and that's
Katy Weber 23:55
where I think it gets down to, Are there risks to over diagnosis or even misdiagnosis. And I feel like, other than feeling like, if everybody has it, then we minimize the struggle. But that's a lot, you know that like that mostly ends up feeling like a personal defensiveness more than it is a risk of over diagnosis, right? So I'm like, All right, well, I can, like, coach myself out of that one but, but like, do you see any risks of over diagnosis, other than the medication issue, or it's because it just feels like advocating for yourself and learning how to be kinder to yourself, like those are all wonderful things for people, even if they agree this is, or is an ADHD,
Danielle Elliot 24:36
yeah, and it's sort of like, if you're toeing the line between, this is now, Again, my personal opinion, I'm not speaking for understood, but I think that if you're toeing the line between clinically or not, then there's a lot of I think, well, to back myself up a step, I do think that the shortage of medication is the biggest problem with over diagnosis. But you mentioned that one also, right? It's like other than. That, I think what I found is that so many of us who have not yet really been versed in ADHD treatment think that medication is the only approach to it, and I've learned so much about other you know, how many other things matter in treatment? And even when I was first diagnosed, I thought of it as, okay, I'm gonna finally try something that might help me better manage myself. And I took the prescription, I kind of took it religiously, and then I would say, about six or seven months in, I started to realize that I actually really, really like my ADHD brain and everything it's made possible in my life. And I didn't like quieting it down, if you will, with medication. And that was a very personal choice. I'm not I don't think that. I think something different works for everyone. But that's when I really started to look much deeper into the lifestyle interventions, if you will, and just trying to figure out how to live. And I still and like knowing how to get the medication to work for you, instead of feeling like you have to be completely attached to the medication. And so I think that I guess where I'm really going, this is just again, speaking personal opinion, I don't see a massive problem with over diagnosis, if it means that more people are learning how to live their way, live their life in a way that feels manageable to them and gives them that self acceptance and self forgiveness. And I think maybe what we'll slowly realize is that a lot of the tools that are presented as ADHD life tools right now are actually just good life tools, right so, like, even if those people who are benefiting from them. It's like, maybe everybody could learn these things. And wherever you are on the spectrum of neuro divergence, they can help you right, even if where I like, you're on the neuro typical end of that, a lot of it has to do with organization, and you're probably going to benefit from it. I guess that's my I don't know I like, I questioned over diagnosis a lot, and I get into it, especially in episode four, because that was a big question that I had coming into the podcast, and is that a problem? And I like, worked my way through it a lot, in some of the conversations I had in Episode Four and some of the conversations that didn't make it into the show. But I think it's a big question. I think maybe the other risk of over diagnosis is that if everyone's diagnosed, then people who since, like everyone needs help, but if people who stand to benefit the most from treatment can no longer access it because we've decided that, like, it's like a blanket diagnosis for everyone, then over diagnosis is a big problem, right? Like, if it limits access to treatment for people whose lives are changed by treatment, then you don't know. I'm trying to figure out the right way to articulate it. Yeah,
Katy Weber 27:57
no, I totally get it. It's reminding me of the autism, actually, autistic community as well, right? Which is like, the more we expand the definition of autism to include self diagnosed, low support needs adults, the more we are, you know, then, then the people who are opposed to that tend to be the parents, the clinicians, the people who have something to lose by the expansion of the diagnosis, right? And so whereas the actually autistic adults don't have anything to lose, in fact, they have everything to gain from expanding this diagnosis to people who are who work next to you at you know who are around you and functioning and living in society. And so it's like, who are the people that are opposing this the most? And it tends, you know, the people who roll their eyes and say, Miss, don't diagnose yourself because of a Tiktok video, tend to be the people who lose the most, you know in terms of their authority and the gate the clinical gatekeeping, or whatever. And now I'm starting to sound like I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I think there's like, almost like, follow the there's a bit of the like, follow the money around that, right? But just in terms of like, if everybody says they have ADHD, will that make it less likely for people to get accommodations at school or at work? The answer should be, no. The answer should be, everybody should be getting whatever accommodations they need. And can we look at it that way if we start looking at each person in the workspace as being, you know, somebody who can advocate for themselves, as opposed to being like cogs in the, you know, the capitalist machine? Yeah, exactly
Danielle Elliot 29:39
right, right? That's exactly. I completely agree with you there. Like, if what it does is empower people to say, this is how I work best, and almost like this is how you'll get the most out of me, because this is how I work best, you would think that, rather than being cogs who do everything exactly as it's expected to be done, it would ultimately benefit companies. In my mind, if. That they but what I was getting excited as you're talking about it too, because something that's not at all in the show, but that I found the most interesting and research that I think is now, you could say on the horizon, because they're getting researchers who I spoke with are getting grants to study this, but are at, like, the nascent stages of actually conducting the research there at least five of the ones I spoke to in all different countries or states, are looking into what accommodations actually help people with ADHD the most, because they're starting to find that when ADHD was initially diagnosed, kind of in large numbers, it was grouped in with other learning delays in school. And so then the accommodations just became we'll give you the same accommodations that we give for learning differences. And like one researcher who I spoke with in London, is a college professor who just said I noticed that when I give my students with ADHD extra time, they're just going to take whatever extra time I give them, because we know enough now to know that the ADHD brain works well with deadlines. She doesn't have the research done yet, but she's trying to figure out what accommodations actually work best, and we could end up now completely hypothesizing. I'm just going to throw out an example. But if we ended up at a place where everyone with ADHD was given less time because they're going to get it done as quickly as they need to. Would every like, would the accommodations be as appealing? And then, if someone doesn't, you know, like, you would almost start to, if we like, start to hone in on what accommodations truly work best for ADHD. We might see that less people like, if we're worried about over diagnosis, we might see that less people who don't have whatever we call true ADHD are seeking a diagnosis.
Katy Weber 31:49
Yeah, and I'm just glad somebody's researching it too, right? Because I think one of the issues is like, if we have to start looking at this differently, and if we have to start taking other people into consideration in terms of needs and changing the way things have always been, then nobody wants to do that right? And so it's like even I'm back in grad school now, and you know, one of the accommodations I need the most, or I appreciate the most, is time and a half on tests and having them somewhere else. Do I ever use the time and a half? No, I never use it. I just need to know it's there. I need to know it's
Danielle Elliot 32:23
there. And the quiet days, that sounds amazing. I've never been in an academic setting while knowing I have ADHD. It's
Katy Weber 32:29
so better, yeah, because,
Danielle Elliot 32:31
yeah, we're distracting, right? And
Katy Weber 32:34
so it is really helpful to know that stuff. But also, like, you know, why doesn't everybody like, why are we even being timed, right? That's the big thing, which is like, Why do I even have to ask for time and a half? Why are we being timed? Why are we even taking midterms? Midterms are ridiculous, right? Why do I have to memorize information when the internet exists, like, it's like, all of those questions start coming out, and then you're like, Well, if we have to change everything from the ground up, well then screw it, forget it, yeah.
Danielle Elliot 33:00
And then you start to see how, like in certain, I would say, spaces that have the privilege of being able to do things really differently, like where I'm going with this is where I went to grad school. It was the first time I'd ever been in a pass fail situation. And I've been a straight A student my whole life. But if you ask me what I've learned, I could tell you that I learned how to take tests in a way that I would get straight A's right, like I learned how to make sure I got the A, even if it meant convincing a teacher to change my grade, because I just learned that the goal was straight A's. And then I got to grad school, and I don't know what my grade actually, most of the teachers would tell you at the end. Had this been a graded class, this is what you would have had. But knowing that it didn't matter if I got an A or not, I can tell you a lot more of what I learned in grad school, because I just retained so much more, because it was truly you're going to do this work if you're interested in doing the work, not if you're interested in getting an A. Oh, absolutely. And I say that that's only the type of place that has is like a privileged enough space to say we'll just do pass fail grading, because you're never going to need to know what your grades were on this when I found out that there were undergraduate programs that are pass fail, I so deeply regretted not having applied to one of them, because that would have been a much easier, much less stressful four years, and I might have retained a lot more of what I actually learned. Yeah, yeah. It's
Katy Weber 34:27
been, it's very fascinating to go back and learning to kind of advocate and talk about, you know, I mean, I'm in grad school to become a mental health counselor, mostly to work with women with ADHD, and it's something that's it's fascinating to me how little ADHD is in the curriculum, how little autism is in the curriculum. And, yeah, I mean, it's everywhere. It's really everywhere, especially in mental health counseling. So it's kind of like, on the one hand, I feel like I'm a broken record constantly having my hand up in the classroom saying, like, have. They've been screened, but also feeling like, thankfully, somebody is in the room talking about this for everybody else, yeah, was there anything that didn't make it in? If there was, like, an episode seven that you could was there anything that you feel like you wanted to get in that didn't make it in? I
Danielle Elliot 35:19
mean, I would love to make a whole nother show about the way we live our lives now and what's different, and why there might be again. I want to be careful with the wording of this, because I don't think it's environmental factors that are creating ADHD, but I think environmental factors that are compounding the difficulties of ADHD, and I think that I would love to get much deeper into that, not because, well, mainly because, I think when we start to have that conversation, we all go back to, you know, when I hear it brought up in conversation, it's like, Well, we did things so differently in the 1990s and I'm like, No, I think we have a Short term memory bias there where it's like, we're not necessarily talking about life in the 90s, even by the 90s, so many people were struggling with ADHD because of how things had changed since maybe the 1890s i think i nerd out the most on the science, so I would love to look into the more evolutionary questions and kind of how we live now. The other things that didn't make it in were really the research on the accommodations. I would have loved to have been able to spend more time talking about adult women at very specific life stages, as opposed to trying to group everyone into especially in the episode where we talk about hormones, and research into hormones, you kind of can't do an entire episode on hh group, because the research doesn't exist. Like it was almost, I think, as a reporter, it was the first time that I was attempting to report essentially on the absence of something, because my reporting style is very much, I mean, it's narrative, and I'm trying to talk to people who've had the experiences of things. Experiences of things, and also who have done the research, and we can look back at least slightly at the research and how it changed things. But this was looking at research that I ultimately found one study that had come out in the last year, and otherwise I was reporting on the absence of research, which is, yeah, it was an interesting challenge. But otherwise, as far as leaving things out, I think it's just that everyone I spoke with could have, I could have made an entire episode out of, like, Episode Five, I go to a camp that's primarily designed for children with ADHD, but it's for their entire family to attend, so that the parents can also like while the children are in very ADHD friendly activities throughout the day, the parents are essentially in either group therapy, you can say, or sessions where they're just learning a lot. And many of the women at that camp were there for their children, but had recently been diagnosed themselves, and I could have made an episode featuring every single conversation I had at that camp. So I think it's really just that the Yeah, the individual stories ended up, some of them got left out for no reason, other than there's only so much time. Yeah, as you know,
Katy Weber 38:20
yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm so grateful to the interviews that I've done with women, I never would have thought my daughter had ADHD. I was diagnosed before either of my kids, and I thought my son had it, because he and I are very similar. Never thought my daughter would have had ADHD until I started interviewing women and seeing the same profile over and over and over again of got 90s in school, white knuckled it white knuckled it through everything, and then ended up with depression and anxiety, dual diagnosis. And I was like, Oh yeah, that's my daughter.
Danielle Elliot 38:51
Well, I'm also waiting to see there was one parent at Camp whose son displays a lot of the symptoms that are typically associated with girls. And I think one thing that I never even had time, I mean, it's a podcast about the rise in ADHD among women, so it really wasn't the place to explore what I'm about to say, but I was, I'm very interested in how many boys and men have the traits that we associate with girls and are not necessarily identified, because the boys don't even know how to voice that. Like listening to this woman describe the way her son would say, would describe what he was feeling, she was even confused, like he was just describing things that you don't typically hear boys describe, and it's mostly the inattentive ADHD symptoms, but I'm curious to see if, in the next 20 years, we find out that there's a lot of undiagnosed men who don't show the hyperactivity as kids well,
Katy Weber 39:49
right? And that's again, like the the difference between the biology and the socialization and the nature nurture elements are also endlessly fascinating, too, because. You think about, like, lack of social and emotional development for boys, if they are inattentive, yeah, like, you know, it's like they're doubly damned in terms of masking and and holding it all together. And, yeah, where do you want to see the conversation around ADHD, especially around women going and if you know, if you could fast forward like 10 years. Where do you where do you feel like it is going? Or where do you want it to go?
Danielle Elliot 40:28
I think the first place I wanted to go is just towards less questioning of women when they talk about having it. I have a statistic here. It's like among women 20 to 49 diagnosis doubled from 2020, to 2022, and I think that massive surge all at once leads more people to question it. So where I would love to see the conversation go question it on an individual level, like the looks that I've gotten from some people, and it's almost like their eyes glaze over if you mentioned ADHD, because they've heard it from so many women in their lives lately, so I would love to see that, um, kind of dissipate, and for there to be a general acceptance that this is not women simply saying wife's too hard, which is what I've heard from people like not ever in official conversations. But I think sometimes, when you're talking to people there, and they're they know you well enough that they're willing to express doubt, they'll sort of say, like, is this really like, is this? I hear that every now and then, and I hope that goes away. Like the willingness to express I just want, I mean, this is true in any situation whatsoever, whether we're talking about ADHD or anything. I just want people to believe women when they're describing our experience, well,
Katy Weber 41:40
right? I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about the ME TOO movement, and I was like, maybe that's what we need, right? Like, maybe that's what is happening, is there needs to be this swell of of like power in numbers, so that women can start being taken seriously when they're like, I'm drowning. It's not, you know, whether or not, whatever you want to call this, if you want to call it a disorder or a superpower, or whatever the cause is, if it's genetic, if it's trauma, take your pick. But I'm drowning, and I, you know, I need help. And like, what at what? Like you said, at what point are we going to start addressing that part, and not, you know, and not nitpicking over whether or not this is actually a disorder, whether you deserve medication or all of those other things,
Danielle Elliot 42:25
exactly, and having it rather than be, yeah, I would just love to see, I guess. And then the next stage of conversation is sort of for societal level adjustments, as opposed to expecting women to figure out the treatment completely on our own and fix things, whereas it's like, there's a lot of things around us that could be fixed too. Oh,
Katy Weber 42:45
I felt that one so deeply, right? Where it's like, well, and I think that also goes back to the idea of accommodations, and even just the the like, medication route, right? Which is like, we, if we stop talking about this, like it's a disease to be fixed with a pill or whatever like, and then we stopped talking about the fact that it's the onus is on the individual to fix themselves. The you know, that the onus is on it's systemic, and the the onus is on our bosses and our spouses and society in general to actually start looking getting as curious as we are about, like, you know, how can we make sure you're not constantly feeling underwater,
Danielle Elliot 43:26
exactly in the same way that we're I think, as a society, starting to look at schools to say the onus? I mean, you would never say the onus is on the child right to, like, figure it all out and fix themselves. And I think giving some of that grace also to adults, would be a good place for the conversation to land?
Katy Weber 43:45
Yeah, wow. No, you know, no biggie. That's
Danielle Elliot 43:51
like, yeah. How can we completely overhaul the way society functions so that more people can feel functional on an everyday basis? Yeah, yeah.
Katy Weber 43:59
But, you know, I think I haven't really thought much about, like, the ME TOO movement and how that swell really did change the dial, right? And so maybe, you know, if, if that is, what is going to come of this momentous few years of, like, massive diagnoses, whatever we end up calling it, whatever we end up, you know, deciding that this is, you know, is it going to move the needle? Hopefully, you know, towards, like you said, towards better health and wellness services, especially for, you know, marginalized populations and
Danielle Elliot 44:35
yeah, and I mean, especially because I like in doing the research for climbing the walls. I just kept coming across. Anytime there was even, I would call it a micro rise, you would see reporting it, and then the reporting always comes back to over diagnosis, rather than, what can we do to help? I guess is what? But not even just to help. Because I don't think anyone with ADHD would ever say we want handouts or help. And. That, like in the way that help is sort of vilified sometimes.
Katy Weber 45:03
Well, one of the things I find a lot with my coaching clients is when they are looking for, when they're struggling at work, right, they feel like asking help is an is somehow getting away with something, right? And I'm like, How have we gotten to a place in society where we have to exhaust all options before we ask for help. Like, why does asking for help feel like you're cheating? And so again, it's like, I have identified a way to optimize my performance by adding in this accommodation. We all benefit, right? And so it's like, how do we reframe this idea of accommodation? And you know, a lot of businesses, thankfully have and are and are doing the work because they're seeing, especially outside of North America, like they're seeing that when your employees are happy, duh, they perform better, right? Yeah,
Danielle Elliot 45:52
exactly. Someone said to me that men talk about optimization and women talk about help, and that's sort of why help gets this bad rap, whereas optimizing is good. So it's like, how do we put the language of it all into optimization? I guess you could say, and then it doesn't have to feel like you're asking for anything. You're actually offering the company something. So it's constantly figuring out how to offer someone else something instead of asking them for something, even though you're saying pretty much the same thing, right? You just have to frame it properly. I also hope the conversation about ADHD goes towards figuring out how to make the resources accessible to populations of people who have been left kind of behind in this, like a lot of my reporting, I tried really hard to find the I don't have the statistics in front of me, but the incarceration rates among people with undiagnosed ADHD are very high, and I could not find any organization that's focusing specifically on trying to get lifestyle interventions and ADHD coaching into incarcerated population. So I think where I hope the conversation goes, in some ways, is figuring out how to get access to care, because medication doesn't have to be the only treatment, and it's often not even allowed in the prison system. So I'm like figuring out how to get access to alternative ADHD care to the people who might benefit most, whether it's population, like of any of the groups that struggle with ADHD,
Katy Weber 47:26
yeah, well, and this is where I feel like Tiktok is our best mode of psycho education right now, right if you're talking about like, democratizing psycho education, and how important knowing our brains and knowing ourselves is in terms of, like, changing our mindset and really kind of getting, you know, getting rid of a lot of the shame around some behaviors and feeling more validated. Like, I mean, you can't really beat Tiktok.
Danielle Elliot 47:49
You can prevent mental health. So I do remember a really well done it was a New York Times piece about a program at Harvard that was inviting Tiktok influencers who talk about mental health to essentially like a training course on psychiatry and psychology and talking about mental health, because the time i because Harvard had conducted a study that found that, and I don't remember the percentage, so I'm not even going to throw a number out there, but it was that a significant percentage of mental health content on Tiktok was actually considered misleading. So Harvard was inviting the influencers, sort of to or Tiktok content creators, mental health content creators, to Cambridge to try and figure out, not, how do we shut you down, but how do we help to make sure that you're looking at the research, not, you know, like it was. It was interesting because they were trying to make sure that they were at a point of understanding that people on Tiktok disseminate information farthest and fastest. So how do we make sure that that information is all scientifically accurate? And I thought it was great to see that one of these gatekeeping institutions was trying to work with the people who are getting information out there at this point, as opposed to trying to say, no, no, no, just listen to our researchers, you know, like they were
Katy Weber 49:10
definitely cut. I feel like there's a whole other episode here that you just opened, because I'm like, because we that is, you know, I think that's really, really important in terms of the like, yeah, let's get it right. And I always think of this tick tock that I saw every time I go to, like, wash my hands when I'm cooking. I remember seeing a tick tock that was, like, the last straw for me, where it was like, I wash my hands a lot in between handling things while I'm cooking. Is that an ADHD thing? And I'm like, okay, you've taken it too far, right, right? And so I'm like, Alright, I get it. That's, you know, but again, I'm sort of like, is how much harm is that causing? I don't know, but I think there is something to be said about the way in which we, the people, are changing the conversation by studying ourselves, right? So the question is, is that an ADHD thing? Huh? I don't know. What is. Related to, is it related to executive Fauci? Is it a sensory thing? Like we're changing the we're changing the definition of, what is ADHD? What is neuro divergence? What is autism? And so by studying ourselves, it's like the, I didn't realize this even existed until recently, but the Choji show kenjo method of of the like Japanese method of self study, which is like, instead of a research doing top down, a researcher doing top down research on the subjects, the subjects study themselves and determine what the study and the questions and the hypotheses are right, which is like, that's kind of what's happening right now, as we all decide amongst us what is and isn't part of ADHD, and who are the people who are, who are against it, it's the research, it's the people who hold the control, right? And so on the one hand, I'm like, Yes, I get it. You might be concerned about misdiagnosis when it comes to something that's life threatening, like a heart attack. And like, we could talk about why women don't get diagnosed with heart attacks, because they have a higher pain threshold, if you want to go there, but it's like, again, I think in this instance, when it comes to, like, mental health and neurodivergence, and I feel like I'm talking way out of turn, and somebody's going to yell at me for this, but I think that, like, there's just as much validity in the way in which we are talking about and sharing our experiences and saying, because I am ADHD, I experienced this, therefore, ergo, this is ADHD, right? And so it's like, where maybe not everything, maybe not washing my hands after, you know, while I'm cooking, but can we expand it beyond the six criteria in the DSM, which we already have, yeah. And so that's where I feel like, yeah. The the idea of like, how can we increase psycho education to more marginalized populations? To the original point is like, you know, just by democratizing what it is and isn't too Yeah?
Danielle Elliot 51:57
Well, yeah. And Sarah soldin and another clinician named Terry Matlin speak to that also in episode two of climbing the walls, because they they really get into, I mean, what we're describing, what's happening on and we get into this a lot. In episode three, actually, also, which is one of my favorite episodes, um, but women talking to each other, is when we really start to understand the conditions that are impacting women, right? Or, like, just the experience of women, is a better way of saying that. And whether it was at in person conferences in the 90s or AOL chat rooms or Facebook groups, like all the different iterations of places women could speak to each other, this is always when we've been able to advance the conversation. And I sometimes think Tiktok is the latest iteration of that, where women can speak to each other free of the gatekeepers telling them, No, no, that thing you're describing is not part of it, or
Katy Weber 52:52
it's not clinically significant, right?
Danielle Elliot 52:54
Clinically significant?
Katy Weber 52:56
Yeah, yeah. I think there is something really curative, especially like the early days of Facebook, because I joined Facebook when I had my first child, and so I was like, God, those Facebook groups were the best thing that ever happened to me, right? Or even just like the list serves, like a park, school, parents and all of those, like the the validation that happens in community for women, I think, is like the antidote to a lot of the misogyny that's happening right now. God, that's so I mean, it's kind of obvious, but feels really profound right now, thinking about the way in which is there is that like curative aspect to validation in a lot of these experiences?
Danielle Elliot 53:33
Yeah, and Sarah and Terry both describe going to the first adult ADHD conference and just the feeling in the room and realizing, oh, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm just not usually surrounded by other women like me, you know, like, just like, yeah, we're different, but we're all and when we're with each other, there's no confusion in the conversation flow, and there's just like, when we're with each other, you can just feel it. But I think that validation makes a big difference, and I think it's kind of that first step in all the self forgiveness and self awareness that we were talking about at the beginning. Yeah,
Katy Weber 54:07
oh gosh. Well, thank you so much. I mean, yeah, like, these are the conversations I find so nourishing. Like you said, like, it's just, gosh, it's I, I've often said it feels like unbuttoning your pants at Thanksgiving dinner, that feeling right, where you just like, oh, that's completely it, yeah, yeah. Where it's like, Oh, I love it, and I love the research you're doing. And thank you so much for that. I have one final question, which is, Where did the name climbing the walls come from? How did you end up with that one? Yeah. So
Danielle Elliot 54:39
in one of the interviews, Terry Matlin said to me, and again, I might get this specific quote wrong, but I but the sound bite is in episode two, so you're looking at the correct quote. But just that, during the pandemic, she received more emails from women seeking treatment for ADHD than she'd ever received before. And. She said these women were climbing the walls. And as soon as she said it, my editor and I were like, oh, that's, that's the name of the show. Yeah, it was her description of women during the pandemic who were truly, I mean, I think that captured it perfectly, climbing the walls. It really does, right? And,
Katy Weber 55:16
you know, I was gonna say, like we were talking earlier, before I hit record, about the shiny ball syndrome, and how you talk about that in episode one of being in grad school. And maybe that would be a good alternative name to ADHD, but I think maybe climbing the walls syndrome might be a better one.
Danielle Elliot 55:34
Yeah, shiny ball syndrome. There was also another one I was tossing around at one point all the scattered ladies, because I don't being scattered as bad. So I was sort of like, but we tossed around a few and then I, I think my editor and I agreed we love to take a title from something someone says to us. And so when she said that, it was like, Oh yeah, there we go. Yeah, that's perfect.
Katy Weber 55:57
Well, thank you again. Danielle, it's been so lovely sitting down talking to you, and I'm so excited for everybody to hear climbing the walls, which has already aired at this point. So April 2 was the first episode aired, and there's six episodes, and there'll be links in the show notes to all of that. And yeah, thank you so much. As other than your website, is there any anywhere else people can find you? And do you have anything else that you're working on that might be related
Danielle Elliot 56:24
the other things I sort of work on, this is probably one of the ways I know about my own ADHD like the other things I'm working on right now are a true crime podcast and an ESPN series, so it's sort of like all over the place, but so nothing else ADHD related at the moment, but understood.org is full of resources, so I would say, yeah. For more information, I would definitely point people. Point people there. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you again, yeah, thank you so much. This was great. Yeah.
Katy Weber 56:58
There you have it. Thank you for listening, and I really hope you enjoyed this episode of the women and ADHD podcast. If you'd like to find out more about me and my coaching programs, head over to women and adhd.com if you're a woman who was diagnosed with ADHD and you'd like to apply to be a guest on this podcast, visit women and adhd.com/podcast guest, and you can find that link in the episode show notes. Also, you know, we ADH dears crave feedback, and I would really appreciate hearing from you the listener. Please take a moment to leave me a review on Apple podcasts or audible. And if that feels like too much, and I totally get it, please just take a few seconds right now to give me a five star rating or share this episode on your own social media to help reach more women who maybe have yet to discover and lean into this gift of neurodivergency, and they may be struggling and they don't even know why. I'll see you next time when I interview another amazing woman who discovered she's not lazy or crazy or broken, but she has ADHD, and she's now on the path to understanding her neurodivergent mind and finally, using this gift to her advantage, take care till then you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
