Taylor Elyse Morrison: Building practical skills for self-care

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 Episode 141 with Taylor Elyse Morrison.

“My ADHD is more internal, so I would often worry I was looking for excuses or tricking myself into thinking I had ADHD.”

Taylor is a founder, facilitator, coach, and serial entrepreneur making well-being and personal development more accessible. Through her company Inner Workout and her book of the same name, Taylor supports people’s journey to know, care for, and become their full selves. 

Recently named one of Fortune’s 10 Innovators Shaping the Future of Health, Taylor is tired of aspirational 'wellness as usual.' Instead, she builds businesses, content, and experiences that make well-being and personal development more accessible. 

Taylor and I talk about why exactly neurodivergent brains struggle with self-care and so often end up in burnout mode. We talk about how self-concept and self-talk lead to emotional dysregulation, how to listen to our bodies and what they’re actually telling us, and the importance of community and support when it comes to self-care (and what that looks like when you have ADHD).

Website: innerworkout.co

Instagram: @taylorelysemorrison ; @innerworkout

Links: 

Taylor’s book, Inner Workout

Taylor’s FREE Take Care assessment

Begin Within group coaching application

 

Enjoy!

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Katy Weber She Her (00:00.831)
Hi, Taylor. Welcome to the podcast. I feel like, thank you for joining me. I feel like I'm in the presence of podcast, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Podcast professor. I feel like you've been such a, you've been doing podcasting for so long. And it's such an interesting medium, especially for the conversations that we have, that we'll have today. So.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (00:04.843)
Hi, I'm so.

Katy Weber She Her (00:28.747)
Thank you for joining me. So I would love to find out, I guess, your story. How long ago were you diagnosed with ADHD? It was about a little over a year ago, year and a half.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (00:42.338)
Just under a year ago, I've been, I've had inklings for a while. And I really, well, let's start from the beginning. So what happened was, I started to hear women in my life, especially talking about ADHD more, and realizing, oh, I have some things in common with them. I had a client while I was working with her.

Katy Weber She Her (00:53.731)
Yeah

Taylor Elyse Morrison (01:10.142)
She got diagnosed with ADHD and I had a moment where I've always had kind of a portfolio career or always for the past four years or so, four or five years, and I realized, oh, I'm doing this because I need to have a level of stimulation that not everyone else needs to have. And I'd heard people talk about with how in ADHD, especially if you're doing something you don't want to do,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (01:39.506)
music on and a YouTube show in the background so you can do this task. And I don't do that. But in my career, I have to have like enough interesting things happening. And that moment, I still remember it. I like finished facilitating a workshop and immediately was like, I need to see if I have ADHD. So I found a practitioner to meet with. And then I called my dad and my dad was like, well.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (02:08.298)
Yeah, you probably do have ADHD. I'm pretty sure I have it. He's in his late 60s. He's just like, yeah, I just live with it. I don't think I'm gonna get diagnosed at this point. And then a couple of days later, my sister called him and was like, Dad, I think I have ADHD. Her daughter has been diagnosed with ADHD for a while. And he was like, did you talk to your sister? Cause she's having the same journey. And so we've kind of been on this journey together.

Katy Weber She Her (02:34.939)
Oh, wow. Okay. So was she also diagnosed?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (02:39.39)
I don't think that she sought a professional diagnosis because she's been working with her daughter who has pretty extreme ADHD for a while, where she was like, I can see the similarities that we have. And she's kind of like my dad in that way, where she's like, I've been coping for this long. My sister's 15 years older than me. She's like, I've been coping for this long. It just feels enough for me to be like.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (03:06.074)
Oh yeah, my brain works differently and now I can treat myself as if my brain works differently.

Katy Weber She Her (03:10.975)
Yeah, yeah, I know it is always fascinating to me because it's something we talk about on this podcast a lot, which is like how important is a formal diagnosis for some of us, it was incredibly validating, right? Like I feel like without a formal diagnosis, I would have always been wondering if I was making this up, right? Like I think a lot of it comes down to how you view ADHD in terms of...

Katy Weber She Her (03:33.743)
you know, is this, is this something that's quirky about me versus maybe like, you know, a lot of this shame that we have around ADHD. And that was what I found so fascinating when I was diagnosed was that it's, it wasn't like the fidgetiness that I related to. It wasn't the, you know, um, I can't sit still part. I didn't relate to any of that. Or like you were saying, like needing things in the background. Those weren't, those weren't necessarily, um,

Katy Weber She Her (04:00.451)
uh, traits that I related to, but it was a lot of the inner stuff, right? Like the shame and the emotional reaction and feeling like a lot of these traits of mine that were character flaws or, um, and, and how deeply held some of the, that stigma is around, around these symptoms of ADHD.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (04:23.418)
I relate to that so deeply. And I was telling you before we started recording, once I did get a diagnosis, my first thing, I reached out to the women in my life who did have ADHD, and I started searching for podcasts because so much of the conversation I'd heard was I'm supposed to be this really fidgety person. And technically my diagnosis is inattentive. I do move around a lot. It's funny, my husband, I've been with him for 12 years.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (04:53.166)
And he's like, oh, yeah, some of the things that you do do make sense. Like I'll randomly just be on the couch and have to put my legs in the air because I've just been too still for too long. But I wasn't as a kid always running around. And I think that's another interesting thing for me, too. And I think part of why I did want to seek out a professional diagnosis or a formal diagnosis was because I did pretty well in school.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (05:18.75)
I was bored a lot of the time in school, but I was able to muscle through it. And so I did feel like, am I just making this up? That like, maybe I was just a normal kid who was bored in school or because like for my sister, for example, she struggled a lot more in school. And I think for her, it was easier for her to connect the dots, but because it was a lot more of inward things or things that.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (05:44.966)
I did have shame around, I didn't feel comfortable expressing. I felt like maybe I was tricking myself into saying that I had ADHD, so I would just feel like using it as an excuse almost. And that was shame that I had to work through and still sometimes have to work through.

Katy Weber She Her (06:01.951)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And it's one of the I think it's one of the reasons why I love to ask guests, you know, how they've surveyed their whole life through this new lens, because I think it is really interesting to see evidence over the course of our life, because it does look differently, right? I mean, you could go to a doctor and say, I did really well in school and I wasn't, you know, I didn't have behavioral issues.

Katy Weber She Her (06:24.159)
And they could say, well, there's no evidence of ADHD, but you also know that there's the high masking that girls experience, you know, and then the emphasis on behaving well and the emphasis on being accepted and the perfectionism that then leads to anxiety, that then leads to the depression and anxiety diagnosis. So, you know, even this idea of like, what is...

Katy Weber She Her (06:45.699)
quote unquote, evidence of ADHD is really subjective from one person to the next. And I've shared this on the podcast before. Like when I was diagnosed, I immediately looked at my son because I really, like your sister struggled in school and had a lot more organizational issues that seemed really obvious as ADHD when I was younger. And so I saw that in my son and was like, oh, he and I are cut from the same cloth. But my daughter.

Katy Weber She Her (07:10.003)
is extremely organized and very, does very, very well in school. And I never would have thought she had ADHD until I started interviewing women on the podcast and heard the story, this story over and over and over again, of girls doing really, really well in school and developing a really intense anxiety and perfectionism and burnout, right? And all of the stuff that sort of comes with high expectations and high performance, I was like, Oh, okay. That's also ADHD. So yeah.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (07:35.095)
Yeah.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (07:39.558)
I relate to that so deeply.

Katy Weber She Her (07:42.367)
Well, and I think also when there is a sibling, I don't know if this was an experience if.

Katy Weber She Her (07:47.327)
you know, I don't know if your sister's gonna listen to this, but like, uh, you know, sometimes when there is the sibling who is the kind of misbehaving sibling, the other sibling, like I've interviewed a lot of women who had a, who had a sibling who was diagnosed with ADHD and then they adopted the persona of the good sibling, right? And then they were sort of the easy one, the one who did well, the one who their parents didn't have to worry about. And that became their narrative. And, and that led to a lot of perfectionism.

Katy Weber She Her (08:17.882)
and anxiety as a result.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (08:20.382)
Yeah, it's really interesting because my sister is so much older than me. Like our childhoods didn't overlap all that much. Like she's 15 years older than me. And so I definitely as I got older was aware of like some of the different decisions that we make. I think something interesting for me and something that I've come back to a lot is, I mean, you you can't see me right now if you're.

Katy Weber She Her (08:30.083)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (08:49.278)
listening to this, but I'm a black woman and I grew up in predominantly white environments. And so I think that added another element of things to me where there's the socialization of being a girl and just generally we're accepted to be quiet and agreeable and all of these things. There also was a hyper awareness that I had that when I was doing things, if I were to be someone who acted out.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (09:14.954)
And I remember being so bored in class, like being so bored that I literally thought I was going to die. But I wasn't going to like, it never crossed my mind as a possibility that I could like get up and disrupt the class. Because I'm representing not just me, but Black people. And that's a lot of pressure to hold too. So that's why I love having more nuanced conversations about ADHD and the different identities that we hold.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (09:44.982)
changes not only our experience of ADHD, but also our outward expression of it.

Katy Weber She Her (09:51.251)
Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like I've talked to guests who were who were women of color who were in, you know, med school. And so the extra, you know, or especially in school environments where there was that additional pressure, which was like, I'm going to, you know, I'm not only representing myself, but I'm representing my entire race. And then I if I if I step out of line, then I'm going to sort of prove to you your

Katy Weber She Her (10:17.539)
preconception that I didn't belong here in the first place, right? And so always having to deal with that feeling of like, you know, over performance, right? Which I think a lot of minority children have of having to, you can't just show up as 100%. You have to show up as 150%.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (10:37.502)
Yeah, absolutely.

Katy Weber She Her (10:39.071)
Um, so, so now one of the things that really struck me on your website within our workout was, uh, you were talking about wellness. Um, and, and, um, said it, what if we could help people build the skill of self care? And that really, that really, uh, um, stood out to me because one of the things I feel like we talk a lot about on this podcast is needing to be explicitly told things. Right? Like, like there's something inherently.

Katy Weber She Her (11:05.731)
And there's something that feels very neurotypical about people just sort of understanding how they're supposed to do things. And many of us as neurodivergence felt like everybody got the manual, but me. And I've often said like, even executive function, like that was not a term I'd ever heard about. Um, I really, really wish it had been told, you know, taught in school or like we were explicitly taught things about, um, strategies and, and, um, you know, developing

Katy Weber She Her (11:34.623)
life skills, it felt like everybody kind of absorbed that. And I never felt like I did. And so a lot of us have that feeling like we weren't adulting. And so it was really interesting to see that in the term, you know, in terms of self care, right? Which is like, do you think there's something inherently neurodivergent about needing to be explicitly taught self care, or do you think maybe that's just a universal human quality?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (11:58.85)
Yes and no. First of all, I love this question. And it's funny because I got diagnosed with ADHD all four-ish years into my work around self-care and after I finished writing the book. So it's, I wished, I was like, man, I wish I could kind of go back and rewrite it. And not because there's anything that I would change, but because I think it colors the way that I talk about things. So.

Katy Weber She Her (12:00.663)
I'm sorry.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (12:27.742)
I think just as growing up in a capitalist society that tends to tell us that our worth is in our productivity, most people need to learn how to take care of themselves and to take care of themselves as the end goal, not in service of them making more money or being more successful.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (12:53.554)
or these other things. So I think there is a larger conversation that just needs to be had about self-care in general. But I do think that the way that I approach it, because I made it with my, this approach with my neurodivergent brain, tends to resonate with people who also are neurodivergent. So I guess to start, the definition of self-care that I use is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (13:23.07)
And that's constantly what I'm going back to teaching people, is you need to learn the way that you talk to you, your inner wisdom, your body, these different aspects of you are trying to have a conversation with you. So you need to learn how it speaks to you. And then you need to develop the skill to be able to respond with love to whatever is coming up. I think that's really useful because

Taylor Elyse Morrison (13:50.982)
I'm not in the business of being overly prescriptive. I'm in the business of really trying to help you understand. Journaling works for you, great. Let's double down on that. Sitting in silence works for you, great. Let's work double down on that. You get your best insights about what's going on in the shower, great. Let's lean into that. Something that I've struggled with, both as a Black woman and as now someone who realizes I'm neurodivergent, is.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (14:19.458)
getting all these formulas that don't take into account the different identities I hold and the different ways that our brains can work. So I could get so fired up about this, but I'm gonna pause here.

Katy Weber She Her (14:33.949)
Well, no, it's really interesting because I feel like, you know, I also wrote a book about binge eating and before my diagnosis and then after my diagnosis, I was like, Oh, yeah, I had the very similar experience where I was like, Oh, seeing this, this lens now and realizing how

Katy Weber She Her (14:52.451)
common binge eating is. And like you said, like all the clients I had worked with in the past, I kind of wanted to call them up and be like, guess what? We all have ADHD. And not that, like you said, not that I would have changed a word about the book, but there is something to context, right? Like I think this diagnosis provides us with context. It provides us with information that can be so enlightening in terms of what is our next step. And that's what I think is so.

Katy Weber She Her (15:20.131)
so profound feeling about the diagnosis is that it really explains to us who we are. But I'm curious, like, when you talk about that, how we talk to ourselves, how, and I apologize if this is in the book, because I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but is how we talk to ourself. What am I trying to say here? So we are, we, I feel like one of the things that many of us with, especially who are

Katy Weber She Her (15:50.151)
a lot of negativity from people around us, right? It doesn't come from nowhere. So we've internalized, you know, somebody at some point told us we were lazy. Somebody at some point told us we were selfish or worthless, right? These are these negative messages that people with ADHD get all the time. And then we internalize them. And then we end up with depression. And so like, how do we break that cycle? How do we begin to talk to ourselves in a way that is caring when so many of us feel

Katy Weber She Her (16:20.051)
like all of the outside voices are saying the opposite. Does that make sense? That's a big question.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (16:25.734)
Yeah, so makes perfect sense. Let me zoom out and then I'll zoom back in. So to zoom out, when I share this definition of self-care, listening within and responding in the most loving way possible, when I say that it's a conversation that you're having with yourself, it's that for me, what it shifted is instead of self-care being this to do list where it's like I need to wake up at 5 a.m.

Katy Weber She Her (16:32.286)
Okay.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (16:54.89)
I need to drink this exact amount of water. I need to do this workout that some celebrity did. It's more about checking in with me, what's going on underneath the surface, which might be different than it was yesterday, which might be different than it was five minutes ago, and respond with love. So that's what I mean when I'm saying having that conversation with yourself is understanding when my muscles get tight, that happens a lot when I'm anxious.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (17:22.762)
That means it might be worth it to take five minutes to stretch or do a few minutes of deep breathing. That nuance that you're able to understand just the same way with like your best friend or your partner, they can have like a certain look that they do or a certain tone of voice and they may not say it, but you know it's the time to give them a hug. So that's me zooming out. To zoom back into your question, which I think is really, really important.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (17:50.054)
as like, again, part of why I sought a diagnosis is because I wanted the validation that I struggle. For example, cleaning is something I've always struggled with. And I felt like I was just so bad at it and had all of these narratives around why I was wrong. I think of like the saying cleanliness is next to godliness. And I'm like, well, I'm not godly because I definitely am not as cleanly as I should be. And it's hard to

Taylor Elyse Morrison (18:19.694)
have.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (18:22.826)
effective, clear, supportive conversations with yourself when there is all of that noise happening around. So a couple things that I would offer for that. One is a lot of times for myself and for clients that I work with, it's we tend to put this into a they like

Taylor Elyse Morrison (18:46.142)
a they or an everyone. Everyone thinks I'm lazy. They think I'm lazy, etc. And so I invite people to get really clear. Who is that? Who is that whose voice you're hearing? And I've done this. It's been the most random people. One time it was this guy from high school. Another time it was this client that I was working with a while back. And I was just like, who are these? Exactly.

Katy Weber She Her (19:09.683)
My fourth grade teacher. Yeah.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (19:13.31)
So get really clear on who that person is, and then how much do you really care about their opinion? But there's something to separating, okay, it's not everyone. When I get to the root of it, it's this one person, and many times I have not been in contact with them for a while. And if it is someone, if it is your partner, then you can have a conversation with your partner and say, I've been thinking about cleaning, I'm having a lot of shame with how I'm showing up.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (19:41.578)
when it comes to cleaning and you're getting it out of your head instead of all of this internalized stuff that we love to do. Another thing that I like to offer, this comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. And this is all about creating distance between us and the thoughts because when we're so identified with the thoughts, it's, I mean, we ruminate, it's spinning, it's like...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (20:04.67)
I'm feeling in my body all of the tightness that happens when I get caught up in thoughts. So another thing that you can do is to say, instead of I'm lazy, just say, I'm having the thought that I'm lazy. Already that's putting distance between yourself and the thought. Another step further, you can go, I notice I'm having the thought that I'm lazy. That puts you into the observer mode. And so instead of you being lazy,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (20:33.398)
you're having the thought or you're noticing that you're having the thought. And when you have more distance from it, that allows you to be more objective versus when we believe that every thought we have is true.

Katy Weber She Her (20:46.791)
I love that. Right. Oh, that is such a beautiful way of explaining that. And I, and I love how you've phrased it as responding with love because it, I think, you know, one of the things I talk a lot about with this podcast too, is, is this idea of, of pulling back and looking at things in, in sort of a logical way, right. Which is, I use the term, this is information as a trigger, which is

Katy Weber She Her (21:12.799)
You know, okay, so getting yourself out of the emotional reaction of I'm a failure, I'm lazy, everybody hates me. Those are all emotional reactions. Those are all judgment laden. And so if we can get to a place where we're, we're observing in more of like an, uh, uh, uh, uh, logical, like anthropological way, we can say, okay, what have I learned from this, what information is important? What can I do next? Right? You can start asking those questions that all involve.

Katy Weber She Her (21:39.267)
progress and observation. And so I've always been looking for a better word than just logical because it never felt like it was the right explanation. And I just loved that you were like, responding with love is really what you're doing in that situation. You're saying what is true and what is not true in those moments.

Katy Weber She Her (21:58.351)
And then being able to say, you know, how important is it? Because then when you're out of that charged emotional dysregulated state, then you can start to ask yourself those questions. Like, what do I do with this knowledge? And, or like you said, like, you know, is this important to me? Who is this? You know, why is this happening? What, what is my response? All of these more, um, regulated questions that are, were able to, uh, move forward with. So I really liked the way you phrase that.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (22:28.246)
Thank you.

Katy Weber She Her (22:28.537)
So, so let's backtrack a little bit within our workout. How did this get started? How did you start this work?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (22:35.73)
Yeah, out of necessity. Like when you were talking earlier about how there are people with ADHD, I'm one of them, who can internalize so much of it. I got my anxiety diagnosis in college and college for me was hard. That was the first time I actually struggled in school because my school growing up was relatively easy, at least for me. And then I went to Vanderbilt and I was like, oh.

Katy Weber She Her (22:38.241)
Mm.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (23:03.894)
Everyone is like as smart as me. This is they have had many of them like better schools than me I did some AP classes, but they're doing IB and all these other things I didn't know and it really like kind of broke my brain and That I always have had perfectionist tendencies, I've always liked to do a lot overload myself but

Taylor Elyse Morrison (23:29.222)
As I really got into adulthood, I found myself in these cycles of doing all the things, getting completely overwhelmed, trying to practice self-care the way that others talked about it. I think of like Parks and Rec, treat yourself, where it's like, get a massage, get your nails done. All of those are great things, but like, if my, the way I've structured my life is fundamentally leading me towards burnout, me getting a 60 minute massage is not going to restructure my life.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (23:58.658)
And I have this particular evening in 2017 where I was newly married. I was working full-time at a startup and doing a lot. I was their first full-time employee. So I had like a lot of things that were happening. I also was doing a side hustle. I also was volunteering for multiple nonprofits and trying to have a social life. All of these things were happening.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (24:25.598)
And I'm trying to be like the good organized person. It's Sunday night. I'm like, let me get my planner. Let me get my laptop. I'm going to plan my week. And instead of planning, I started panicking. I was like, I have too much going on. I can't do all of this. And I'm just clicking buttons and not really writing stuff in my planner. So I did something really out of character for me, which is that I closed my laptop.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (24:50.706)
and I took a bath instead, which side note is kind of funny because now I'm always telling people self-care is more than bubble baths, but it is bubble baths are where it started for me. And that something about unplugging, I didn't look at my phone or my laptop until Monday morning was really useful for me. And that became my first self-care ritual is like I would take some time on Sunday nights to take a bath, to journal, to check in with me. And the more I did that consistently,

Katy Weber She Her (24:58.627)
I'm sorry.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (25:19.97)
The more I wanted that feeling that I got on my Sunday night baths to be able to access that on like a Wednesday morning or a Friday afternoon. And I realized that it wasn't about the bath. What I was doing is that I was listening to myself and I was finding loving ways to respond. And as I started talking about it more and people told me like, I'm struggling with self care and the way that you're talking about it seems like it would be more effective. And it

Taylor Elyse Morrison (25:48.494)
turned into this company in this book.

Katy Weber She Her (25:51.723)
That's amazing. Uh, and congratulations by the way, on the book, I guess it's, it's only been out for a few months. So that's awesome. You're birthing that in 2023. That's amazing. Um, so yeah, you know, it is, I think it is like you said, I, it's a matter of deciding for ourselves, what self care looks like is almost the first step. Right. And I think that many of our experiences as people with ADHD is that we don't necessarily

Katy Weber She Her (26:19.915)
recharge the way other people might. So like lying on the couch for a couple hours is agony. And oftentimes when we're lying on the couch, we're in a state of anxiety or we're in a state of procrastination or we're in a state of paralysis and it's not restorative at all. Usually our inner voice is on is on you know um overdrive telling us how terrible we are. Why can't you do the thing? Or at least that's my experience. Like that's not if I'm lying around on the couch scrolling my phone

Katy Weber She Her (26:48.903)
a bad state. Um, whereas, you know, something that might restore or recharge me is something like getting excited about a new venture or new business. Right? Like my, my hobbies usually involve accidental side hustles, right? I'm like, those are the right. So it's like finding those things that actually do restore and recharge you and realizing that they're going to look very different from, as you say, like what we are taught is, is.

Katy Weber She Her (27:18.363)
supposed to be relaxing like massages. Um, but figuring out what is going to trigger that specific, um, that specific feeling of restoration. And that's really tough, right? I mean, it's really tough because a lot of us don't often feel relaxed. Like, like we don't even know what that means or what that looks like or feels like. I know that, you know, so many of us go through our lives feeling just

Taylor Elyse Morrison (27:30.516)
Yeah.

Katy Weber She Her (27:44.199)
exhausted all the time and no amount of sleep or rest seems to help with that. So, um, yeah, I think that that is sort of the first step is realizing that it's not going to look like what we think it's going to look like.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (28:00.018)
Yeah, and it's interesting, I heard you use the word relaxed and like for me, that isn't the end goal. The goal is to feel cared for. And so when you and that's another thing, like now I kind of want to do a word search in the PDF to see if I even use the word relaxed in the book. But like I'm really concerned about people feeling supported and cared for. And yeah, like

Taylor Elyse Morrison (28:27.206)
I can think of people in my life, I can think of moments for myself, even like I do meditate, I can only meditate for about five minutes. And sometimes it has to be like a moving meditation where I'll start like moving my body because the sitting still just doesn't do it for me. And that doesn't mean that I'm like, not a good meditator. It doesn't mean that I'm bad at it. It just means I know what works for me and what makes me feel cared for in me.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (28:55.766)
not scratching an itch or like being mad at myself for having to move my body doesn't make me feel cared for when I'm meditating.

Katy Weber She Her (29:04.255)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I, you know, I feel like oftentimes when women come to me for coaching, they're newly diagnosed and in that frame of mind of now that I figured out what's wrong with me, how can I fix me? And, and I always kind of chuckle at that where I'm like, no, there's nothing wrong with you, like there never was anything wrong with you. Um, but I think we oft so often want to fix things so quickly and, um,

Katy Weber She Her (29:33.911)
through this lens of self care. I'm like, how, you know, my ins, you know, my impulse as an interviewer is to be like, okay, what's the first thing, what's the quickest way you could tell somebody, you know, to, to feel cared for, what's the, what's the one thing you could tell them to feel cared for. And I realized that that's nuanced and not very easy, but like, okay, that's a good one. That's a better phrasing. And this was, what would be the first step?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (29:52.654)
I mean, I do have a starting point if you want it.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (30:00.85)
Yeah, I think the starting point that I would offer is really leading into the how do you hear from yourself. And I know, especially for myself with ADHD, I want to skip over, I'm like, let's get to the good stuff. Like the responding with love is doing something. But learning how to listen to yourself is really important. I would almost say it's more important if you have ADHD, because

Taylor Elyse Morrison (30:27.418)
so much of the messaging that you're going to be getting around personal development and leadership development and how to be well is not going to be created with you in mind. So learning that I can understand when I'm feeling emotionally dysregulated because I feel this feeling in my stomach. Like really building a rich vocabulary with yourself. And by vocabulary, I mean like,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (30:55.714)
those tight legs, the stomach, the feeling of excitement that you get when you think of a new venture, the things that the voice in your head tends to say, like again, some of the work that you can do with a coach or a therapist can be like naming the stories. Oh yeah, this is the, I'm a failure story. Cool, like I've heard that before. Or this is the Taylor's flaky story. That's a loud story for me where I'm like.

Katy Weber She Her (31:19.009)
Mm-hmm.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (31:23.442)
I have so many interests, people probably think I'm flaky all the time. And then I have to be like, who's people? Oh, people is this one woman that I went to college with that I haven't talked to since college. Actually, I don't care if she thinks that I'm flaky. But I got distracted. I got on a whole tangent. But learning, learning, building a vocabulary with yourself about what is going on, what is you speaking to yourself?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (31:50.09)
will then naturally flow into action. Once you know this means you're anxious, then you can figure out how to deal with it. Once you know that this means you're excited, then you can know how to harness it.

Katy Weber She Her (32:01.287)
Right. And I, yeah, I've often called this, you know, having notes in the margin or, you know, feeling like you are learning a new language when it comes to this diagnosis, because for me it was like, Oh, I had no idea I was dysregulated. That wasn't a term I knew. I didn't, I'd never used that term before. And now I use it all the time because so much of this comes down to sensory regulation, um, in terms of my mood and, and, and, um, you know, but so it really is like.

Katy Weber She Her (32:29.163)
learning this language around who I am and why I am and why I do what I'm doing and how my environment is contributing to that and all of that. So, um, yeah, that's amazing. Um, now I'm curious, uh,

Katy Weber She Her (32:47.059)
I had a question and I've lost it. Oh, well, maybe it'll come back to me. Oh, I did want to get back to the five dimensions of wellbeing, because this is like, tell me a little bit more about your self-assessment too, because that feels like a really good place to start for somebody as well.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (33:02.046)
Yeah, and it's so funny because people with ADHD, they're like, it's 75 questions, so they're either like, ooh, that's a lot of questions, or they're like, ooh, I get really into it and I hyper-focus. So you could be, yes. So to start with the five dimensions of wellbeing, that's really the foundation of the work.

Katy Weber She Her (33:15.308)
I know, we love quizzes, absolutely.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (33:26.97)
of inner workout. And this was inspired by this yogic concept of the koshas, which I then kind of put my own interpretation on it and became the five dimensions of well-being. And what's been really helpful for me about these five dimensions that I'll touch on briefly is that it helped me realize that there are many parts of myself that need attention and care. And if I'm not being mindful...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (33:55.806)
I can put all of my care into one dimension or I can misdirect my care and have something going on emotionally and then try and make it better with a physical response. So I'm already starting to use some of these dimensions so let me go through them. There's the physical dimension, which is the way that your body talks to you and the way that you talk to your body. It's about body awareness, body acceptance, embodiment overall,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (34:25.342)
Again, something that women with ADHD can benefit so much from being more present in our bodies. Then there's the energetic dimension, which looks at our breath, how it can support or detract from our wellbeing. And it also is looking at the way that energy moves in and through our lives. We have things that energize us, things that drain us, and bringing more mindfulness to that. Then there's the mental and emotional dimension. That's one dimension. And that looks at

Taylor Elyse Morrison (34:55.402)
what comes into our brain, like how we're using our brain, what's engaging us, what's stimulating us, especially for ADHD, what's coming out of our brain in the form of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and that's all supported by sleep because we know probably better than almost anyone, sleep can really change our mood and our ability to process things. Then there's the wisdom dimension, which is about us being tapped into our inner wisdom.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (35:23.442)
in the present moment in taking aligned action. As again, I feel like a lot of this, when I say this, I'm like, oh yeah, of course I had ADHD. Because it's one thing for us to like know something, to have that gut feeling. It's another thing to take aligned action there. And then the last piece is about bliss. That dimension is all about connection. Connection to the truest, fullest expression of yourself.

Katy Weber She Her (35:34.515)
Ehh

Taylor Elyse Morrison (35:51.362)
connection to community and connection to something bigger, whatever that means to you.

Katy Weber She Her (35:56.991)
That's incredible. And you know, it is what I find very neurodivergent about this breakdown is how organized, how helpful organized scaffolding can be for us when it comes to self care. And so being able to break these down into categories, I feel like that's very neurodivergent, right? Where we're like, let me understand this. Is there, can I put this into a spreadsheet? You know, of, and how can I understand this from these different point of views? And.

Katy Weber She Her (36:25.675)
points of view. And it reminds me of kind of our treat, the holistic nature of an ADHD quote unquote treatment plan, which is what I call it for lack of a better word. But I'm like so many times with a diagnosis where, you know, our clinician says, here's your medication, see ya. And I'm like, that is not, I mean, medication is amazing for a lot of people, but that is not how we deal with ADHD. That's not gonna solve a lot, you know, it'll help with some things, but really we need to take an incredibly holistic point of view. And when it comes to

Katy Weber She Her (36:55.495)
you know, self care and education and advocacy and accommodations and all of those things in terms of how we are moving in this world. Um, and so, but there is this need to like categorize things I find because maybe it's because we just

Katy Weber She Her (37:11.211)
generally feel so chaotic and we have such a hard time figuring out what our next step is that that feels that even just the five dimensions and working off the co-chains feels very neurodivergent of just being like, yes, this is, this is what it is in a way, a checklist, right? Which is kind of like, M how do I make sure I'm, I'm covering all my bases and, and coming at this from all of these different points of view.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (37:26.626)
Yeah.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (37:36.306)
Exactly. And it's, I like seeing that visual representation when you take the assessment, it's free. And you get like a representation of bubbles of different sizes, you can see, okay, here's how they relate. And then you get percentages, which I will say, especially for my perfectionists here. It's not a test, you can't fail it. The percentages are only so you can see the relationships between the different categories.

Katy Weber She Her (38:01.475)
Uh, that's amazing. So now it does it after you take the assessment and are there, um, is there like tailored suggestions in terms of like, you're the kind of person who needs meditation versus you're the kind of person who needs to go for a run or like how, how tailored is the, is the feedback.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (38:18.966)
Yes.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (38:22.354)
I really like that you asked that question because it's really a snapshot of a point in time. So you could take it one week and take it the next week and get different results and different recommendations. So you get three recommendations that for practices that you can do based on your results. And then if you want to go even further, the book really expands on each of the dimensions. Each of the sub dimensions has a bunch of practices, journaling prompts, all of that good stuff.

Katy Weber She Her (38:48.927)
That's incredible. Oh my God. It almost feels like it could be an app too, right? Where it's like, is those check-in apps I've always really struggled with, which is, you know, how are you today or what are you feeling right now? Because I find it very difficult to decide in the moment how I'm feeling. You know, check-ins are anxiety producing for me, but I feel like there would be a nice way to say.

Katy Weber She Her (39:11.571)
If there was a way that you could kind of describe, like answer questions in terms of how you're feeling, and then it could tell me, you know, this is what you need today. Maybe it's ice cream, maybe it's a bath, I don't know. Like an AI self-care buddy. See, this is how I relax, right? I'm like, start a new business. Now, how do people, beyond the book, how can people...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (39:23.064)
Hehehe

Taylor Elyse Morrison (39:29.758)
love yeah I was gonna say yeah

Katy Weber She Her (39:40.623)
And of course there's the Interwarm Up podcast, which is incredible. I've listened to a few episodes and it's just such an incredible resource. Um, so thank you for putting that into the world, but how can people work with you? And do you do group coaching? Do you have, do you work, you work one-on-one? Do you have courses?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (39:58.654)
Yeah, so, yes. So there is Begin Within, which is our group coaching program, which will actually be starting a couple of months after this goes live. So the application is all on our homepage. And then we also have what are called shift sessions, which are like 60 minute sessions where you take the take care assessment, we hone in on like, what is one specific shift that you can make?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (40:28.098)
that is going to make the biggest impact for your overall wellbeing. Because a thing that we can tend to do is be like, okay, I'm gonna go to the paper store, I'm gonna get a new journal, I'm gonna change everything about my life, and then we get overwhelmed or we get bored and we go to the next thing. So it's so much more useful to be like, okay, let's look at this assessment, let's see what your score is, let's get to the root of the why behind that score.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (40:54.002)
and let's help you commit to one sustainable thing that you can do that will create a ripple effect for you.

Katy Weber She Her (41:00.807)
Oh my goodness. I love that. We do have a tendency to throw a lot at the wall to see what's going to stick. But I also think there's the companionship element is really important with ADHD too, which is really being able to talk this out in terms of the next step. It's not the kind of thing that we're necessarily going to be able to do on our own, right? I can't necessarily sit there. Even if I'm journaling, even if I'm filling a form out, oftentimes it takes another human.

Katy Weber She Her (41:28.787)
to interact with who can then coach us and say, okay, what will be that next year to ask the questions that need to be asked, uh, and to prompt us. So that's incredible. Um, I'm so, I'm getting, uh, this is, I love, I love what you're talking about. I love your work. So, um, um, yeah, that's so, so I'm curious, like since your diagnosis.

Katy Weber She Her (41:50.455)
Has anything changed looking back over the work that you're doing and like, has it, has your view of self care changed through this new lens or is there anything that you sort of has, is there anything that has changed in terms of your definition of self compassion and self care?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (42:07.81)
The definition hasn't changed, but the importance of community care has been underscored for me. Where for a lot of reasons, both perfectionism and living in an individualist society, even though self-care is difficult for many of us, it's easier for us to do often than asking for help and receiving support. And what my ADHD diagnosis...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (42:33.71)
helped me realize is like, again, my brain doesn't work the same way everyone else's brain does. And so I can lean on my husband in certain areas, I can be more upfront with my friends or with my family about the support that I need. And I have like language to name what is going on, which everyone should just be able to ask for help. But for me to understand like

Taylor Elyse Morrison (42:59.638)
where my request was coming from and understand it from a more like intellectual perspective helped me ask for help.

Katy Weber She Her (43:08.375)
Yeah, and that's, I think, a theme that runs throughout this podcast all the time, which is how much of this is how we're socialized as girls versus how, you know, what in terms of support, right? Like, I think that girls are socialized to do things for themselves and to not look for help. And that if we especially in a capitalist, you know, Western Protestant society where it's like, you have to be at your wits end before you can ask for support.

Katy Weber She Her (43:34.467)
because support and asking for help is basically failure, right, whereas I think that boys are socialized to find support immediately, which is like, who can I get to do this for me? My mom, my wife, my secretary, you know, it's always about who's gonna help me do this thing. And so, how does that, how does socialization play into, like you had said earlier, like how our ADHD presents, I think is so fascinating, because it is such a different experience for so many of us.

Katy Weber She Her (44:02.77)
Now, if you so what would you say that you

Katy Weber She Her (44:09.095)
love the most about your ADHD brain.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (44:13.678)
I mean, it was so fun. I felt like you're such a kindred spirit as you were just like, and then it could be this app and then it could be these things. I love the creativity that comes with ADHD and like the connections that we can make. It's funny, before this, I was just getting lunch with a mentee who also has ADHD and got diagnosed just over a year ago. And she was talking about like, yeah, we can just make these connections that

Katy Weber She Her (44:20.724)
Hahahaha

Taylor Elyse Morrison (44:43.146)
are so obvious to us and aren't obvious to other people. And I just think it's so beautiful for us to be creative and be able to, like, it's almost giving me chills just thinking about the interrelatedness of things that is really apparent to us and how that can come forth in business. But also like I've been leaning into more painting and other types of art and creative expression. And

Taylor Elyse Morrison (45:12.618)
like leaning into that and it feels so good.

Katy Weber She Her (45:17.047)
I love that. Actually, that was, as you were talking before, I was like, I wish you did retreats. Maybe that could be another thing you could add on your to-do list. I was like, if you hosted a retreat, I would 100% go, because I think it is really interesting to explore even the idea of a retreat, right? What would a restorative self-care retreat look like for somebody with ADHD? Cause it might not.

Katy Weber She Her (45:38.743)
be lying around on a hammock or take it, having massages like that's not necessarily relaxation. So like, what would it retreat look like? Because I think we're all looking for a way to escape our lives and take a break and, and, you know, recharge. But oftentimes I don't know what that looks like. So it would be interesting to explore like, how do I

Katy Weber She Her (46:03.099)
do I take that time? Because sometimes, you know, even when you have a weekend of like, look, we have a long weekend coming up and I'm like, how am I going to not work for three days? That's my biggest fear. Because I love it. Like that's where I get all of my, you know, I, that's what I love to do. But I also have a family that I need to hang out with and spend time with and enjoy. And I can't be present with, I have such a hard time being present with them, um, when I'm excited about work things. And so that's, that was a little, that's my little therapy session right there.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (46:32.062)
I mean, relatable. I was just in New York with my mom and I like had a conversation the day before. Couldn't sleep the first night I was there because I basically like conceptualized a rebrand, like new iteration of inner workout because it's coming up on four years old, which like is a long time to do something pretty much the same way. So I'm like, OK, it's time for an upgrade. And I just was like, my mom was like understanding about it. And I did.

Katy Weber She Her (46:33.464)
Right?

Katy Weber She Her (46:53.437)
Uh...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (47:01.122)
the majority of it when we weren't together, because we had some, but I was like, it was all I could think about. We're at museums and I'm like, ooh, I love this color combination. I might incorporate this into the rebrand. It was a lot.

Katy Weber She Her (47:16.773)
Um, so now I, I imagine when you first heard the term ADHD, it wasn't relatable. And in terms of a term, I feel like that's another thing we talk about a lot on this podcast is what a terrible name ADHD is. If you could rename it to something else, would you call it something else?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (47:34.226)
It's so funny because...

Taylor Elyse Morrison (47:39.714)
There's a term that already exists that isn't always a positive term, but like having galaxy brain, you know, but I kind of like, which can be derogative, but I kind of like that because I do think that, like I am seeing like stars and constellations and connections and beauty, in ways that other people aren't always seeing it, but also like,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (48:09.762)
SARS are like these volatile balls of gas too. So there's also that element of it. So I think I might name it that like galaxy brain. I don't even want I was going to say syndrome, but I don't even want to put syndrome on it. I'm just a galaxy brain to person.

Katy Weber She Her (48:14.044)
Hahaha

Katy Weber She Her (48:25.691)
Right? I don't know. I mean, I guess it's I guess it's been used as an insult. It's not something I've ever been called, but like I do love it as a metaphor to even just not only that, but just the way in which the galaxy is expanding and contracting at the same time, you know, how it's like moving away from us.

Katy Weber She Her (48:43.467)
towards us and like beyond comprehension. Um, I love that. I really like that too. And I, I, I want to do away with all of the syndrome and traits and everything else. Cause I really think at the end of the day, it's just what

Katy Weber She Her (48:58.687)
we have a certain type of brain and our brain reacts to who we are in our different environments and if in our different countries and if our different societies and socioeconomic, like it just feels like it is one type of brain that has been, you know, um, the, the difficulties that we experience are not the from the brain. The difficulties are from the environment, right? The system around us. So,

Taylor Elyse Morrison (49:29.01)
Absolutely.

Katy Weber She Her (49:29.067)
I like that. Thank you. This was so wonderful. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you so much for your time. You're just incredible. And I'll put links to your website and your book. And is there anything else you want to make sure that people know before we go? How can people reach you is what's the best way to reach out to you?

Taylor Elyse Morrison (49:45.686)
The best place to go is the website. There's the link for the book. There's a link for the free assessment and you can sign up for our newsletter. I'm like kind of on Instagram, but the most consistent place that I do show up is in our weekly newsletter, Self Care Sundays.

Katy Weber She Her (50:03.727)
Oh, I love that. Yes. Yeah. When it comes to self care, I usually stay away from social media. So I get that too. Well, that's wonderful. And oh, yes, of course, I will have a link to the free assessment. I think that's super cool. And we do love we do love personality tests. So well, thanks again for your time. It's been really lovely hearing your story.

Taylor Elyse Morrison (50:26.638)
Thank you, Katie, for having me.

Katy Weber She Her (50:28.995)
Thanks for watching!