Just a note, this episode does contain explicit language.
I make plans and change them all the time. I can't sit still and told my house is clean. I unsubscribe to things and then realize I need them, and then subscribe to them. Keep on deleting Facebook. You know, I'm so erradical and impulsive.
Anika Moore singer, songwriter, broadcaster, podcaster and mum of four. She's a national treasure with a diagnosis of ADHD.
My ADHD is fifteen thousand voices in my head all day, every day. I have so many ideas in my head, but I can't execute them. So that's why I have a manager. But I don't have a manager because I'm out of impulse.
I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity. I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent. A few years ago, I was diagnosed ADHD. In this series, you'll hear from experts and from many wonderful people who experienced the world in a unique way. We're looking at neurodiversity from the inside Calder. I'm Sonia Gray, and this is no such thing as normal. Series two. In this episode, I'm looking at late discovery ADHD. What is going on?
Why are so many adults queuing up to get the tick for a disorder? Is it really ADHD or an excuse for unreliability, impulsivity, bitter laziness A Nika Moore and I were both diagnosed with ADHD as adults. We both had mental health battles along the way to get there. And now she's come to my fadde to talk about her brain and fun fact, Annika sang at my wedding twelve years.
Ago, wollas love, which was true with you because you were still together. Maybe I was the tongue.
She actually was the tongue a star on our wedding day. One of the songs she sang was Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You, the one made famous by Whitney Houston, and she sang it better than Dolly or Whitney, And I thought, imagine being that talented, she must be so fulfilled. So I want to know, how could you be unhappy when you have those gifts?
Because I have ADHD and it's not good enough for me. You know, if I'm singing and I sing a bum, no, I parnish myself all night long. That's how much I want to be the best at my job. When I was doing any kind of and I don't know I said the wrong thing or offended someone, I beat myself up because I want to be the best and I don't want to hurt people, and I want to be seen as really intelligent and really onto it. You know, we can look at each other from the outside and
I go, song, it is amazing. She was on short Street. She's an amazing actor.
She was on Shortland Street.
Street's amazing. Don't bomb that shit, man.
I love Shortland Street. But it was twenty years ago.
I know, and I don't watch it really, but I fucking totalk all those bustards. What I say, Bustards, you said it with love, though, and you do so many creative things. You've got your neuroda thing MERGINGI over there and I see that greatness. I see how incredible you are. But I also know the tum or you'll be going on inside you because I have that, and that's what pushes us.
Effort is central to the ADHD experience, but that effort is very rarely seen. We just look like walking contradictions, need for speed, but always late, sensitive to rejection, but always blurting things out.
I say things that I don't mean all the time because my brain's worring and I can't stop talking, so I just go, oh, you're fat, you know, or you know, like I'm like Paul Henry but a tongue of vision. I would never call someone fat, you know. I'm so erradical and impulsive. But the beauty of it is I'm creative. I'm such a quick thinker, and I can do the job that you and I do. I just quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
How did you get to the whole diagnosis thing.
I've seeing a therapist. I've been through a lot of therapists because because you get so bored with them. You know, I'm fixed now, And they're like, are you sure you've only had two sessions?
No, I'm fixed.
I finally found a therapist, a psychologist, a mardy woman who understands me. But anyway, where I was going through a couple counseling, marriage counseling, don't and I said, I think I've got ADHD because my brother's got it, my mother's got it, We've all got it. And he I did the test and I was like, here a high achiever. Then I ignored it for two years like you did,
and now here we are talking about it. And I find talking about it so intriguing because you realize you're not alone, you realize that you're not I don't know, You're not a beast. So I'm very brutally honest. And that's why I struggle in relationships, because I find it hard to mask, to lie. I've been married and divorced twice for it. Luckily, I've got a partner who sees my neuro diversity as I don't know, like a learning process. And I'm not judged. And I'm not saying any of
my past lovers judged me. I guess they just didn't understand because I wasn't diagnosed, and I couldn't explain to them I was feeling.
You didn't know.
I didn't know. I had bouts of anger, like not beating people up, anger, but fucking furious anger, and I didn't understand why. And now I don't. I'm mellow, I am so gentle, but back then I was a ball of rage. I just because you go through all this turmoil, What am I? Why am I this way? Why am I failing in life? Where in fact, you're not failing in life. You're amazing and you do amazing things, but you be something missing and that's your diagnosis.
The diagnosis gives you the why, but you still have the same head and it's still chaos in there. I sort of describe it as having too many taps open. There's so many taps open. There should be a priority heading above some of them, but the priority heading is above the ones that aren't important, and them you try and shift to those important ones, but it's just for some reason you can't. And it's this, it's this internal fight all the time.
May it's internal fight. And I know with neuro typical they just do one thing. They just can wake up and do the thing. I know, And I'm like, how do you do the thing without doing the other things? Until you do the thing? Because right now my most important thing is to what am I doing? I have to ensure my car. If I don't ensure it, and Warren fit is it, it's I'm going to get in trouble and ticket it. Do you think I've done it in the last month? No, you know, I've done all the other things.
We should do it now?
No? No, no, why no?
What is it?
Why do we sabotage ourselves? Do you know? I think I know. I'm going to answer my question because if it was just a matter of going, I want to ensure it send done. But there's all these steps. Yep, there's step one, then there's this random other step. Then you've got to talk to somebody. Then you've got to make a decision do I want to ensure it with that much or that much? And then it's like it's too hard. Why is it too hard? How do not adhds do the thing, the most important thing without doing
the other things. Alex Campbell is an ADHD coach. He's also an adhder, and he has one of the clearest explanations for this that I've ever heard.
The default for our brains is interest, not importance. This is one of the key differentiations between someone who's an ADHD and someone who isn't. We have brains wired for interest. This means that we are entirely motivated by an emotional response because interest is emotion. Importance is not so emotionally charged, right, It's more sort of thought led, Like paying a utility bill is not that interesting until you've had five utility bills. Come from the door and the last one hasn't read.
We're going to reclaim your sofa if you don't pay, and I go and then I pay it because suddenly there's now anxiety attached to the bill, and that anxiety is interesting. That in interest, right, interest is both positive and negative, so is urgency doing things last minute that's interesting to us. Interest is simply fuel. It's not a moral thing. People go, oh, well, if your care, if you're interested or no no interest, is a fuel. It's like a fuel mechanism. We have a different fuel mechanism.
And if I don't understand my difference is I essentially live on a diet of anxiety an urgency as a way to sort of muddle on through life.
So many with ADHD do muddle through life only doing things like text returns. When the urgency is so great it becomes interesting. This is a stressful way to live, and it's frustrating for others who need punctuality and order or just a response to their email.
Do you do the.
Don't reply to emails for a week because you don't want to talk twenty one and then you've got an hour where you want to email everybody and then you don't want to talk to anyone, and you're annoyed that people have emailed you back straight away.
Because then you have to Yeah, emails are I've got forty six thousand unread emails. Yeah? Yeah, Actually you do want to.
Say they like from people or bots?
Well, some of it's online shopping things, A lot of it's online shopping, but yeah, from people, because I just go, I'll get to that. Yeah. For some reason, I haven't actually learnt that I won't. I still think that somehow I will get I'm going to. I want to prove it to you. I'll show you that I can't because I've got so many tabs open I can't find the right one. A thousand tabs open, but can't find the emails, let alone reply to them. I take my overloaded inbox
problem to coach Alex. What is it about emails? Because that's one of my things I struggle with, And I try and now be really cognizant of what I'm feeling and what the resistance is to do the email.
A lot of like rules that we live by, lots of kind of should I should or I must be able to do insert whatever it is that's based on very neurotypical ideas, sort of like I should just be able to get through all my emails because everybody else can, when actually there's quite a lot going on in the brain that helps you to figure out how to prioritize emails to respond to first.
This comes back to executive function, doesn't it?
A lot of we've been talking, So whenever I talk about effort, I am referring to a part of an executive function process.
Can you explain what executive function is for those that don't know.
Yes, So, executive functions are essentially the brain's management system, and it's featured just behind your forehead in the prefrontal cortex. And remember this executive functioning is fueled by interest.
Right listening, I get it. Executive functioning is complicated. A researcher in the US has broken it down into six parts. These include activation, emotion, and effort. We'll put details to this in the show notes because it's really helpful. Alex is, when you're finding it hard to do a task, identifying what part of executive functioning you're struggling with is the key.
When I coach individuals. This is part of what I call the ADHD lens getting people to understand how their executive functioning plays out in different scenarios and situations, because it starts to remove blame. This isn't I can't do this, it's oh, I'm now realizing that I've got this management system, and in different situations, I'm now sort of starting to
check in with is this an activation thing or is it? No, I got into the task, I'm started, but I know I'm really actually like, it was really effable to keep going with it. So it wasn't the start bit, it was the maintaining of it. That's helpful. Yeah, because you're starting to get very nuanced as to what you want to think about as opposed to just I need to be more organized, right, which is the black and white thinking just organized. It's never as simple as that.
You could look at executive functions is like the mep. ADHD is a great at spotting the destination, not always great at following the route to get there. But without the map, there's a gip between w you want to go and actually arriving there, and that cooks something else into gear. A close cousin of boredom, frustration.
Frustration is one of the hardest emotions for us ADHD is to regulate, so we all avoid frustration at all costs. Frustration is also perceived as threat or like boredom, is perceived as threat in the brain. So therefore we'll literally do whatever we can to mitigate that. And if sorry, I just realized my point about why I was talking
about it was about I've lost that again. This is classic k ADHD, which is this is working memory, which is when you have a point and you're trying to hold the thread of it and then you lose it.
Yeah, and it's so quick, isn't it.
It's so quick, very very quick.
And I think that's why you stop me. I think that's why for so many kids in particular, they have to butt in and say it. I remember my daughter saying, I have to say it now or it'll go I have to talk over people.
I call it the fear of forgetting.
Yeah, it's massive.
Yeah, it's a working memory. If you know anything about computer, working memory is like the RAM in a computer. It's a temporary space that the computer uses in order to process things in the moment, like opening a word document, clicking this folder. It uses RAM. It doesn't use the hard drive. It uses another part on the RAM.
That's what rams even you Yeah, diet really here, but good for this.
But adhds have the RAM or the working memory size of a sticky note, and if you don't have ADHD, you have the working memory the size of an A four piece of paper. So there is this difference in capacity to process things in the moment, which is why you might forget the thread of your thoughts because that post it note suddenly gets very full. And so that's nothing to do with IQ. Like forgetting stuff, we can very quickly think, oh, you're just a bit thick, I
forget stuff. I'm forgetful. No, it's often because your sticky note is full.
Working memory is a big one. We need to do it, say it, hear it right now, or it's gone. It's a constant challenge, but adhds do excel when it comes to intuition and instinct. We're guided by feelings and we feel a lot.
Do you find when you're around people you're trying to guess how they're feeling because you're so hyper sensitive to other people's energies. But you you need constant reassurance from people that you're being a good person. That you're doing it right, that you're not failing, that that they are okay, and then that competuities it can you know, your your nerve system can can breathe. Do you have that?
Absolutely?
Do you have that?
Yeah? I've intensely got it. And if I'm in an interview with someone and noticing them, you know, feeling uncomfortable, I will pull back because I'm like, oh shit, I've asked something that's that's that struck a court with them. But even so, if I noticed that I've asked them something that's really positively done, I'll lean into them. So I'll try my best to ride this wave of emotion with people, which I don't think a lot of people can do. No, you know a lot of people can't.
You know, they've got their routine and nothing gets in the way and feelings and all that. Don't worry about that doesn't our job.
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they've got I've got a certain amount of questions. I'm going to get through them. Yeah, they're not constantly monitoring has set Was that right? The crazy thing is say I'm interviewing you if you kind of do that, because sometimes you do that and I think, oh, yeah. See, it's nothing to.
Do with me, I reassure you. So I've got I'm always scared that I'm going to go cross eye, so I blink to whet my contacts and then i make sure I'm not going cross those because I've got a walking eye. Can you see it?
No, I can't see the wonky eye, but oh it's very, very minor. I wouldn't even be able to actually see that. You pointed it, just about it all the time. But the thing is, I've just noticed you doing that, and I've just been going, oh shit, is that? Is she okay? Does she need anything? Is it? Is she comfortable?
Is she?
Yeah?
Alex Campbell says instinct is a strength that we should lean too.
You were talking about we get to trust our instinct. Yeah, this, I would say is I think a core component of ADHD coaching. You've essentially lived a life of not understanding yourself, not having this language to talk about yourself. You then don't trust your instinct. You don't trust your intuition. You question it because it's also been questioned in you. We've internalized the questioning, which of course has a knock on
effect on your confidence on your self esteem. So this is not just about saying, oh, yeah, this is my IDHD and why. But you then take that all that information and you start to feel it and you make changes. These incremental little changes build up a new relationship with yourself, which means maybe I can trust myself. Yeah, like maybe I can back myself.
That's huge, It's massive, it's massive, And I think, what the whole instinct thing. We've been taught that there are processes for doing things, yes, and let's should take a certain amount of time. And I've realized now that I know that my instinct is what gets my ideas and albeit pilladdes and I know what it is. I know what it is, I know what the agle is, I know what I need, I know what I need and
it's just it's a picture. But before it was like that, that's not I can't trust that because I got it on the Pilatties reformer.
That's executive functioning, right, or when any ADHD gets the clarity piece, boom they're off. That's important to pay attention to and not gaslight yourself with it.
Yeah, but it's just it's that reflection, isn't it going? Okay? That happened to me there, It's happened to me there before. That's how I work. Piece. Maybe my office is the Pilattis studio, you know what I mean. It's like it's all the things we're taught, it's throwing them out. So that takes courage.
We've been raised in a diet which is like good things are hard work, Like we prioritize hard work. If it's worth something valuable, it should be hard. Yeah. So when you start to get clarity on oh, I have really good clear thought when I'm in pilates, like that is a part of your life that you've now identified as ease. Part of my job as a coach is to support people in making helping their lives be easeful.
But that's quite.
Difficult when you've done everything in life that's been effit for so it's actually going to rattle a value system in you.
One question I for you is why such an explosion of why he knew being diagnosed with ADHD. What do you think the reason?
Oh, my god, multi feted. It is multifaceted. But for many women things fall apart with the streets and mandanity of motherhood.
Much of parenting is very boring, but when you add the lens of ADHD to parenting, it's a whole other ballgame of needs. And this isn't about This isn't about saying you're a bad parent.
Or you don't love your child, or exactly exactly.
But when I say boring, I mean that it's not stimulating. And remember that interest, this idea of interest, that's stimulation. I've coached a lot of women who would identify as being quite daydreaming. Again, they're daydreaming because they're stimulating their brains. Daydreaming is a way to try and generate interest. The brain's like, I can't focus. This is not generating any feel for me to listen to what you're saying or doing.
This is an understimulating environment, so the brain is going to do whatever it takes to try and stay stimulated.
Girls are usually the daydreamers, and daydreaming isn't disruptive, which is how we used to think of ADHD the naughty boy who couldn't sit still. So females are not as easily identified in school. If they are, they're often diagnosed with the innertentive form of ADHD. But the word inattentive paints the wrong picture alex is daydreaming not only keeps us in the room, it's valuable.
We have to I think out something here about the value judgment of daydreaming or mind wandering might be another way of talking about it, because in general it's in At least the very early narratives of this in the education system is that that's bad. But what if it isn't? What if we need people in society to daydream? But my relationship to mind wandering is it's inefficient use.
Of time, and the society's response to mind wandering as in an efficient use of time. So that's where we have this I guess problem is it's not okay to say to someone I haven't replied to your emails because I took that hour to mind wander. Hm. I worry that there's this pushback, this resistance from society kind of like everyone wants a label these days, or it's a cop out because you're just you're actually just lazy and
you want to label for it. How do we help people to understand that this is not just about losing your keys.
In general, no one's ever kind of hankering after an excuse, like no one actually wants to live a life of excuses. What we're looking for is understanding. And for most clients that I work with, they've read every self help book under the sun, and then suddenly there's a shoe that fits like clearer than anything has ever been before in our lives. That is massive, Like I cannot explain how significant it is when you read something and go.
Oh, it's this.
This is why schooling was so hard. This is why maybe I've been in and out of relationships. This is why I'm a serial hobbyist. Because when you don't have a language to understand your brain differences, what happens. You rely on the world to tell you who you are, which of course is normally negative, like you're lazy. If you cared, you'd remember, if.
You consider it, you'd be on time.
Yes, it is very nuanced, and the thing is this requires everyone to have an understanding of the nuanced experience of ADHD. It ain't just about focus like it's not. You can't reduce someone's brain wiring to simply you're lazy because you can't take action on this because you can't focus on this. ADHD is far more complex.
It is complex. These challenges are invisible it's hard not to see them as merely character flaws. So the stigma around ADHD persists in the word disorder is still in the name. We now know it's not a disorder. It's a brain difference, and an important one. In Tadai or mardi, the kupoo for ADHD is already teeny a ten going to many places, it's a fad, gentler and more apt description of what is going on and why it might
feel like everyone here is ADHD. These days, it's still massively underdiagnosed in alterior If you're lucky enough to get an assessment, it will be very thorough, and for those who do get a diagnosis later in life, it can be validation.
It's massive for an individual to realize, often over the age of probably thirty five forty, that maybe a lot of your challenges just actually brainwiring and living a life of not knowing who you are has a massive impact on how you show up in the world, at work, in friendships. You don't have any language or any certainty to understand why things are might be more difficult, but also why things might not be so difficult. As well. Being late diagnosed or like just late discovering have ADHD.
It's like thinking that you were a girl or your life when actually you're a boy. Like it's that seismic of a shift from many I'm not saying for everyone, but for for a lot of people, the shift is huge. And when you don't understand your differences, then you live often lived a life of small tea trauma. This is microaggressions. These are paper cuts that you don't have any conscious awareness of until enough of those paper cuts. It's a
wound and it hurts. And so for many individuals, late discovery, whether you're diagnosed or not, often invites reimagining that and looking at the impact of not knowing right.
Yeah, I'm going to ed to it, though I think a lot of it is about shame, guilt and self loathing.
Absolutely.
I tell myself sometimes you're such a loser, you're so ugly, you're so fat, you're your here is thinning, you're getting old. And then I'm like, no, it's not true. It's just not true.
Well with the depressions, you were depressed.
Here, I have mild depression. Yeah, and it's just sitting in the background and it's not I love my life, I love my kids, I love my future, I love all my family. It's just that little flatmate right here go, Yeah, fucking idiot. And even talks like that, you know you're you are not loved. You're not loved. But the pills that I take put it a little bit further away.
But if you have a day where you've got a lot, you know, things haven't quite gone right and the kids are hard. And does that voice get loud of that little guy? Yeah, yea, yeah, just strike me. Do you think you're lucky in this? It's that you got really low and in order to get up again, you had to be brutally honest with yourself and really just go, holy shit, what is going to work? And sometimes what works is going to some quite dark places.
Yep.
Yeah, But now do you kind of go, I'm actually lucky, Like this is the silver lining now that you know way more about yourself.
I can't. I've been low many times and that's okay. And I've been high many times when I've been riding that wave and then slowly go down. You go, you go in wood and you change change shit. Oh and it's a roller coaster and I love that. That's dramatic and it's it's intense and passion and all that, but I have learned to have boundaries and to work. I hate this fucking word, but work on myself just you know, get better.
I also hate self care.
I hate self care the term here. Okay, yeah, well it's hell today as we're all in healing phase. You know, we're all trying to heal.
Do you also think that now knowing about the ADHD, that you can look at other people that previously you've found really annoying and go, I understand you a bit better. Not the yet, I'm not the you'll get there. I'm further along the road.
Further along the healing process. And yeah, self care, what is self care?
Let's call it looking after yourself. A big part of that is having the courage to say what you need. And what you need is often clearer communication or rest time, or just acknowledgment of your effort. Not much, just a bit of support.
You know, the people that I work with, they know my boundaries only because I've learnt. You know, one person kept on teasing me for being late, like hearing oh yes, she's arrived, everyone clamp black. And I felt so hurt by that because I feel, so I try my hardest, and the moment I walk on set, I failed. So it sticks in my mind the whole day. And I finally got the nerve to give her my boundary with them, not her my boundary, and she accepted it. They accepted it,
and they loved that I communicated it. And the other thing is when I do shows, so i'll, you know, go to Wellington. I just went to Wellington for a show. I put all my energy into people and meet people and sing and hang out with them and learn about the area I'm in. I fly back to Auckland, pick up my kids, and I'm fucked. For two days. I
just cannot talk to people. I have to run, I have to have a few drinks, and my kids and I just get the mudey style mattresses and the loude and and luck, my twelve year old ones can message really well. So they're just on my feet all day A dollar a minute.
Yeah, bar Rich, It's easy to think, what's the problem here? An ekimoe and the lot of lady who was once on Shortland Street can't manage their energy, or insure their car or reply to emails. But it's much deeper than that. This is a daily struggle with the way the world works. And that's before you layer on other adversities.
Been a Maldi woman trying to work into our park hou in a white system that's even more intense, and dealing with intergenerational trauma and dealing with the whys. Why did that happen? Why is it happening? What's our future? You know, we're colored people. We struggle, yes, but we seem to climb them never ending mountain, you know. So you put Adhd in that together as well. I could add my lesbianism. Yeah, take all the boxes to so
great that love you love ticking boxes? Yeah, no, it's it's an interesting challenge.
Anyway, let's try and information.
Do you want from me?
Are we done yet?
Are we done yet?
Do you have that thing where you your go go go? And then you're like, right, I've got to leave now right now?
Yep, I've zoned out about ten minutes ago.
Can we do about boredom just quickly?
Yes?
Are you experiencing it right now?
I'm experiencing the next thing on my list. Boredom is in me inherently all the time. But our conversation I enjoy it because it's fast and we're talking over each other, and we've got all these ideas and but we can follow it. I'm following this fully. But for a neuro divert I can't say the word person. They'd be like, what the hell are you?
Like?
Where are you?
You would just hear you.
Now, and I can't keep up.
I remember that one last thing. But I know you're done.
I'm done.
Yeah, you're done, all right, Just.
Make me sound clever and make me look hot.
I will, I will well. I don't say it's the look at it, look at it? Hey, what the both the cameras are on you. I am so useless. It's over. This is over, and it's not.
Thank you so much.
Next week on No such thing as normal.
I can understand why you would look at somebody like me and go that shit's broken. I can understand that I can write a master's thesis in a day and get a distinction for it. You give me a form to fill in. I can't do it. What's that about? I must be broken?
Right?
If you like this podcast, please rate and review it. It helps people find it. No such thing as normal is produced and presented by me. Sonia Gray. Nathan King is the editor. Arwen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawkes are executive producers. Production assistant is Beck's War. The series is brought to you by the New Zealand Herald and team Uniform and it's made with the support of New Zealand on air. New episodes of No Such Thing as Normal are available every Saturday wherever you get your podcasts.