Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team, this week I'm talking with H.H. Rune, a Pacific Northwest based author who's writing explorers neurodivergence identity and rediscovering meaning in everyday life. Rune was diagnosed with ADHD at 52 after decades of feeling like she was just bad at life, something I know I felt a lot of in my own journey.
In our conversation today, we talked through the emotional processing of a late diagnosis. Rune describes it as going through the five stages of grief and how she's reshaped her relationship with herself, her work, and the people around her. Ruhn also shares the evolution of her long-running book series and how ADHD both challenged and fueled her creative process. If you'd like to follow along on the show notes page, you can find that at hackingyouradhd.com/225.
This episode is brought to you by understood.org. So I want to tell you about another podcast I think you would really like. It's called Climbing the Walls. It's a six-part series that investigates why women with ADHD have gone under-diagnosed for so long and how that changed dramatically during the pandemic with the diagnosis of ADHD in women skyrocketed. I've listened to the first five episodes and I'm itching to hear the six one once that comes out. This series has been a ton of fun to listen to as host Daniel Elliott explores these questions around women and ADHD and how the picture that's been painted around this topic so far isn't quite what it seems.
The show asks why women, why now, and how under-diagnosis has impacted women's mental health. As I've listened to this series, it's also gone beyond those questions and is really digging into what's going on with women and ADHD. This series has gotten me thinking about how these topics are currently being handled and even how I might want to address them on my podcast in the future. It's a fun listen and if you enjoy investigative type podcasts, definitely check this one out. To listen to Climbing the Walls, search for Climbing the Walls in your podcast app. That's Climbing the Walls.
All right, keep on listening to find out how getting a late diagnosis can give you a third life. All right. Well, I'm thrilled to have you on the show. It's been fun looking at the stuff you do, but I thought one of the places that we could start here is talking about your diagnosis. When were you diagnosed?
I was diagnosed at 52. So I'm 55 now. So not that long ago. And it's kind of an interesting path. And it probably is fairly common with what we're finding out with women and late in life diagnosis. But I kind of always joked about it. I joked about it in my 30s or whatever, if I'd forget something or lose track of something or not be able to decide or whatever. I'd make an excuse and just say I had ADD, which was what it was referred to back in the early 2000s. But I didn't do anything about it.
I didn't tell the doctor. I didn't go and see a psychiatrist or anybody and try and have some understanding around it. It was just a joke. And then fast forward to like around 2019, one of my friends, her daughter was diagnosed with ADHD as a minor. With that diagnosis, they kind of look at the parents and go, oh, well, you probably have it. So then, so she comes to me, she's telling me the story about she probably has it. And then she's like, and you have it for sure. And I'm like, what?
So that was one little seed, you know, that was planted. And but I didn't do anything about it still. And I was just going along living my life. And I got on TikTok and I started seeing people and videos of things that I could really relate to. And I was like, Oh, okay, this is interesting. And then I heard a video by Mel Robbins, who's a self-help guru. And she described her late in life diagnosis as being the young girl who, you know, kind of was distracted in school, the daydreamer, how that led into anxiety and depression, because she wasn't as successful in the scheme of things with school or, you know, just being social.
And that kind of hit me because, you know, at times I have been on antidepressants and things and really struggled with this whole worthiness thing, because I felt like I didn't know what I was doing ever. And so there was, I think there was one day, and I was supposed to go to the doctor, my regular practitioner, a couple of days later, and I just watched TikTok all day, the whole day. And I just wrote down all the stuff, like every single thing that I could relate to the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, moving my feet when I sleep. Like I wrote down everything that I related to, and I took it to the doctor and I'm like here. And she read it and she's like, whoa, and that was my diagnosis.
I didn't have thousands and thousands of dollars, but I've also had that same doctor for 25 years. So like she knew me, it wasn't me trying to go after meds. She saw that I was really struggling. I don't know when you got diagnosed. She gave me a test, like a written test to take, and I wanted to rewrite the thing. Like what was that test? That was the most poorly worded test.
And then you're supposed to like categorize how you feel about something from one to five, but they didn't give any boxes. There was just like this space. And I'm like, well, should I use this space as a graph of one to five? Like what are we doing here? And I handed it back. I'm like, that was the worst test I've ever taken. I don't know if that's part of it. Maybe all of us want to rewrite the test.
I was diagnosed in my 20s. And I remember doing the testing being like, the questions are also like, so like, how do you feel doing these things? And I'm like, also know what you were saying earlier. Like a lot of like the quirks of ADHD, because it's our lived experience, feel like that's just the way things are. Do I get really distracted by things? I don't know. I get distracted a normal amount for me. Is that more than other people? It's hard to tell.
Yeah, really good point. Yeah.
I know when I did it, they had my wife, then girlfriend also fill out a form to like...
About you?
Yeah, to have like an understanding of what when kids are done, they usually have like a parent and a teacher do fill out a form, because parents have one aspect and teachers have a very different understanding of their child too.
Yeah, cool. Fascinating.
I know I feel like, you know, my mid 20s getting diagnosed was like late diagnosis. And so it's like, yeah, I can't imagine like at 52, the understanding of like looking back at your life being like, Oh, this all makes sense. Even with like, Oh, yeah, I was joking about having ADHD for years, but it's like, Oh, that really makes sense. And especially with like, as you like, you're going through TikTok and finding these relatable experiences, which I mean, this is like the great thing with the social media aspect of it is that we now have this sense of what ADHD is like lived experience rather than the pop culture understanding we get from movies and TVs where it's just some like, that's, I think, a lot of times why we kind of feel ADHD as a joke, we're like, Oh, yeah, it's just there's squirrel. Yes, but more than that.
Yeah, I mean, that that was really gigantic about it. It was this feeling that I wasn't alone, you know, and after feeling alone in my own brain, feeling like I was lazy, or I was, you know, not smart or whatever, suddenly I'm in a group for the first time in my life. But I will say that the diagnosis did rock my world. I mean, I do believe that I went through the five stages of grief about it, you know, this idea that my life could have been completely different if I would have known, or I would have had tools, you know, throughout my life.
It would have potentially affected my relationships differently and my work life and just overall well-being and, you know, feeling about myself, my self-confidence, all of those things could have been different. So it's the death of who you could have been. And then you just start with the denial. Well, maybe, I mean, I didn't lose any of my kids anytime. I mean, I forgot one, one time, but I thought she had Spanish that day and the school called me. So it was like a 15 minute deal. It wasn't like I left them in a gas station or anything.
So maybe I didn't, but I think I did. I don't know of any science-backed research about it, but I have heard that women as they age and their hormones start to change, it becomes more pronounced. And so maybe that is why I started to see that when my hormones were changing. And it just, it was like, I can't not see this now. I can't ignore it. And then, you know, you get to this time where you realize that the majority of your life you've been masking.
And so moving out of that and deciding not to mask anymore by using communication with other people and letting them know, you know, and choosing more specifically who you hang out with, it's all been a gift, really. I mean, I'm happy to have the diagnosis. I'm happy to be in the club and quotation marks. A lot of my favorite people are similarly minded. So I don't look at this as a disability. I look at it as a different brain style. I don't beat myself up about it. I'm not offended with the squirrel jokes, like whatever. And I like squirrels, so it's okay. So yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the funny things too is like, I'll be like out on a walk and I'll see a squirrel. I'm like, oh my God. That is being very stereotypical here, Will. But the squirrels are cool. So yeah.
They're really cool. And like, when they land and they're like superheroes, have you seen them? Like, yeah, anyway.
Yeah. Forest up here, I walk through and I'll see them like jumping branch to branch. I think this description of your journey is going through the five stages of grief is really interesting. Do you think you could just write that a little bit more like what that was like going through that process of self acceptance?
Yeah. I think it took me probably about four to five months and I didn't write down the five stages and maybe you can help me with it, but it's like there's denial, there's anger, there's acceptance. That's the last one.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
Yeah. So I hit all of them. It was just very similar to losing my job in 2020. I felt like I went through all of those things. When you look at it that way, you give yourself a little bit more grace about it because it is a gigantic upset to what you believed prior to. So the depression was just kind of thinking about what I could have done. What could I have done differently? Maybe my relationships would have been better if I would have known that I had this part of me that was always looking for the hammer to fall or believing that the insecurity of just being myself, probably with parental stuff as well, but feeling like there wasn't something wrong with me. There was just something slightly different than a lot of people.
And then the acceptance, I don't give myself any grief about stuff as far as like I've told people, okay, if I say something completely random when we're all out to dinner with each other, people will go, they'll smile and be like, okay. It came out of nowhere and I'm like, would you like me to explain to you how I got there? And they always say yes, you know, and they always want to know. And the example I have is like, you know, you go out to a pub or whatever and they have 17 televisions and they're all running something different. And I'm looking around trying to figure out how they're doing that.
Do they have 17 cable boxes in the back or whatever? And I ask the group, you know, and it's completely random because they were talking about their jobs or their kids or whatever. And so I was just telling them, look, I've been processing this for like 15 minutes trying to figure out how they're doing that because I'm noticing that these are all different shows. I'm going to write more about this in one of my upcoming books, the play by play, the anger, I didn't have a tremendous amount. I had, I guess, a little bit like I told one of my friends who was a school teacher and I'm like, yeah, I got diagnosed with ADHD and she's like, well, duh. And I'm like, hey, that's not cool.
Like, I would tell somebody if I thought that they, you know, had that, especially if they had some expertise about it. She had kids that she was around all the time and a little bit upset with my therapist for never bringing it up to me. Like, surely he should have noticed, you know, and then with all of those, those parts, it's like, well, then you have to make the decision on whether you're going to medicate or not. So am I actually going to change my brain during these periods of time with medication? That's another whole question.
Yeah, because I know a lot of people do, they're very concerned about will they still be themselves on medication. I know for me personally, I do take stimulant medication to treat my ADHD and I'm probably more myself when I'm on medication because part of my issues with ADHD is having a very slow processing speed. And so I will be, have trouble expressing myself when I'm off medication is I'm just like, oh, it just takes me a long time to think things through seems very antithetical to ADHD.
But it is like, oh, this is just part of like the inattentive side where my brain is like going through different thoughts and then focusing on the one thing. And I'm like, oh, yeah, if I'm able to focus, then I can actually like get through conversations and express who I am much better than when I'm not on medication.
Yeah, I think I just lived the majority of my life without it. So like taking it. But when I did take it, it's like, whoa, who is this person? How can she get all this stuff done and care about accounting? Like, I don't know.
It is funny where I'm like, I've been on medication long enough that when I'm off, I'm like, this is weird. Like I'll be like, for some people describing this like putting on glasses, but for me, it's just kind of like, oh, I'm just working through the world normally now. And then when I'm I notice when I'm not on medication, because I just like, why haven't I done anything today? Oh, no, I didn't.
Yeah. See, I'm still I'm still in that place where I only take it for things that I don't like. And so I consider myself free-styling most of the time. And I mean, I don't know, I don't I've chosen to only take it for things that are, you know, not my favorite things to do.
Everyone has to have their own way that they approach it and get in the right way. Because I know some people have I've had some people describe it's like, yeah, they feel like it makes them less creative. For me, it makes me more creative, because I can focus. I'm like, oh, I'm just doing the one thing I want to do. And that I can build on a lot that I do like taking it for things that I like doing, because then I can do the more.
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I think, and if I take it, I take it in the morning, and then I don't take another one past noon, just because it affects my sleep. So it's, you know, it's a juggle, you have to figure it out.
It's definitely yeah, it's something that's not one size fits all. So.
And no shame for anybody, you know, do whatever works.
You were mentioning in writing and expressing this, and you do a lot of writing in general. Can you talk a little bit about how your diagnosis has affected your writing?
I don't know if it really has. I've been writing one book series for 25 years. So for all the things that I have let go in my life, the writing and this, the story specifically, have had, has never left me. As far as how is how it affects my writing, I don't think it does. And this might be, you know, a little bit controversial, but I feel like when I'm writing, I'm so in the flow, that it's not even really me who's running the keys.
And I'll go back and read. And I think it's because I'm very easily in my hyper fixation with writing, it's mine. And so I don't struggle with writing as far as my ADHD goes. It's more the things, like I said, I don't love the administrative things with having a publishing company and another business. Those are the things that don't light me up and I have to work harder to do. As much as I understand that they are important, there's no dopamine in that for me, none.
Yeah, it's like I'll do one of those important tasks and then I'll be like, well, great, what's next? They should be celebrating this win or getting it done, but it's got nothing for me.
Because you're probably gonna have to do it again in a little while anyway.
Have you developed some coping mechanisms to help you work through those tasks then?
Well, when it comes to accounting, I will take a medication and then bust it out. But I can get it done in so quickly. I need to finish my tax stuff for upcoming and I can do it in a day. I can do an entire year's worth of accounting in a day. So that I think in general, I do co-working with some more author friends of mine. I know you've talked about that on your show. I love that for whatever reason, if I'm just home alone with no accountability, I can dork around and waste a lot of time. So having an appointment with somebody is great, even if they're just a little head on a screen.
Yeah, it's amazing how just having that little bit of like someone else there can make, just like, oh yeah, my word is like, I mean, it's kind of like an aspect of masking in that sense too, where I'm like, oh, I don't want them to know that I would just sit around the house and do nothing all day.
Yeah, I don't trust myself to remember something. So like in the middle of the night, if I have a different plot line or something that I want to pick up on the next day, I will send myself an email in the middle of the night. And so I have an email. I just remind myself that I'm entertaining, you know, for other people. And that's what keeps me not feeling bad about myself. I went to the market and I was standing at the fish counter and I looked down and they had sole.
And I'm like, sole, okay, they don't usually have soul. So I asked the fish man, is that one of those flat fish, like a halibut? And he said, yes. And then I just stepped back with my insecure self and went, oh, that was probably a weird question. You know, I didn't ask how it tasted. I didn't ask if it was light or whatever. And I said, I'm just really naturally very curious. And he's like, well, that means you're never gonna get old. And I loved that, you know? I mean, we're so curious and I'm making it okay.
Yeah, there's always more stuff to learn. Wikipedia is like the number one thing I look up. I'm always just like, every year when they have like, they're like donation drive, I'm like, I need to, because I used you for the weirdest things. I was reading about coyote wolf hybrids this morning. Oh. Which I did not know everything, but apparently.
I did not, wow. But why were you reading about that? How did it come to you?
I heard coyotes howling last night at 1130. And I was like, oh, I want to read about coyotes now. And then I saw this like, oh, there's coyote hybrids. That's weird.
Wow. Yeah. Fascinating. We can hold on to those wisdom nuggets too, can't we? About animals and things. I love it. It's fun.
My kids will always be like, they're very similar and they like have, want to tell me about these cool things they learned. And it was much better when they watched educational TV and then they'd be like, did you know what I learned on octanauts? Now I get to hear about the Pokemon facts, but.
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
So could you tell me a little bit more about, so you said you've worked on this one series for 25 years now. 25 years working on a single series sounds incredible. Like that's a lot of time to work on a series. So could you tell me a little bit more about it?
Yeah, sure. So I've been writing it for that long because I've said it aside so many times, felt too stretched at the moment or didn't feel like it was going to turn into something. But it's about a woman who decides that she wants to live an extraordinary life and she's married and has young children. So it's not like she can just, you know, chuck her life and go move to Greece or anything. So she starts making different decisions. She starts saying yes to some of the opportunities that come her way, like joining an indoor soccer team and just doing things just beyond anything she's done. So it starts with that.
Then she has this crazy idea to write up some of her memories of people that she's known into five little books. And she doesn't put her name or their names anywhere on the book, but she has a request that the books be passed along until one lands in the hands of someone she wrote about and that person would bring the book back to her and go, look, what did you do here? Because, you know, it's kind of this big global experiment. One, to see if people would help out a stranger with this little mission that they have. And two, to see how small the world really is, you know, it's kind of the big T's. People say that the world is small, you know, the ride at Disneyland, the whole thing, but...
It is amazing how big and small the world is at the same time. Mm-hmm. I always love like coincidences that happen where I like will run into someone in a different city and I'm like, how did this happen? And it's happened to me multiple times. So I'm like, it has to be both a small world and the world also just feels so giant.
Yeah. Yeah, I noticed it a lot with like Facebook friends. If I get a new Facebook friend and then I see that they're already friends with like two of my friends, I'm like, how do you know them? Like that's totally random.
Yeah. Yeah, so this sounds like a very cool series. And so you're, and it's, I love that it's something that you've been able to pick back up and like, you know, like this is something that was, you kept to yourself for a long time, but was able to develop because I know for a lot of people at ADHD, they have all these ideas of things they want to do. And sometimes it feels very like it's hard to execute on that kind of stuff. And so you feel, we do have this like shame and sadness that we can't make those things that we wanted, we've had while we wanted to make.
The series is, it's also multifaceted too, because I think with our brains, we can see things, you know, like much differently than a lot of people do. So this book has three different veins going throughout it. So we get to watch the travels of the books and see the characters that they come into their lives and then see how the book affects them and what changes they make in their lives. So that's one aspect to the book. And we also get to read her memories of people which all have the initials of each entry.
Those are real people from my life. And then the third part is the journal entries of the author over time. And a lot of the struggles that you'll read about, you can then kind of correlate back to this ADHD. Some of the troublesome times, not feeling okay, you know, walking out of real estate school because I couldn't listen, sit and listen to the tapes. I'm so boring. I mean, and then people can, you know? And I knew that like the numbers weren't gonna be my thing.
I might miss $10,000 on your bid because, you know, it wasn't meant for me. So, but I think that's part of why I've been able to hold onto it is because it was a massive undertaking that tickled my brain. So I kept with it because I knew that the story could be cool. But yeah, originally I was writing, so there's five books of the traveling books, but I was writing them all together. So, you know, it bounced from author stuff to memory to book three, book five, book, and it was just too crazy.
So I got with a book consultant author friend of mine and she was like, I think you need to turn it into five books. And really, I hadn't been able to see that myself, but her saying that was like go time. And it's really just fallen into place. And I've learned so much about, you know, indie publishing because my book was very non-traditional. So I got a lot of the rejections, but in the end it was like, I don't care. I'm gonna do this because I have to do it. So.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's, yeah, for writing, it's you have that inside you. It's always just percolating in there in your head. And you're like, this has to come out somehow.
Yeah, I mean, you probably have this with the podcast and maybe some other things that you do, but like you see these people and they go to work, you know, during the week and then they go home and that's their two things, you know? Sometimes they go camping or whatever, no diss on camping because I like camping too. But they really only have these two lives where I feel like I have this other third thing that's sitting on my shoulder going, I need some attention too here. And you have your podcast, you have this thing that's always in your head, well, I could do a topic on this or, you know, I don't know what it's like to have two things.
Yeah, I mean, and oftentimes it feels like I have like 10 things where I'm like, I wanna do this. And then this other idea that I really wanna do and I wanna do, a lot of times for me, it's learning how to tell myself what I'm not gonna do. Cause I'll be like, oh yeah, here's four topics for podcast episodes I wanna do. I can only really focus on one at a time. I've like this list of like topics that like had come into my head and like I just like I write them down and then it's good to get them out of my head, but I never visit that list again to get those back up.
Yeah, for me, some of that has been like businesses. Like I'll think, and I think it's good because of our brains, we see what's missing or we see a gap, you know? And like in the movie robots, it's a sea of need, fill a need, you know? And so it's like, okay, well, I could have this business where I have this product that solves this problem for that something that I see, but really I'm not interested in that. And, but I did in my early, you know, 20s and 30s, I did start businesses that I had, you know, tiny level of interest in because I saw a gap. And, you know, it's the same with your topics. You saw a gap, but can you really bite into that?
Yeah. What can I realistically do with my time? Because, you know, when there's so much stuff, it's I hate having to choose, but I do have to choose. And it's, that's been one of my struggles for a while is like being able to be like, let's focus on the things that are important. And then being like, okay, well, how do I define important? Like, okay, what's what, what matches up with my values? What makes me light up when I want to do it? Think about it, you know?
Yeah, definitely.
Then also like these things like, what no matter what I do just isn't leaving my head. If it just keeps coming back, it's worth exploring more.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
So I was wondering if you had any other thoughts you really wanted to leave the audience with?
I've got this other little side project that I'm working on currently, and I'm just on this intense spiritual journey. And I've been meditating a lot. And I, I really hadn't touched meditating, just understood it, you know, from a basic point of view throughout my life. But I'm doing it more often. I'm doing it every day. And it's helping me, it's helping me with, you know, having a broader view on the world. It's helping me to remain calm in the chaos. And you know what I'm talking about? But one of the things that I think is so cool is that when I'm doing it, I get all tingly.
Like my body gets tingly, and it feels like there's an energetic shift. And I think that that really tickles the ADHD brain. We're always searching for something that's gonna make it cool. I'm having this cool experience. And you know, looking at the brain very differently, looking at the potential power that we have in our brains, and just celebrating that. So yeah, meditation, I had no idea. But it is becoming my jam.
I know a lot of people with ADHD are both very hesitant to start meditation, but is something that's a lot of people find incredibly helpful for helping just manage their day-to-day ADHD because it's just, oh yeah, I'm learning how to be okay with my thoughts and to sit with them and not have to do the impulsivity and just be like, oh, I had a thought. I didn't have to act on it.
Or like, I just don't have to freak out, you know? We can take a step back.
If people wanna find out more about your work and your books, where should they go?
Well, have a website, hhrune. R-U-N-E.com. I'm on TikTok. If you wanna hang out with me, yesterday I showed some of my dance moves in the kitchen.
Nice.
My books are on Amazon. Probably have to type in find me and then hhrune in order to find them because find me is apparently, you know, when I came up with this 25 years ago, since then has become a more common title. So yeah, I'm on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, yeah.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think people will really enjoy this.
Thank you!
Thanks again to Rune for coming on the show and thank you for sticking with us all the way to the end. Before you go though, let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips. One, avoid relying on memory, especially for creative ideas and lean on tools like reminders, email, and structure to back up your attention. Don't just trust your brain to remember and instead trust the systems that you've set up. Two, try celebrating your ADHD curiosity. Instead of shaming yourself for going down random thought paths, reframe your curiosity as a gift and use humor to engage others.
Three, getting a late diagnosis can require a lot of emotional processing. Rune describes going through the five stages of grief, post diagnosis, acknowledging that the loss of a life that could have been is real and valid. All right, that's it. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me over at hackingyouradhd.com/contact. Or you can find me at bluesky@hackingyouradhd.
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And now for your moment of dad. Why do graveyards have gates? Because people are dying to get in!