← ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
EP. 382: What’s Really Behind RSD? with Dr. Shawn Horn Pt 2
01:06:47
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- [00:00]
A
Before we start, a quick note. If you've been listening to this podcast and thinking, I need more than insight, I need support. This is for you. Your ADHD brain is not broken. It just never came with a map. That is why I created you'd ADHD Brain is a okay academy. It's my patented step by step framework to help you build a life. And that finally fits how your brain works. Ready to get started? Click the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call with me now. On with the show. Richard Branson, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, James Carville. Wait a minute. Where are the women? Greta Gerwig, Lisa Ling, Audra McDonald, Simone Biles. That sounds like a list of highly successful titans in a variety of industries. They all have adhd, but you don't hear much about that now, do you? You know what else you don't hear about are the 43% of people with ADHD who are in excellent mental health. Why aren't we talking about them and what they are doing? I'm your host, Tracy Adsuka, and that's exactly what we do here. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, a lifelong student, and now the author of my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. I'm also a certified ADHD coach. And the creator of youf ADHD Brain is aok, a patented system that helps ADHD women just like you get unstuck and fall in love with their brilliant brains. Here we embrace our too muchness and we focus on our strengths. My guests and I credit our ADHD for some of our greatest gifts. And to those who still think they're too much, too impulsive, too scattered, too disorganized, I say no one ever made a difference by being too little. Welcome to ADHD for Smartass Women. I am your host, Tracy Otsuka. So last week I sat down with Dr. Shawn Horn. She's a licensed clinical psychologist, the author of Thrive Socially with Adult adhd. She's known as the Shame Busting Psychologist. For more than 30 years, she's been helping people understand what's actually happening in their brains and nervous systems so they can stop making it mean something about who they are. And so what was supposed to be a conversation about shame, RSD and the ADHD nervous system turned into something completely different. We spent almost the entire time talking about her story, how she missed her ADHD entirely, how it showed up, and what finally made everything click. And honestly, it was too good to cut. So I said, we're not even touching the real conversation yet. Why don't you come back next week? And so that's what today is. This is part two with Dr. Shawn Horn. And this time we are talking all about shame. What it actually is, why it can hit so hard for women with adhd, what RSD really is, and why she calls it shame, ptsd, and what's actually happening in your nervous system when you feel that drop. If you've ever thought, why does this feel so intense? You're going to understand yourself in a completely different way. So let's get into it. Welcome back.
- [04:04]
B
Thank you so much. Thank you.
- [04:07]
A
Absolutely. I also want to mention, for many of you that listen to this podcast religiously, you know that I am in San Francisco in corporate housing. I sold my home and decided, okay, I'm just going to move to the city, no problem. Six weeks, we should be able to find something, right? Well, the market is a shit show. And so we are moving from corporate housing to a rental across the way so that we just have more time. And today. And so what's happening is I've had to. Every time I have a podcast, I've had to set up my microphone, my focusrite, my cloudlifter, all the stuff that goes into podcasting. And for some reason, today and yesterday when I recorded a podcast, my mic won't work. And so I am using my traveling mic. So I'm holding it. If you're watching this on YouTube, I've never done that before, but we're just going to make it work. So, Dr. Sean, thank you so much for being here. And let's start.
- [05:07]
B
Okay. Yeah.
- [05:09]
A
You say that shame is not about low self esteem or negative thinking. Then what is it about?
- [05:17]
B
Okay, we'll break this down. So shame is a social emotion. It's not generated from within us, us. It comes from outside of us. When somebody corrects us, they have a strong reaction and then we have the shame response. A lot of people get that confused with guilt. And. But it's different because guilt is generated within. Guilt comes from our own thinking, processing. Guilt is what we feel when we violate our standards, our personal standards. But shame is what we feel when we violate somebody else's standards. So it serves to be a social correction. And what's so interesting is that shame is measured at 15 months of age, 15 months of age, where guilt is measured at 5 to 6 years of age. So the link is that when somebody tells us we violated a standard, you don't steal, you don't lie, don't kick the dog, you know, kind of Thing we, they're teaching us, this is our value system within our society, our village, our structure, community. And we want you to weave that into your own moral compass. And when you internalize that shame, that message, yeah, don't kick the dog, that's really bad, then it becomes the. The material that fuels our guilt. So if we agree that stealing is wrong, and I stole as a child, I'll sit there and I'll start thinking about it and I'll go, oh, no, stealing is really bad. And I'll feel that inner conviction. So how. This is what we call healthy shame. Healthy shame is social correction. But when it moves from correction to condemnation, when it moves from that was a bad thing to do to the message that you are bad, bad girl, then it becomes toxic because then it attacks our sense of self, our sense of val. Our personal value. And because this emotion is hardwired into our survival brain, it is there to tell us, if I don't, if something's wrong with me, I am at risk of being rejected, exiled, kicked out, and then I won't surv. So we are heavily invested into making sure that we don't violate a standard because we're not going to be incorporated and therefore not survive. So when we have that continual message that there is something wrong with who we are, that when we made a mistake, we didn't just make a mistake, we are a mistake, we're flawed, we're defective. When we get that message, then we go through life with what I call shame masks to show the world we are worthy enough, we are good enough. And that's why we say that toxic shame is core to all of our emotional and behavioral struggles, because we will turn to things to soothe it when it gets activated. Alcohol, you know, drugs, alcohol, things, you know, any excessive behavior. And we will also turn to things to guard against the shame experience, to make sure I never am shamed again. And that is what's underneath. People pleasing and perfectionism, among other things. So this is where it starts to take over our life and create this. This problem that we go to therapy to try to resolve. And, you know, why am I doing this thing and it causing those difficulties.
- [09:23]
A
Okay, so how is shame then related to adhd?
- [09:30]
B
Well, we have the variables for the Perfect Storm. You know, one is that we have a sensitive nervous system. Our nervous system is delayed in development. You've heard the 30% rule that we. Our executive functioning develops 30% slower or delayed compared to neurotypicals. So that means that we might not figure things out like Everybody else figures things out and we don't may not recognize patterns when others recognize it. So when we're in a classroom and other kids are referencing each other, we're just not noticing. Because think about it, from the 30% when we're five years of age, our executive functioning is at the age of three. So really we're starting kindergarten at three. We graduate high school not at 17, but at 13. If you think about that, how many 13 year olds do you know that are graduating high school? This is evidence of how amazing our resilience and tenacity is, how hard we are working. We have this challenge in making sense of things. Among all the other learning differences in our brain combined with feeling deeply. I say if our nervous system was a skin color, we're very fair skinned in a sunny place, so we can get sunburn very easily if it was a spice. Where the, our nervous system's the kind where if you get a little bit of pepper, it just burns so much, right? And this isn't a problem. This is that, like, we want to be spicy, but not so spicy it burns, right? And so this is the part that makes everyone just love us with our, our contribution of that energy and that joy and passion about things. You know, you hear us talk about being just as sensitive, things like this, you know, we're passionate. So we have this sensitive nervous system. And then we are getting frequent corrections. Sit still, be quiet, don't interrupt. You know, Sean, go to the back of the room or something like this. Tracy, you need to go in the hallway, you know, or we see. Stop talking. Name on the board. How many times did we have that happen, right? We see kids that will connect with each other and they go on parties. They go to parties together, they're invited to these parties. I remember one time when my son was little, we went to the YMCA and we were sitting by the pool and a door opened to the right and all these kids came out. That was from his kindergarten class. And then a door on the left opened up and it was another group of kids we knew from another environment and we were not included. You know, it's those moments he didn't notice. Thanks goodness. But talk about RSD activation, you know, how come. Why weren't we there, right? So you get this exclusion where you're not incorporated, you're not invited, you're constantly corrected. And then we have this thing called neuroception, which is our inner security system that's constantly scanning the environment to see am I safe? And when it detects Danger. It does a very interesting thing. It expands the information so we don't miss it. So think of a rattlesnake came into the room. Our ears would get very heightened, attended, or pay attention to the sounds of that snake. And so it brings up the volume, so to speak. So people that are talking, it will sound louder. Faces that are surprised or alarmed will look angry. So because this is linked to the fight and flight response when our bodies, because our bodies is frequently living in a fight and flight response for various reasons, it will expand this information so we will have this experience that the world is so angry with us that they don't delight in us, that they don't enjoy our company and why. So we get that more negative feedback than positive feedback combined with exclusion, combined with the sensitivity of our nervous system and the delays of our executive functioning, all of that together perfect storm. And when you have that frequency, over time it just wears and tears on us. And so we start to see something is wrong, we don't know what it is. We don't have the cognitive maturity to understand that how the world is treating us is more to do with the world than it is to do with us. You know, if our parent is angry and they lost their cool, that's more to do with the parents ability to regulate their emotions and how they're building meaning in their mind about what is happening. So when they have that reaction, we, we can't make sense of it. So we take responsibility for it. We take responsibility for other people's feelings, other people's behavior. Maybe we were even told that if you hadn't behaved this way, this wouldn't have happened to you. That pattern continues on into adulthood where we will personalize what is happening in our worlds. You know, these people are doing this because of me, it's my fault and so forth. So it take takes on this life of its own that just permeates our entire experience.
- [15:30]
A
That the ADHD experience would be so in tune with shame. Because if this is all about social structures and what we should be doing and we either don't understand them or even more, we don't really care about them. Right. It just makes so much sense that, that you know the statistic that a child before the age of I've heard 10 and I've heard 12, here's 20,000 more negative messages when they have ADHD than a neurotypical child does that all of those rules and how we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to do, and if we're either not understanding them, not seeing them, or rejecting them our whole life would be shame, right?
- [16:18]
B
Yes. Yeah. And we don't always remember, you know, I mean, just think of regulating your face. How many times have we heard people say, don't look at me like that or you know, and we don't know what, what's my face doing? You know, so we have this experience where we're told we're feeling things, doing things, have motives that we don't have, intentions we don't have and we don't understand. How are we so incongruent? How are we so out of sync with what is going on? What are we miss? And that out of sync experience throughout life and that misunderstanding of why we struggle, you know, you're not trying, you're lazy, you're not applying yourself and you have what it takes. And as we know, it's a condition where we have a hard time bridging the knowledge with the performance. Yes, I have what it takes, but I'm struggling to put it into action. And sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. And that inconsistency also confuses the world around us. So we were just struggling and don't want to struggle and don't understand why. Unless we get really good psychoeducation about our brain differences and we get the accommodations and we have that understanding.
- [17:40]
A
We talked about ADHD and shame generally, but what about adhd, shame and women? Does it show up differently for us?
- [17:52]
B
That's a good question. I haven't had that before. I don't know of any gender differences in the experience of it. I think that we may mask it more than others. Maybe in our coping methods might be different. Like we might turn more to. Well, one thing that comes to mind is body image stuff that's huge. And eating disorders, we know that that is highly correlated with adhd. So we may become more preoccupied with how we look. Because the message is if you're attractive, people will like you, right? If you have the right body, so forth. So that might be an area that we get very hyper focused and then all that gets distorted. I believe that body dysmorphia is related to that neuroception distortion that I explain how things get exaggerated. So I think in our coping skills what we focus on might be different. Maybe the male counterpart will, you know, pursue other things other than beauty and attraction.
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A
What I'm thinking of is there are definitely more societal rules for women, right. And how women are supposed to behave. And a lot of us, I mean, I always joke around That I feel like a man trapped in a woman's body in terms of I don't see any boundaries, I don't see any reason why I can't do anything that a man can do. And I've always been like that. I was born like that. So I tended to do things like, you know, bodybuilding and the kinds of, you know, careers and things that I pursued. I, I actually like the challenge of, oh, there's no women in that industry. That makes me want to do it even more. And so if you're not playing by society's rules, then society wants to kind of beat you down if you're a woman. Right?
- [19:52]
B
That's right, yeah. And again, that depends on your community. Like, I was born and raised in San Diego in a very progressive family, a very diverse family. I didn't get the message that I had these limitations. It was that, yeah, you can do anything. And it wasn't until I moved into other areas like in Spokane, Washington when I came here was the first time I encountered the good old boys society and club. And I was like, what is happening? What is this thing? You know. So I think it depends too. If you are raised in a highly religious community, what they call high demand religion, where it's more patriarchal, if you're in a liberal or conservative areas that hold those conservative views, all that will affect what we believe we can or cannot do for sure.
- [20:46]
A
Especially for combined type hyperactive women. We talk a lot, we have high energy, you know, we move a lot. We're. Yeah, there's. And we're loud at times too, which is not always socially acceptable for women. So I'm thinking, you know, if you're a little girl and I mean we're called bossy, right? Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain, of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain, which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the A OK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition. Trust yourself again and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it.
- [22:24]
B
Yeah, and we, we say bold questions. You know, we'll just ask a question because we don't screen it and then people are just taken back, you know, what is this thing you're doing?
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A
You don't ask that, but it's a good question.
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B
Why wouldn't I ask that?
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A
When I was a kid, my cousin was an only child and we second cousin and we, there were four kids in our family and I remember I must have been 12 and maybe she was, was 8 and I said in front of everyone, why does she get everything? Whatever she wants she gets. And it was totally true. But it was also because she was an only child. Right. And I remember my parents were like, I mean it was, you know, you don't say those. Well, why not? I thought it was a fair question. What do I need to do to get what she gets.
- [23:20]
B
That's right. That's right. And you know, I hear a lot of people associate that with autism. Like they'll say, you know, if you ask those really bold questions. But I think that's one of those overlaps as well. And you mentioned gender differences and a lot of people don't realize the Gottmans in their research on couples at a university of Washington have found that gender differences are actually the other way, that men are actually more tender and sensitive and women can be more task oriented. So what we typically think men aren't, men are this, women aren't, men are that. It's actually the opposite. But men are conditioned out of that, you know, to be tough, to cover it, you know, but they're very tender and when they present that to us, we'll go, you know, like, are you kidding me? Like I'm not your mother, figure it out, you know, but they can be very sensitive and we can be very goal oriented to, you know, more than we realize.
- [24:21]
A
A lot of people that are listening have heard of rejection sensitive dysphoria or rsd. Can you define it for us, your definition?
- [24:31]
B
You know, when I was at the Chad conference, had opportunity at a three hour private one on one coffee meeting with Dr. Dodson and, and he is in agreement with me on this, you know, because I wanted to really hash this out with him. But I believe that RSD is a description of the activation of social trauma. So if you look at PTSD and the symptoms of that, you have hyper vigilance, you have high reactivity, intrusive thoughts, avoidance of things that will Trigger you. And if you go down the whole list, you'll see that that's describing what we experience with rsd. High reactivity, hypervigilance, trying to avoid the shame reaction, intrus thoughts of, oh, they don't like me. They're, they're thinking this about me. We have the distortion which is related to the neuroception distortion that I mentioned. But it's specifically a social context. So a lot of times people say I have social anxiety or something like that, you know, and they don't know what they're, what they're really describing. But because we've had so much injury in our relationships and in social environments, we have developed a trauma response to it. And you know, when I wrote my book, I was, I reached out to the polyvagal community, the trauma community, and they really are adhering to this idea that ADHD is trauma and we know it's not.
- [26:09]
A
Meaning that you get ADHD from trauma.
- [26:12]
B
Correct. Right. Which is what people are perceiving or are gathering from what Gabor mate described. Right. And, and I have a friend who's good friends with Gabor and we hashed this out and she said, she talked to him about that because she's an ADHD specialist. And he said, according to her, this is like, you know, telephone game that he, what he's intending is not to say you're born, that you're not born neurodiverse, but really emphasize the trauma piece. So I'm not sure if it's just not getting communicated correctly or what. But we're born with adhd. It's a neuro developmental condition that makes our brain have differences, executive functioning differences. And, but when you combine that with our social experience, because it strongly impacts, significantly impacts our social work life, then you can develop trauma. And the research shows that we are more vulnerable to developing trauma than a neurotypical. And again, a lot of people say, why is that? Well, because of our nervous system differences and, and we can get in the weeds with all that. But because we have a more fragile or vulnerable to activation and difficulty with down. Activation of the nervous system, it, we're, it's felt very deeply and we can develop the trauma response. So it's not black and white. And that's what I want everyone to know. It's not is it born with it or is it trauma? It's both. And Right. Because you, you cannot go through life with ADHD without having traumatic experiences. We're, we're so much more vulnerable to unfortunately, sexual violations, to, you know, being Terminated or like having, losing jobs, having exclusions, all sorts of things, not having opportunities in schools and so forth. So it's, it's hard to, to grow up with this without again knowing what we're going through and having those accommodations. And so we develop this, this trauma response. So rejection sensitive dysphoria, in my opinion is describing the activation of the ptsd, is saying the PTSD got activated and this is what it looks like and it's describing the symptomology of it, just like if you were reading about ptsd. And that's why I think a lot of people say complex ptsd. And that also mirrors rsd. It is complex, meaning it's not a one time environment thing. It wasn't like you got held up or you were at 9, 11, you've had all these, you know, micro traumas over a lifetime. And that is what RSD is, but it's the description of it, of the activation.
- [29:18]
A
And that makes perfect sense because I have met time and time again very high performing ADHD women who did they have adhd. They, they were lucky enough that they did well in school. They had really solid families who provided a lot of scaffolding for them when they were little. They, you know, were able to develop or get into a really good relationship and you know, an intimate partnership. And probably one of the most important things is they chose a career that was in their area of interest. So they actually were able to use their ADHD because we know when we're in an area of interest, sky's the limit. Rather than struggling in a career where all their executive functions were being tapped or taxed, I should say. So that's what has always bothered me, is that I meet people like this every day. I would say I am fairly close to that description. But then I meet women with ADHD who it is such a struggle and a burden for them. And so how do you explain both things?
- [30:30]
B
When you have an environment where one, they weren't supported, understood, maybe rejected, compared to youth, that is in a supportive environment where that is not a problem to their family or to their community, they have all the freedoms that everybody else has. Such a different experience. But I think that if, if we were that person that was not understood, rejected, did not have the resources, did not have that empowerment, we felt limited and imprisoned in our own self of this is how my brain works, is how my body works, right? And then if you look at those that were fully empowered, fully embraced, fully understood that they were given a supportive environment with all the resources they needed, they're not thinking about those things. Things. And it's incredible to see young ADHD women that say, yeah, no, I didn't have that experience. You know, like I, I had. Maybe they, their difficulties were not in the social area. Right. Maybe they left school and like you're saying we're successful and so they just don't identify with those things. And they had a life that we were like, wow, that's such a great journey that you had.
- [31:51]
A
And it's not to say that they don't also struggle with just the limitations of adhd, but they don't, you know, they're not focused there. They're focused on where the strengths are. And, but so much of it is. Did you have that support early on? Did you always feel like you're just a great person, you know, and you have lots of opportunities versus I'm sure decades ago it just wasn't that easy. So, you know, people are much more understanding, accepting, get science and understand.
- [32:30]
B
We're rounded. We're not just this thing, one thing, whatever. You know, we have all, we're full holistic beings that aren't defined by one thing. And so it's so wonderful to see that. And I've also noticed that some ADHD clients, they don't care if their house is a mess, they don't care if they're losing things, they don't care if they're the absent minded professor. Neither do their families or their spouse. When you have that, they, they're just not, it's not a problem. Right? But let's say they're married to someone that cannot tolerate or stand, that they're messy, that they want them to be consistent, they want them to be different in those environments and they really are suffering because they can't meet that standard. And again, shame activation because they're violating somebody else's standard.
- [33:22]
A
Okay, so talk a little bit because I know this is a big subject for you. Talk about social media and shame reactions.
- [33:31]
B
Oh, thank you. Yes. This is what my whole TEDX was on. And I was going to do an inspirational thing, which you all got in the first part. Part one, that was girlfriend wine mode. Right. And so when I was doing the TEDx, they said, we want someone that has an idea worthy to be heard. And so they want unique ideas, unique contributions. So I started doing research and that's how I found polyvagal theory. And as I was looking at the polyvagal chart that describes all three different levels of our nervous system, I saw something very interesting. I saw in each, in each of those states are specific emotions that you are associated with that state. So, of course, in your fight and flight, you've got all the anxiety emotions or all the anger, irritability emotions. But in the shutdown state, the dorsal vagal complex, it had the word shame. So I was like, wow, shame is associated with our shutdown. What is this? And then I did a deep dive and I discovered that. That what happens is all three of our states are informed by our neuroception. So think of the antiviral where you have on your computer, it's always running and it's looking at inside the computer. How is this computer operating? Do we have enough batteries? If the battery's low, it will alert you. It will shut. It might just turn it off, right? So it looks inside our body. Neuroception similarly looks inside. How's our breathing, our heart rate, our blood pressure? Do we have pain? Is something off here? And if something is a problem, it will shut us down or it will power us up, create inflammation, do what it needs to do. It also looks the computer, the antiviral wear looks at. When you go to a Internet site, it will say, is it safe? And you just enter, no problem, or is there a problem? Hit with this. And then it will send you an alert. You know, are you. Do you know this website you're going to? Are you sure you want to go there? So our neuroception is looking outside. Are we safe to enter this space? Is there something wrong here? Then it also looks at the computer, like right now we're talking. If we were on Zoom, we would see these bars on the bottom. Maybe it does it here too, where we'll have green bars, yellow bars, or red bars saying, hey, the interaction is great. Everything's flowing just as it should. So when we're talking to other people, our nervous system is reading their nervous system and vice versa. And it's looking at, how are we doing? Is everything just as expected or is something off? So we might get yellow bars that say, this isn't the greatest connection. Or red bar saying, we might be out here in a second, right? So our neuroception is looking inside, outside, in between 24, 7, just like the antiviral wear on our computer. Now, neuroception pays attention to very specific things. It's looking at our eyes, the expression of our eyes and. And our eyebrows. Our eyebrows inform neuroception a lot. Have. Have. If somebody has dogs, and maybe you have dogs. I know you might have heard the saying, the tail tells the Tail, right? So we know that dog. The tail of the dog will let us know, is it scared and it's underneath its belly. Is it alert and it's straight out. Is it happy and wagging? You know, and so we can tell what's going on with the dog based on that. Well, our eyebrows are our tails. And so if I see you and I go, hi, Tracy, and I give an eyebrow pop, you know, that's the wagon. I'm so happy. And if it's frowned, you know, and it's scowling, it's like, what's this thing? If you raise one eyebrow like this, what's this thing? I'm thinking, right? So we rely on this a lot. Now, some dog breeds, they dock the tail, they cut it, and it will give it a permanent aggressive look, right? That is what Botox, I believe Botox does to us. When someone's eyebrows are Botox, that's docking our tail. This is. This is my own. My own theory here, or how I put it all together. So it's looking at the mask area. Very important. It's listening to the voice. Does the voice have lots of intonation, what we call mother ease. Like, if you think about when you talk to your dog or your loved ones go, hi. Oh, how are you? You know, you have all this warmth to it right now. It really likes that when there's lots of warmth. Warmth. And part of that is because when we're in that parasympathetic, the peaceful, calm, ideal place in our nervous system, the ventral vagus nerve is related to that state. And that nerve is connected to our facial expressions and our throat and our vocalizations. So when we're peaceful, we have lots of tone and warmth to our voice. But when we go into a fight and flight state or into the dorsal vagal complex shutdown state, now the dorsal vagus nerve is activated. Ventral vagus nerve is not activated in the same way. And this is a very basic, simple explanation. I'm sure there's a neuroscientist listening. They go, well, technically, okay, so. But, you know, gives us an overall understanding. And for that reason, our vocalizations become flat and monotoned and our facial expressions are minimal. Our eye movement is. Is limited. So our neuroception knows that. We don't know that, but it knows that. So if it hears your voice be monotone, it's going to go, what's going on? Something's wrong. If your face is not very expressive, think of wrappers like. Like when you see them interview, they got the Flat face. They're talking all monotoned. Right. That is a docked tail that is saying, you know, you need to be alert. With me, it's I, it's communicating a, a presence that we must be aware of. Right. We will get that if we're stressed. I have pay attention to this a lot. When I'm stressed, my voice gets very monotoned and also a little hoarse. Hoarse. And if, when I'm happy, I don't have that hoarseness and it's got more depth to it. So you can kind of pay attention to your voice like you would if you checked your blood pressure and you'll learn about, oh, where's my state today? If I'm noticing I'm hoarse, I might be in a fight and flight. If it's flat, I might be there. Right. So neuroception is paying attention to eyes and to voice. And it wants us to be in sync, it wants us to be in real time. And then it has everything it needs to determine where it needs to signal the nervous system. Now, if you have animals, you may have had the experience that when you walk in the door, they're so excited to see you and they're happy. But you go on vacation and someone's house sitting and you say, let me, let me talk to my, my dog. And you FaceTime your dog and you're talking to it and it can hear your voice, but the dog's looking to the left, is looking to the right. And there's no acknowledgment of you. That is because when you have animal or human interaction on non human devices, neuroception, it blocks everything that neuroception requires to recognize the situation. It blocks it all. It can't understand that now we have this modern brain that can understand that. Like right now I'm talking to you. You know I'm, I'm with Tracy, right? And. But my neuroception doesn't understand it. Why can't I sense you? Why can't I feel you? Why are our eyes not correct? Right. Eyes are always off when we're in these recordings. Like right now I'm looking at you, but if I look at the camera, it looks like I'm looking at you. You. Right? So neuroception goes, why, why are you talking to me? But you're not looking at me, you're looking down there. It doesn't like that. So it sends off the alarms. Well, now we're on social media and this is a social world.
- [42:15]
A
I can't believe you remembered to connect this yeah.
- [42:18]
B
And so now you're on social media. It's social. You see your people, you see social stuff. And neuroception is working hard. It's going, where. Where am I fitting? Why am I not understanding that? Why is that? My friend, But I'm not with them. Why is the friend not talking to me? What's happening? So it starts to sound the alarm. Fight and flight response. And then it can't sustain that. The fight and flight is meant to be a sprint runner, not a marathon runner. So when we ask that sprint to run a long distance race, it will turn on the over, what I call the overflow switch. So you think of your bathtub, of the water gets high. The overflow switches on to keep the bathroom from flooding. So that's where the dorsal vagal kicks in. The shutdown for most people. Shutdown. Looks like I'm depressed. I'm withdrawn. For adhd, it's functional. Freeze. We march on. We've learned how to push through. So we may not recognize that we're in shutdown. How we can tell is we cannot make a decision. We cannot think, communicate, articulate. We might read and not understand. Our brain's just really struggling in that way, so it shuts down. Well, the shame shutdown response is to pull back. Pull back and protect yourself. Shame says, go hide. You think of your dog comes in. You walk in the room, couch is torn up, food's on the floor. You go, what did you do? And the dog runs and hides underneath the table. Right? That's what we do. We run and we hide. But at the same time, we want to understand. You know, I feel like I need to hide. I'm in danger. But why? So we get stuck in this shame loop where we're leaning in to gather the information and we're withdrawing socially. Leaning in, withdrawing. And how we try to gather that information is comparing. Am I where I'm supposed to be? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be be right now, with adhd, this is complicated because one of our adaptive strategies have been to compare. We didn't hear the teacher say, put your book away and get out your notebook. So we had a look at our peers to go, what are we. What are we supposed to do? What did they say? So we continue that pattern through life. Am I doing what I'm supposed to do? They're all applying for college. Okay, I'm supposed to apply for college. College. They're all getting married. I'm supposed to, okay, I'm getting married. They're all Having children, they're all going to retirement homes, you know, whatever. Like I see some of my 70 and 80 year old ADHD years feeling pressured to go sell their home, downsize and go retirement home. Because that's what everyone is doing.
- [45:02]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [45:03]
B
But they don't want to, right?
- [45:04]
A
They'll hate it.
- [45:05]
B
Yeah. So that's, that's the, that's how it continues on into and throughout our life. So we're looking, we're referencing, am I exactly where I'm supposed to be to be okay, to fit the social world. Now this is where people go wrong. They say you're on social media, you're, you're comparing, don't compare. As if it's our thinking brain that's making us compare. My argument is that the digital communication and social media activate the shame reflex. And that shame reflex is like if you hit my knee, the knee is going to bounce out. Right? Right. If I go on to digital, it's gonna whoop. It's just gonna do that and it's gonna fuel, it's gonna trigger the fight and flight and it's gonna want us to pull back and we're not gonna wanna talk to people or socialize. That's the sign. So if you find yourself comparing feeling less than having all those feelings because shame's gonna talk to you saying, you know, something's wrong, gotta get this fixed, you know, get in life can make yourself fit, right? But then we're going to think, oh, this is because I'm broken, I'm insecure, you know, and they get shame about shame. But we need to free ourselves from the shame about shame. Our body, our survival brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do. It's saying, I am not in this community that I am looking at with my eyes. Something is off and the whole system gets activated. And that's what's going on. So the solution is when you're on social media, instead of having shame about shame and beating yourself up about comparing feeling insecure less than and having it be a visual like trophy board, right? A bra, a visual brag board, which sometimes it's saying, see, I am okay, see I am doing the things I'm supposed to do instead. Disconnect. The second you feel that way, disconnect. And we have have to go to a human being or an animal and have a face to face correction. So when you're you, you go to your people and you see them call a friend, go have coffee, even the telephone's better. Go out in nature, feel the earth, you know, let your body take in nature. It will go, oh, okay, we're okay. And then we can get, we can begin the process of downregulating. If our nervous system is able to, able to do that, sometimes it gets stuck. And that's a whole other conversation. But polyvagal theory helps us understand how we can get stuck in certain nervous systems that are dysregulated. But that is why social media activates the shame reflex. And it is not because of what we think, it is because of what our body is doing. And it's not bad. It's for our survival. So we need to say, thank you, body, but we're misfiring here, but I need to correct it. No, help it know I'm okay. Connect with a real thing, then go back, you know, and balance that. So we use our thinking brain to help guide what the body needs rather than the thinking brain to like react to the body like a scolding parent, you know, angry, what are you doing? That's so stupid, you know, don't do that instead of saying, okay, it's all right, you're doing what you're supposed to do. Now we're going to pitch it well,
- [48:28]
A
and you can do that when you have this awareness, right, of, oh, well, this is what's happening. And what's so interesting to me about social media is I speak to some of my ADHD friends and they are like, they could stay on there all day, they are just fascinated by TikTok and Instagram and just all of the stuff coming at them. I, on the other hand, and other friends, I will only go on social media when it's work related because I just find it so overwhelming. Everything is coming at you. I don't know what to focus and pay attention to and I can start looking. And then lo and behold, 30 minutes has passed. It just seems like it makes me just anxious.
- [49:17]
B
So I'm going to say something that's going to blow your mind. I think it's going to blow your mind. Okay. They're now coming out talking about digital dementia being seen in children as young as four years of age. Right. So they're saying that the frequent screen use is causing some serious implications. It has serious implications to our developing brain and, and it's causing a lot of the symptoms that we're seeing with ADHD. Well, 60 Minutes Australia did an episode on this. I saw it and I was like, oh my gosh, that's like huge. If you look at the ad, adhd symptoms. You have people that are saying they're relating to this, but we have always said it's neurodevelopmental. But here's the problem. We have people that are younger that have had screens their whole life. Okay. So if they've had screens their whole life, we're not going to be able to make the difference between neurodevelopmental or screen effect effects. Right. Wow. Huge implications.
- [50:25]
A
We are changing our brain. Right. And our, the grown ups are changing their brain and the kids, they're never going to have a chance.
- [50:32]
B
Yes. And as a researchers, you know, from the scientific approach that has huge implications because if we're testing children to understand their Neurodiverse Brain at 2 and 3, but they have screen times and we can't get a clean sample of people not on screen, it's going to be huge. So what we're seeing is generational differences with our neuroception as well and how it's reacting to these things. You and I didn't grow up with social media, we didn't grow up with this digital stuff. But we might see 20 year olds that did, 30 year olds that did. And so I'm going to suggest that that may create differences in how they experience the digital world. World. Because neuroception will figure it out. It, I suspect that neuroception might have really had a hard time with telephones at first, but once it figured it out, it coded that into our DNA. We have children and now they have that software. You know, our bodies are like a computer. Our experiences at the programming and then that gets programmed and then the next generation computer has that in it. Right. So my computer understood phones, so I have a child and now my child's neuroception says phones are okay. You know, that's how we adapt. But I didn't get the computer thing, the talking on Zoom and FaceTime and social media, but she does so eventually the bodies will adapt. I suspect that within, maybe even within a generation we're going to see full adaption. I don't know. And that's to be researched, right?
- [52:08]
A
Right.
- [52:09]
B
But what we may be seeing is some groups that may be able to adapt to social media in ways that others cannot. And maybe there's neurodifferences in that as well to have that differences in resilience with it. But some people might have a harder time than others. And it's not something to judge. It's not about our, our strength, our virtues, our tenacity, our self esteem.
- [52:34]
A
Same.
- [52:35]
B
It's just Nervous system differences.
- [52:38]
A
You're on screens from the time you are little. I mean I can't tell you, you know, we've been eating out a lot just because of the situation here. And I cannot tell you how many times I go into a restaurant and there are little kids, I'm talking toddlers and the parents set up a laptop in front of each of the toddlers and then they get on their phones and they're scrolling their phone so nobody is talking to anyone. And I just want to go over there and say, do you know what you are doing not only to your brain, but your child's brain and nervous system?
- [53:14]
B
Because through the relationship that our nervous system gets myelinated. And myelinated is where we insulate the, like the, the batons, like neurons are like a baton, right? It gets something in one end, it goes through the, the metal bar and out the other. So that bar needs to be insulated with this myelin. And if it's insulated, we begin, it functions like a high optic nerve Internet. You know, information's flowing in and out, we can flow in between nervous systems states. That's what's a regulated nervous system. It flows very easily. It gets activated when it needs to, it gets down activated when it needs to, to. But if we're not getting it properly myelinated and it's, it's not developing correctly, then we are still having dial up Internet. So we could get activated easily, have struggles down regulating. That's a dysregulated nervous system where you're not flowing in the states correctly, you might be misfiring, you have too high activation, you might, I get stuck in the yellow zone, stuck in the red shutdown zone. And that is a problem. So according to polyvagal theory, it's through the bonding and the relationships and the face to face interaction, you know, where our parents mirror that they can soothe us. We outsource that nervous system and when they are soothing through that connection, it helps out. So we outsource to the parents, it helps that development of the nervous system getting myelinated. Now your prefrontal cortex is the myelinated part of your brain, the limbic system, the ancient brain. That's your unmyelinated part of your brain. And that's the ancient part, that's the part that's related to all of our ancestors, our instincts, our motivation, our drives. And that is why we live a little bit more in that area than in, in the myelinated part of our brain. And so we want our nervous System to be developed properly and developed properly, we need to have a lot of human interaction in. Throughout our development as small children and not on digital devices, we are seriously harming the brain more than we ever understood or knew. And now we're understanding more. And so I've told all my family members that have small children no screens. Like, just don't do it. I know how tempting it is and how hard. And I can hear parents going, oh, you just try that. Every one of their friends has a screen and blah, blah, blah. It's not realistic, you know, I understand, but we must make this change as a society and begin educating each other that it's lowering what the. What they're finding now is it's lowering IQs and is causing this breakdown. So it's going to change the brain of our world and it's more scary than we even realize.
- [56:25]
A
So you use the term digital dementia. What exactly is that? Is it exactly what it sounds?
- [56:32]
B
Different? Yeah, exactly what it sounds. There's different kinds of dementia, right? And a lot of people think dementia is Alzheimer's, but Alzheimer's is just one type of dementia that is genetic. And we can actually discover that, like after someone is deceased and they look at the brain and they identify that was the source of it. But there's vascular dementia, which is caused by having high blood pressure throughout your life or. And there's some that are related to alcohol, there's some related to head injuries, but it's something that's happened to the brain that has caused it to develop this dementia, which looks like Alzheimer's. You know, like you, you are unable to use your thinking brain in the way that we want and it progressively gets worse. So digital is saying, just like vascular dementia that's caused by high blood pressure, it's dementia that is caused by digital use by screen time. And that's what it's describing.
- [57:34]
A
So now we know not all about shame, but we know a lot about shame. Adhd, rsd. How do you heal it? What do you do?
- [57:44]
B
This is where I say education's intervention. When you understand what is happening, with what shame is, when you name it, you can tame it. When you understand what RSD is like, huge. It's like noticing your dream drunk, right? When we're out, we drink too much, we go, oh my gosh, I'm so drunk. And. And so then you don't trust, like what you want to do and you're. And all that stuff. You same with rsd, you're drunk with rsd, so don't get behind the driver's seat of life and try to make sense of what's going on. We have to down regulate sober up. And then when our thinking brain comes online, then approach whatever we need to sort through. But don't trust what our thoughts and feelings are telling us. We have a that thoughts are not truths. Feelings are not facts. They're information that's coming your brain and giving you information on something to attend to. So we understand that. So we just wait it out. Sober up, you're okay. Understand that neuroception distortion happens when shame is activated. Everything is bigger, everything's scarier, louder. People look angrier. This is when someone goes, why are you yelling? And you're like, I'm not yelling. See, right there you're yelling, you know, or look at your face, you're so angry. I'm not, not angry. Like right there. Right. So it misunderstands what is happening. This could explain a lot of our conflicts with others and how people react. And so when you understand that, it changes a shame bound personal narrative into a nervous system, a shame free nervous system narrative of instead of what's wrong with me, it's saying what is happening within me. And that's where like in my book, I start off with a shame free mindset because I find that people have shame about shame and when they learn about this is why you do what you do and why your brain does what it does. Instead of it being hopeful and encouraging, they if they have that shame core, you know, it's really gripping them, they'll go down the other other road of saying, see, see where I messed up? See, if I only had done this, if I only knew this, you know, that kind of thing. So I like to lay the foundation of shame free mindset because it fosters a growth mindset that celebrates the struggles, celebrates the errors, the failures and understands that that's all part of shaping our brain and learning so that as a reader goes through the book, they can have a shame free approach. And then the next step is to understand your nervous system states. What does it look like for you when you're in a peaceful, in a parasympathetic ventral vagal complex state? You know, how do you know you're there? What are your behaviors, your emotions, your and so forth, fight and flight. What does that look like for you? Dorsal vagal shutdown. What does that look like for you? So that you can recognize when you're in those states? Because each state has a matching tool. In the green state, it's A proactive tool that you're proactively strengthening your ventral vagal complex. That's through voical vocalization, singing, humming, gargling, you know, face exercises. There's all sorts. There's a big list. I have the list list online and with the book you can find it everywhere right now. It's very popular. And so you have this proactive state. If you're in the yellow light, you're charged up with all this adrenaline and all the stress hormones you need to expel that energy. So that's where we're doing things to get it out. We might shake it off, we might dance it off, we might yell in a pillow or something. We might talk it out, journal it out, go for a brisk walk, do an aggressive, you know, or a stimulating exercise and you're expelling that extra energy. Just like when we have a lot of sugar, we need to use it. When we have a lot of that adrenaline or epinephrine, we need to use it. And when you're in the shutdown, that's the worst thing you can do. It's there because you're over activated. So when you're in the red state, we need a slow awakening. You're there because you've overstressed the body. So if you're there and people go, you need to go for an exercise and you like hit it and you hit it hard and it's just not working. You're yawning the whole time and everything. It's because it's just too much stress. So there, that's where we do gentle stretches yoga. You listen to music, you slowly awaken the body. And so each state has a different tool. And that's in my book. I explain that and I and I make it unique for the adhd, help them understand a more tailored approach to that. And then, and then I have where in the rest of the book where I apply it all to our executive functionings in a social context. And then in the end I talk about who told you that? Because sometimes we are so stuck in, in that child mindset, not because that's a problem, but that's because we didn't get what we needed to develop our emotional intelligence, social intelligence, that we're still giving authority to outside voices and we're not using our discernment to know is this healthy, is it not, is it toxic, is it not? You hear about boundaries, what does that look like? So I address all of that in the last, last chapter is actually one of my favorites and needs to be the next book because I, I explain how we're, we fall vulnerable to narcissistic abuse and things like that. But that, that's how it all comes together to help us learn how to position ourselves. This shame free mindset. Learn how to regulate that nervous system so that we can access our executive functions. If you're dysregulated, you're not going to be able to do that. And having the social executive functions that will empower your social skills, without them, you're not going to be able to use social skills. And then who are you paying attention to? So that's it in a nutshell. The solutions to help you regulate that nervous system. We, we have so much hope with neuroplasticity and helping that nervous system that we now know these are the things you can do. And I began spelling that out, out in my book.
- [63:39]
A
Yeah, you can totally change your brain. And I've got to tell you, Sean, that drunk analogy is brilliant because you're absolutely right, you know, I mean, I don't do this anymore. But I remember in college, right, when you drank too much and you knew you drank too much and you weren't feeling like yourself, you would literally say, no, I'm not going to do this. That doesn't mean anything. I'm not going to trust what I'm thinking right now, what I'm feeling right now, because it's not true.
- [64:06]
B
Yeah, don't go confront that person. Don't dance on the table. Like we're just not going to do that. You know, don't call that friend because you're mad at them, don't you? You know, that is so good.
- [64:18]
A
I am going to use that from here on out. So Sean, tell us, where can people find you if they want to know more about you and what you do, where to find your book.
- [64:31]
B
Yes. Thank you so much. The book is sold everywhere where books are sold. So Amazon, New Harbinger Press, the publisher has a site, bookstores, everything. You can order it, you can find me, get all my info on my website, Dr. Seanhorn.com and all my handles everywhere is Dr. Sean Horn. I have a YouTube channel and you can follow me there. Follow me on Instagram. I'm on Instagram often and then I do share on Facebook and TikTok so they can find me there. Join my community on my website and we'll learn and grow together.
- [65:06]
A
Wonderful. Sean, thank you so much for spending time with us here today. Not once, but a second time. I so appreciate it. This was so, just so informative. So interesting.
- [65:20]
B
Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Me.
- [65:24]
A
Absolutely. So that's what I have for you for this week. If you like this episode with Dr. Sean Horn, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal, you know what it is, is to change the conversation around adhd, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you here next week. You've been listening to the ADHD for Smartass Women podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Otsuka. Join us at adhd for smartwomen.com where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. And my patented you ADHD Brain is a OK system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain, of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain. Which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the A OK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself again, and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it.