Dr Judith Mohring
Appearances
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
ADHD impacts executive function and one of the first elements of executive function is self-awareness, so awareness of who you are in the world. And if you're not aware of who you are in the world, it's difficult to go through life because it's like you're kind of going through life naked going, am I wearing this outfit? Am I wearing that outfit? Who am I in the world?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So positive psychology, it was a term that arose in the 1990s. Martin Seligman, who I think was president of the American Psychological Association, really interesting guy. He wanted to research flourishing and kind of mental well-being. So if you think about it, before that, every gym was like a hospital for the mind.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So, you know, if you went along to see a doctor, it would be assumed that you had a deficit. And he was going, maybe you would go and see a psychologist because you had a strength. A bit like, yeah, so shifting from a kind of there's everything wrong with people to there might be things right with people. Lots of research in the positive psychology movement on flourishing.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And he has come up with work on strengths and values. um the 20 universal strengths and you can go i think it's called via um strengths finder online you can do a free strengths questionnaire and that was later used by colleagues jane sedgwick muller and some other colleagues to do a piece of research on adhd strengths showing that
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
successful ADHDers, and this was looking particularly at people who were flourishing, but identifying their strengths within that network. And it's all the things we were talking about. It's courage, transcendence, curiosity, empathy, thinking outside the box, putting other people before yourself. Loads and loads of really interesting strengths there.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Such a great question. Thank you so much, Alex. And thank you so much also for asking me on because I'm really passionate about sharing high quality information with people. And ADHD is both wonderfully complex and also wonderfully simple. So the science is complex. Sometimes the answers are quite simple.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And I think you've mentioned self-awareness and we're going to keep coming back to it because self-awareness is key because if you know who you are, and you begin to know what your strengths are, then it helps you overcome that ADHD shame.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
You can go, yes, I'm not the person to organize a big project over six months, but I am the person to come in and do some really high-intensity work at various different points. So really understanding your strengths is so key.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And I think what's really interesting about what you're saying there, first of all, you mentioned that calm in a crisis, and that is a classic ADHD strength because of this tidal nature. But we're really good under stress very often, and we can talk about that in a minute because there's some very nice science around that.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But that noradrenaline surge gets us into a sweet spot where we just sort of suddenly, and I remember as a doctor, you know, being an A&E, somebody comes in the very unwell, actually used to enjoy that kind of hot, hot breath of death on your neck. You're like, oh, this has got me in my sweet spot.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Super focused, super sharp, really performing, really hopefully helping this person out at this point. So there's a definite ADHD strength there. But what it leads to is a tendency to lean into rushing and to lean into stress because we know it helps us focus. And so you end up with a pattern of leaning into this tidal kind of, I'm going to jump into that tide.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And I have a real passion for sharing that evidence based science with people so they don't have to wait to have an assessment. They don't have to wait to see a doctor. And they don't have to just have medicines. They can also use skills to help themselves get better. So that's my real passion is to see the light bulbs go on, see people inspire and go, oh, that's what I can do. That will help.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I'm going to surf into it because I know it's going to get me where I want to go. But then it's how do you get out of that? And what you've just described is actually just slowing down. So slowing down for long enough to go, where am I?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
what did i do today what were just slowing down because the tides are very strong and we get drawn into things that we shouldn't do and it's learning to recognize when you're in those tides and to raise a hand to say can you help me here i seem to be in one of my patterns i don't know how to get out or i could do with you just pausing me a bit so what did i enjoy today what was difficult what triggered me what was so real self-awareness is so important
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Totally. Yeah. Yes, yes. Because burnout can be worn by some people as a kind of badge of pride and certainly overwork is worn by many people as a badge of pride. But, you know, burnout is very classically the stage that we get to before we get depressed and you get this kind of reduction in. So there's three signs of burnout. There's a reduction in energy. And I hope I'm going to get this right.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And there's also a loss of sense of efficacy. So you lose a sense that you're being effective and you also become quite cynical and detached from what you're doing. So that's the classic burnout pattern. But for people with ADHD, it may be a bit different because quite often I find with ADHD is they will be flying and on the edge of burnout. They'll be having a great time.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Everything's going really, really well, but then there's just that little spidey sense that you're beginning to get overwhelmed. And that's why we talk in my business called ADHD, I'd overcome the overwhelm because that overwhelm is often a sense of, oh, hang on, I'm beginning to tip into not being okay. So it's recognizing, is it lack of sleep? Is it irritability? Is it running persistently late?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I find my subconscious will help me. Like once when I was quite burnt out, I just repeatedly lost the house keys. So I couldn't do the meetings I was supposed to be in because I was locked out of my own house. It's like, what? Oh, hang on. I'm overwhelmed.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So that's why I'm here. So thank you.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
totally so you're just that's a really lovely description of that and i really relate to this idea of you get drawn into something you're enjoying and you're enjoying it and you're rewarded by it so you've got that nice potentially hyper focus the reward you're feeling this is good and yet at the same time you're less immediately rewarding but routine things that keep you well like eating
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I mean, it's basic, but eating, exercise, remembering to sleep. Those really basic things get missed because they're less rewarding than the very often it's work. I work a lot with entrepreneurs, lawyers and musicians and all sorts of interesting people. And because work can be so rewarding, it's almost addictive. But if you don't look after your body, your body will begin to tell you.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Well, it's not single things. I think we talk about, I've mentioned a bit that ADHD research is new, but neurodiversity research is also really new because essentially our techniques to understand the brain are developing all the time. And we used to think very much in the neurotransmitter model,
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
that kind of it's a single neurotransmitter there's not enough of and now we think much more in the network model that in fact there are large brain networks which are really complex and need to be modeled um and and so there's emerging really emerging science and it is it's an umbrella um so i used to say to people if you major in one neuro neurodivergent condition you'll probably minor in another whereas now we use a constellation so there are lots of different ways of being
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So I made up the term natural psychiatrist because it's really a reflection of who I was, of a developing sense of self-awareness of what I brought to the party. Because I was a successful psychiatrist but was also really unhappy. And I couldn't work out why, but it was this identity piece. I didn't see myself. I didn't see other doctors who were like me. I didn't really...
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
know who i was and it was a real yeah that real self-awareness piece but the natural psychiatrist sort of emerged from um an understanding that there are three ways to treat any mental illness you can use medicines and many of those work really well and you can definitely use therapy and therapies can be very effective particularly when there's a good rapport between therapist and client
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So there's medication and therapy. Those are the kind of two of the legs of the stool. But the third leg of the stool, which is the most important, the one that keeps it standing up, is everything else. And by everything else, I mean everything from group-based outdoor exercise to mindfulness to cold water swimming to changing what you eat to giving up alcohol to joining a choir, everything else.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And everything else is massively powerful. And that's what the natural psychiatrist does. It's teaching that to say to people, if I can teach you to mend your mental health, then you might never have to see me again. You might take the doctor with you. It's like that teach a man to fish. You feed him for life. You teach people to improve their mental health. They don't need to see a psychiatrist.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And you won't be surprised to know, Alex, there are not enough psychiatrists to go round. There's probably, I've calculated, about one psychiatrist doing primary care mental health for every 12,500 people who need one.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
there's just not enough psychiatrists to go around so if i can teach people to improve their mental health then actually that's a massively helpful thing to do and that's what the natural psychiatrist is
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Again, that's really interesting because one of the things about ADHD that I think we're only just beginning to understand, and I'm really clear that ADHD is emerging. The science is new. It's emerging. Many of the papers that I quote have only come out in the last four or five years. is that ADHD is really tidal.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But the top two, let's go with mindfulness. Mindfulness, really well evidence based in ADHD. Unbelievably hard to do if you have ADHD, because basically we're saying let's, you know, we're trying to calm the chatter of the mind. And so we have to adapt our mindfulness offering. So it's something really simple that you could mindfully run. You can mindfully dance. You can mindfully listen to music.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But that checking in with yourself that who am I, where am I? What am I doing? How long do I have that? Checking in is a form of mindfulness. And then exercise, massively helpful for ADHD.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And whilst there is a really enjoyable adaptability because you can adapt, there is also a vulnerability because you don't have an exterior shell.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So that's a quote from a piece of work I did for a business on stress management. So this is just after the pandemic, and a business asked me to go in and help managers manage stress better. So we use something called Sparks Tools from Stanford, and that's been developed by Dr. Alia Krum, who you may have heard of. She's on the Huberman podcast. She talks a lot about stress mindset.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So we were using the stress as enhancing model, so explaining that stress is actually the way our body prepares us to overcome a challenge. And so it's not bad. We shouldn't be trying to live a stress-free life. And so we used the SPARKS tools in the morning and in the afternoon of that course and saw an improvement in stress mindset across the day.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And then four weeks later, we saw a greater improvement. And what was really useful for me about that work is it helped me to understand the noradrenaline piece for ADHDers and the way that we use stress as a way of finding focus. So in my experience, people with ADHD will often cope with a slightly higher amount of stress
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And find that sweet spot, that mental clarity that you and I both described in quite stressful situations. So we have a slightly different response to stress.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So there's some interesting research that came out a couple of years ago looking at anxiety and ADHD and that we overcome the lack of focus through our tendency to worry and our tendency to apply stress. So we're sort of turning up the stress dial in a way that then makes us successful because we find focus.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And what I mean by tidal is that we know that noradrenaline and dopamine are dysregulated. Not low, but dysregulated. Which means that when the tide is out and we're zoned out and we're not focused and we're not concentrating, got low noradrenaline and dopamine. But then when the tide rushes in and you've got high dopamine, noradrenaline, you have hyper focus, you've got hyper energy.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
um and so i think there's an interesting link there and i suspect it's probably intrinsic it's sort of how many of us are wired and it you know you're very successful alex so your stress has served you well may not be easy to live with i'm also an alcoholic yes but you're an alcoholic in recovery so exactly yeah and that requires courage it requires resilience it requires self-awareness so that's not a small thing that's successful too
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It can be. It can be, I think, yeah. I mean, and your story is really, you know, it's really compelling and it's really inspiring as well because it's a story of losing so much and yet also finding the courage to recover, which is amazing. And that you've found...
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
your you know love again which is podcast social media and the the interest the interest in adhd and sharing this for the benefit of other people which is very artistic so it's um it's a really inspiring story and i think one of the advantages of adhd is there is a creativity because i also lost my passion i lost the thing that i was good at i wasn't able to continue with psychiatry for a
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
and we can talk about that a bit more in a minute but um and so i had a very strong sense that i was lost for a while and actually that wasn't a bad place to be there's nothing wrong with being lost if it means that it's a chance to find yourself if if it's a if it's a chance to to to reflect to journal to become more self-aware to go well that was a screw up what am i going to do differently now
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
What did you learn from that screw up?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
you talk about intuition screaming at you my my inner self sometimes has screamed at me not that way not that way don't go there and you do it and then you're like why did i do that but it's because you know logically it all looks good but i think that there is often a very strong you know people talk about the sixth sense and they talk about sensitive sensory sensitivities in neurodiversity
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
The ability to intuit others' mental states is a sixth sense and it can be hypersensitive in us, those of us who are neurodivergent. And that's both a blessing and a curse.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So you've got this real tidal variation in your energy levels and your focus. And it looks really confusing, both to the individual, to their friends, their colleagues, and also to doctors. Because doctors have a kind of thing called present mental state, which is how is the client now?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
yeah it's a blessing and a curse I think there's two sides to it there's the knowing and then there's the have you got the courage to then take action and do and I think that takes practice and that people pleasing piece as well about ADHD as an ADHD often we're like oh no this is the right thing to do and I'm doing it for other people and then I have a sticker at home a postcard that says stop me before I volunteer again
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Because you can be very impulsive and go, yes, of course. No, no, no, no. So it's learning to say, and I think that thing of, I now have a technique, which is if I think I'm going to say yes to something, I'll go, let me get back to you.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Because you never know if you've got time to do the thing you've been asked to do. And it's quite embarrassing to admit that. actually, that the thing that you've been asked to do, you don't want to do or you can't do because you can't focus for it.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I think When you have a neurodivergent colleague and they've got particular strengths, very often the workplace goes, oh, that's amazing. We'll give them all this particular sort of work to do. So I remember working with a partner in a firm who was incredibly good at certain very highly technical things. And so everybody's like, well, just give them all this highly technical stuff to do.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But they also expected him to be good at everything else. And then I was thinking, but how can you expect this man to be a technical genius in this area, which requires immense, immense hyperfocus? Like the cognitive effort that went into doing what he was doing was vast. And at the same time, people are saying, well, you need to run your own diary. You need to send your own emails.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
You need to do your own timesheets.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
like you just don't get it do you this is not how people's brains work you don't get the genius you don't get the kind of amazing hyper focus the ability to deliver all this stuff and also the person who's going to turn up on time with all their notes beautifully highlighted not having forgotten their own shoes i mean yeah sorry speaking personally no so so interesting it's so true um
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And if you have ADHD, how you are now could be really different from how you are in half an hour or even an hour because the tide may be in or it may be out. Does that analogy make sense to you?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So it's a really good question because I also work with companies and often see them struggling with this, which is this sort of, oh, well, people just need to disclose and then it will be fine. You know, just say you've got ADHD. Not actually that helpful. A, because it's a condition recognised under the Disability Discrimination Act.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So you don't have to disclose the condition and you may be stigmatised if you do. So I talk with people about the idea of saying I am the kind of person who, so I'm the kind of person who really needs some quiet to give you my best work. And focus on the company's needs.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
If you want the best out of me, it would be really helpful if we could look at some coaching at work, if we could look at a colour-coded diary, if we could look at a quiet room to work in, if we could look at flexible working. And the difficulty with that, Alex, if I'm honest, is that it puts a lot of emphasis on the individual to be self-aware enough and also to know what they can ask for.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And that is a lot of emphasis on the individual. Unfortunately, though, because neurodiversity is diverse, every individual's needs are going to be different. So we can't expect a company to go blanket, everybody gets this. What we can expect of businesses is we have a universal design approach. You've heard of universal design? Yeah.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So Nancy Doyle talks, Professor Nancy Doyle talks a lot about this and The team at Birkbeck, who've done lots of work in neurodiversity at work, talk about this. And it's basically designing an environment where anybody can ask for the adjustments they need. So if you're deaf, you can say, it'd be really helpful if the businesses, you know, if we can link teams to my hearing aids.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Yeah, drastic mood swings. And so you get told you're moody or you get told you're difficult because it's like, but you were different yesterday. Who are you today? And it's almost like your neuroscience is kind of quasi gaslighting you because of this variability.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's all the basic stuff. And neurodiversity inclusion would be fit within that. But it requires the neurodivergent to be able to say, what really helps me is flexible working or really explicit instructions. This is a big issue, is when companies are vague. Oh, God, my bugbear. Somebody asked me to do something and they don't give me a deadline.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's like, it will not happen unless there is a deadline. I need to know when, otherwise it's literally not going to happen. Unless it's something I'm really interested in doing, in which case I'm probably already doing it.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's a really good question. And I think there's so many elements to the question. Psychological safety is obviously a very important term at the moment. It's emerging as a term in businesses. And there's so many layers to it because actually it's about having a safe to fail culture where you can give feedback to more senior people to say this doesn't work very well for me.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's about a culture where outsider voices are included and an effort is made to ensure that everybody's voices are included.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Now, I'm going to caveat that with the fact that this is, there are a few papers that show this difference and it's called the difference in tonic, which is resting, dopamine and phasic, which is dopamine on. when we are rewarded or stimulated. So there are a few papers that reference this. And from talking to experts in the field, this is what we think is going on.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So vicarious trauma, it links to this idea. So I'll define it first, sorry. Vicarious trauma is essentially being traumatized by traumatic material you're exposed to. It's not your traumatic material, it's other people's. So an example might be, say, lawyers working in family law or in...
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
um in a law on a homicide case they might be exposed to lots of traumatic material traumatic videos traumatic depositions now in my career as a psychiatrist i'm a woman as you recognize and i saw an awful lot of women who'd experienced sexual assault and i saw a lot of women who were very traumatized and over the years listened to many many
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
stories of trauma and i think um for neurodivergent people who can be very emotionally attuned we've talked about that sixth sense um you begin to mirror other people's trauma responses you begin to actually develop symptoms of trauma yourself so um i ended up with things like nightmares being murdered and all sorts of unpleasant symptoms um which was to some extent that that vicarious trauma
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So it's a really interesting question. I don't know that we have the evidence to support that, but theoretically, we could argue that they could because of this default mode network piece, where if you are using your default mode network to mirror, and we know the default mode network has many, many functions, one of which is to mirror other people's internal states.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So you're mirroring and empathizing with others and you're perhaps less aware of yourself and your own needs, which is something else we've talked about. So that kind of ability to empathize whilst also the difficulty prioritizing your own needs means that you can end up, in my experience, I see lots of people with ADHD who do this, who empathize.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's very hard to evidence in live people, but we do have a few studies.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
who experience trauma and I'm going to say something a little bit controversial here as well which is I see lots of people with ADHD becoming coaches now this exactly mirrors my experience nearly 20 years ago I went off and trained to be a coach actually I needed coaching But because I was so curious and I loved learning, I was like, I know, I'll go and be a coach.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So I went off and learned to be a coach, loved it. And then thought, as I went through the process, I thought, ah, I don't need to be a coach. I need to have coaching. And I think there can be difficulty sometimes distinguishing between meeting our own needs and meeting others' needs. And it takes practice to balance those. Because you can do both.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
You can be a really good ADHD coach and meet your own needs. And probably through the process of learning to be a coach, you learn to meet your own needs. So it's a very fluid thing.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
yeah it's really interesting isn't it um so well-being is massive it's you know very valuable we globally as a society are wealthier than we were although that wealth isn't very well distributed we are wealthier and if you're very wealthy um you're going to be looking to maximize other things and what are you going to maximize you want to maximize your health you want to get the most joy out of life because money doesn't bring you happiness so once you've solved the money equation it's like what do i do now
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
ah i turn to well-being and you know we're a less spiritual less religious society than we used to be so well-being is beginning to answer that which is why you can get caught up you know there are some people in the well-being world you know selling quasi-religious experiences um so it's it's kind of the opium of the masses at the moment is well-being that's what i would say it's it's what we're all looking for is in this world where things are difficult where do i find peace and contentment
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
um seeing people validated that moment where somebody goes it wasn't just me nope it wasn't just you because the big fear when you go and see a psychiatrist is you're frightened that you're going mad and actually the power of education is say no no this is a normal response to a really difficult situation you're not going mad you're going sane it's a really sane response
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
to what's happening in your life. And I'm always flattered when people, or when I was running my clinical practice, when people would cry because it's like, well, this is a good place to weep. This is a place to let go of that masking.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So I think validation and people being heard and listened to and believed is hugely moving because very often they've experienced not being believed for a long, long time.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So there's a couple of things that happen after diagnosis. And I think the first thing to say is that neurodiversity, I tend to say this when I'm teaching doctors, neurodiversity is like the soil in which other conditions grow. So neurodiversity isn't, it's not a disease. You can be diagnosed neurodivergent with ADHD or autism. You can be diagnosed with it, but it's actually a way of being wired.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
You're welcome.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
He's a puppy. Yeah, he's a puppy. And so he links to a metaphor that I use. So I run various courses for ADHD, which use kind of an awareness and regulation coaching model. And one of the things we talk about is we talk about neurotransmitters and we talk about that tidal nature of neurotransmitters. We also talk about networks.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
We haven't talked so much about networks today, but maybe another time, because the puppy is the default mode network. And so the default mode network of the brain is the part of the brain that struggles to switch off with ADHD. And we only discovered it maybe 20, 25 years ago. So it's new and it's complex, scientifically complex. It does all sorts of things.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But the default mode network is the part of our brain that is curious. It wanders. It doesn't want to stay on the path like the central executive network. Like a puppy, it wants to wander off the path. And it's looking for new ways of doing things. And it's playful. And it's creative, just like a puppy.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
and just like a puppy it needs looking after it needs exercise it needs sleep needs rest and it does not need to be beaten and that's why i use the metaphor of the puppy and the path when we teach the networks of adhd because when we understand our networks and we begin to get a feeling for what they might be and a feeling for what's going on we know instinctively what that puppy needs so that's my that's my puppy
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
That reminds me of what I used to say about rumination. Rumination is like a washing machine. It's the same worry sock that goes round and round and round.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
You know, when you have a worry, it just keeps going round.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's who you are. But within that way of being wired, other conditions can grow. So you might be neurodivergent and also have severe anxiety or or OCD, or an addiction problem, or any of these other issues.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
But no, I love it. Washing machine, whoa.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Which I'm really embarrassed to say. But she said to me the other day, she said, don't forget to bring the laundry in. What did I do? I forgot to bring the laundry in. So yeah, I'm not great at doing laundry, to be fair. Drunk things, lost things, forget things.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Really good question. So, yeah, there's a key word in there and that word is incompetence. I think a bit of a cognitive reframe. You're not incompetent. Maybe there's just certain things that you struggle with. If you can raise awareness of what the things are that are difficult and go into a job
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Really kind of going, these things will be difficult for me and ask for help with those as soon as you can. And the other thing is to raise awareness of your strengths. What do you bring to a business?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Because when a business can see, actually, this person's really good at this particular thing, it may be customer service, it may be that you're really good working in a team, it may be that you're really good working to a deadline. When you can explain your strengths and also explain what you need help, support with, that really, really helps.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I would say take that kind of self-awareness piece of these are the things I struggle with, please can I have help, and these are the things I actually would recognise as strengths that I bring to this business. And also self-care, that's the other thing, is that ADHD gets worse when we're sleep deprived or when we've had too much to drink or anything to drink or when we haven't exercised.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And so what we see is, first of all, we see that people say, well, my ADHD is a bit better under control now, but I'm still struggling with OCD symptoms, or I'm still struggling with an addiction problem or an eating disorder. So we see that. So we see that shifting. And we also see the, you know, you and I talked earlier about coming out. That kind of, oh, now it all makes sense.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So if you can use your job as a sort of structure to hang off some self-care, then do so.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
lovely thank you very much this is really exciting i feel okay i remember what they wrote um so three rules to live by learn how to communicate well that's exactly what we were just saying that's how creepy is that be clear love it relationships are vital to your well-being so be open honest and compassionate to your friends colleagues and family which i think it says lovers
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
or friends, colleagues, lovers and family, who knows? And take time to care for yourself in all ways, specifically physically, intellectually. Yeah, amazing.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Excellent. Can I put any surprises in for the next person so they open it up and go, oh, I can't read that out.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I promise to behave myself.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Thank you very much, Alex.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And I definitely had, you know, I read your book and thought, yep, now it all makes sense. So for me, coming out with ADHD was like, oh, that's why my nickname for myself is Last Minute Lucy. So you have this kind of mixture of shame and relief. And it takes time. It takes probably two or three years to really kind of come to terms with the fact that your life has been,
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And optimize their amazing, unique brains. So what I see amongst my ADHD coaching clients is a delightful lack of narcissism associated very often with a vulnerability because there's a sense of who am I in the world. With ADHD, there's an overactive default mode network. And the overactive default mode network means that we're very good at taking other people's points of view on adapting to them.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Yeah, I think it's difficult to explain to somebody that there's an invisible difference in your brain that means that you experience the world in a different way. And so there's a lot of dismissing. So people like to be ridiculous. So I've had, you know, really, you know, very clever, very well off people saying, you know, neurodiversity is a fad, neurodiversity is indulgent.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
uh this is a middle class diagnosis you want special treatment so there's dismissal um there's often a lot of shame within adhd the way adhd world anyway because of that whole kind of why can't you be more normal and why do you keep screwing up in this very particular way so there's the shame piece there's the dismissing um and then also there's the power dynamics that if you're a young person in a business you know you and i run our own businesses so we are lucky that we can uh
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Wow, it's a really good question. And I think there's lots of evidence that we've known about the construct for over 200 years. So there's books written like in the late 18th century describing ADHD constructs. So we know that it's been around for a very long time. We know that treatments have existed that help since probably the 50s.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
We know that the diagnostic constructs across countries are valid. So we have different diagnostic constructs across different countries. And I suppose in a way it's about society slowly coming to terms with this because nobody was talking ADHD. I only trained to diagnose ADHD about 10 years ago and I'm a mental health professional. We weren't talking about it.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So we're kind of on the sort of journey that other people might be about, you know, sexuality, that kind of, this is a very normal way of being. but it does have an impact and we need to talk about it. So I think it's sort of slow and steady and find your allies.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And I think certainly someone like me, I'm a middle-aged woman, so explaining to other middle-aged people who maybe don't believe in neurodiversity is kind of an important bit of allyship. for other generations.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
It's very interesting because what you're naming is actually one of the core features of ADHD. It's not in the diagnostic constructs. But ADHD impacts executive function. And one of the first elements of executive function is self-awareness. So awareness of who you are in the world.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And if you're not aware of who you are in the world, it's difficult to go through life because it's like you're kind of going through life naked, going, am I wearing this outfit? Am I wearing that outfit? Who am I in the world? And whilst there is a really enjoyable adaptability because you can adapt, There is also a vulnerability because you don't have an exterior shell.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I call it pretzeling. You twist yourself into the shape that's required of you.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So what I see amongst my ADHD coaching clients and the people who come to my courses is a delightful lack of narcissism associated very often with a vulnerability because there's a sense of who am I in the world.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
um and so yeah i think the other thing and you mentioned this in your book um with adhd there's an overactive default mode network and we come to that later on because we've touched a bit on neurotransmitters but we need to talk about networks too and the overactive default mode network means that we're very good at taking other people's points of view on and adapting to them i call it pretzeling you twist yourself into the shape yes yeah fascinating that's a new new way to look at it but yeah fascinating
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Because you talked about that in your book, didn't you?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
The pretzel. And I know myself, one of the reasons I was really good at being a psychiatrist was that I could see that different clients needed different things. So I would pretzel to what they needed, but it didn't leave any space for me. And so my coming out has been to begin to emerge into the world and un-pretzel and go, actually, I am a bit different. And so... So it has a massive impact.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And again, that's why we come back to coming out, because when you come out, you can explore. Does this really feel authentic or not?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Yes, so self-awareness is so, so, so key. And I agree with what you're saying as well, Alex, about it's not a deficit of attention. We now think it should be called attention dysregulation because, as I say, it's tidal. When the tide is out, no, you cannot remember where your car keys are. You know, I'm quite proud of myself.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I've never lost the children, but I have lost more or less everything else, including at some points in my mind, you know, I've lost many things. So there's this deficit of attention at times and other times. So I really love a bit of hyper focus and I'm never happier than when reading academic articles and digging deep into things. the default mode network, et cetera.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
So there's this dysregulation. But then when we shift to think about, as I say, the networks, the brain networks, definitely in terms of identity, in terms of who we are, there is at times a difficulty in holding onto a solid self-construct. And so part of what I suggest to people is I know Leanne Maskell says journal. Journaling's been really, really helpful for me.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Breathwork, so simply coming back into the body. Really simple mindfulness techniques that you can use. So I have a who am I, where am I, what am I doing, how long have I got? So that very simple, using kind of Russell Barkley's executive function network model, but just reminding yourself, who am I in the world? So I'm Judith, where am I? I'm in the studio with Alex. What are we doing?
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
We're doing a podcast.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I love that example firstly because my parents wanted me to be a doctor and indeed I became a doctor and secondly because I think it really underpins one of the ADHD experiences which is difficulty distinguishing between imagination and reality and that makes it sound like a deficit which it isn't but it's more like I have shower thoughts, get in the shower every morning.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
And it's like, it's like this beautiful fruit tree has just come into fruit. And there's all these ideas just falling off the tree. And I'm like, I need to capture all these fruits that are falling off the tree. And I've now realized that it's okay to let some of them fall on the ground, but it would be wonderful. I always thought I wanted to be like a singer in a cabaret club.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
in another life maybe but not right now that it that sometimes the fruit is allowed to fall to the ground because the joy of adhd is there'll always be more fruit always it's like a tree which is forever in fruit when you're in particularly when you're in flow and when you've slept well so so it's allowing yourself to have you talk about what is it the ideas shelf
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
I have a now, soon, later basket now.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
Soon, later. And then people who now work with me go, could we put that in the later pile? Meaning probably never. But yeah.
ADHD Chatter
Cambridge Educated Psychiatrist Shares New ADHD Treatment | Dr Judith Mohring
the three thing is really important because i'll often talk about the rule of threes that don't overwhelm your working memory with more than three categories so if i'm tidying up it's like keep throw not sure right yes so like you it's like maybe wear again and actually to be fair i do have a chair so we have a washing basket the chair of like probably re-wear and then the cupboard yeah so yeah it gets it all off the floor as well so you don't trip our patches