← ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
Episode 356: The Science of Memory and ADHD with Dr. Daniella Karidi
01:00:07
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, have you downloaded our brand new AOK Mind app yet? It's finally here on both the Apple App Store and Google Play and it's already changing lives. Here's what one listener just wrote today. Tracy, I have been using your a OK mind app for only 4 days and I have had so many mind blown moments it's unreal. Your take on RSD gave me insight I'd never thought thought of before. That is exactly what the AOK Mind app is for. To help you understand your ADHD brain in ways no one ever explained. Inside you'll find free tools like the ADHD clarity kit with 13 unusual signs of ADHD in Highly Successful Women, a preview chapter of my best selling book ADHD for Smartass Women, straight from Audible, and a training and worksheet to help you prepare for your first ADHD appointment so you don't forget what matters and can walk into that first meeting with your clinician confident and clear. So head to the App Store or Google Play, Search Aokmind. That's a OK Mind and start your own mind blown moment today. 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're doing right? I'm your host, Traci 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 BR 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. Hello, I am your host, Tracy Adsuka. Thank you so much for joining me here for another episode of ADHD for Smartass Women. You know my purpose. It is always to show you who you are and then inspire you to be it. And in the thousands of ADHD women that I've had the privilege of meeting, I have never met one that wasn't truly brilliant at something. Not one. So of course, I am just delighted to introduce you to Dr. Daniela Caridi. Dr. Caridi is a professional ADHD and executive coach and the founder of ADHD Time, based in Encino, California. She specializes in helping people with ADHD navigate major life transitions, whether that's starting college, building a career, or moving into retirement. Dr. Caridi earned her doctorate at Northwestern University where she focused her research on memory and adhd. She also holds a master's degree in learning disabilities. Training includes executive coaching at the College of Executive Coaching and advanced ADHD coaching at jst. She has managed university disability services, spoken at international ADHD conferences, and developed programs that translate science based memory strategies into everyday practice. Living with ADHD herself, Daniella brings both expertise and empathy to her clients. She's also a mom, a partner, and a priority. Proud redhead. Welcome Daniela. Did I get all of that right?
- [04:37]
B
Yes, you got it totally correct. And I'm so honored to be here and thank you so much for inviting me to talk about adhd.
- [04:46]
A
No, I am delighted that you are here. Your research on memory, given my poor working memory, is what really sparked my desire to have you on and be able to talk to you. But before we go there, what I always want to talk about is our guests ADHD diagnoses. So can you tell me what were the circumstances around your diagnosis?
- [05:15]
B
Yes. As every ADHD woman on this podcast, we each have a special story and it's not the same, but I was diagnosed first with learning disabilities. I have severe dyslexia to the level that write that amazing dissertation about memory and research. I had to dictate everything. I was early users to text to speech. I literally had the original NASA text to speech program because that was the only thing you could get in the 90s. So I used technology to overcome my dyslexia. But in the beginning, when I was diagnosed in fifth grade, it was because of my reading disorders. And when my mom asked what about this thing she heard about from the United States, that was adhd, because at that point in time I was living in Israel. They told her girls don't have adhd and that all these behavior problems like not sitting quietly, running around is somehow what my redhead temper and some my learning challenges. She's not reading, so she's not interested in class, so she's misbehaving, which could have been a good explanation except even topics that I really were able to do or were interested in. I still couldn't sit because I had adhd. Moving on. I kept on getting my services because of being learning disabled and so severely dyslexic. So I kind of never got the ADHD evaluation until I needed college accommodations. And I. When I worked into Tel Aviv University in Israel and I came in with my big file of all my diagnostics of dyslexia and all that, the lady sat in front of me and says, like, did anyone ever tell you you might also have adhd? And I said, yes, but I was. My mom was told that girls don't have adhd. And then she looked at me and she says, well, now we know that's not true. And I'm like, yeah, it wasn't true before too. And we kind of started the process and really got like the real official kind of initials next to my name. It took all of undergrad only when I transferred to my master's in Haifa University, where I got really. During that whole four years, when I finally got the official letters next to my name, in addition to dyslexia, I have an official diagnosis of actually combined hyperactive and inattentive adhd.
- [07:21]
A
So I'm curious, when you got that diagnosis, how did you feel seen?
- [07:28]
B
People ask me a lot, especially clients in different age groups, because I like working with older adults. I get asked sometimes by a 67 year old or a 72 year old, why should I bother to get diagnosed? And I like to use my own story, saying about how many tools the diagnosis provided me. First thing, it provided me lens to look at my own life backwards and forwards. So it kind of explains all the different things that happened. Why I couldn't sit quietly, why I struggled with completing tasks, why I had so many hobbies, why I had so many passions at the same time. It explained the positives and the negatives or maybe the consequences. It gave me a mirror to reflect through. And it also gave me vocabulary, which is really worth a lot. Having words to put, to understand, to understand what rejected sensitivity is, to understand what emotional regulation is. Executive function challenges. All those words that we use as professionals now also help us individuals with ADHD understand ourselves and be able to use it with others. Then it allowed me to seek help and get some accommodations. Especially when I went to the master's degree level, it served as a tool. Also, it gave a family perspective. I am confident that I am not the single one in my family that has adhd. It allowed the rest of My family members also to get a perspective about what's going on. And at the end, it also gave me a passion to research. When I entered my PhD, it allowed me to freely kind of knock on my professor's door and say, I know I applied thinking I'm going to do research on reading, but I really, really, really, really want to understand why I'm always late to our meetings. So that kind of gave me also something to be passionate about.
- [09:13]
A
So have you always felt different than others?
- [09:18]
B
Yes, yes, I've always felt different. But I wore my differences as a flag, kind of with pride. I would never wear the same socks to school. I always wear different colored socks because my approach was if I'm going to get attention anyway for misbehaving, for being redhead. So I'm going to hold my uniqueness to extreme. I never had two earrings at the same. I had the weird haircuts. Everyone was like, it's the 80s. Everyone's doing one ponytail, I'm doing two ponytails. It was like this kind of thing where I really wanted to like, put my uniqueness to out there and, and own it. I always loved purple, obsessed with purple. As a kid, I remember my parents brought a bike from the United States to Israel because I wanted a purple bike. And I would not learn to ride a bike until it was purple. So putting these kind of uniqueness and these like, specialties that made people smile and laugh instead of laugh at me, laugh with me was kind of my strategy.
- [10:13]
A
I can really relate that too. Originality is so important to me and I will cut my nose off not to be the same as everybody else. And so I always feel, even in groups, a little bit like an outsider because I don't want to be like everybody else. And it's almost like in order to be part of a group, you have to kind of conform, right? I mean, to really feel like you're part of the group. And sometimes I wonder, is that really true? Is it just me thinking that? Because, you know, I always want to do things differently. And I mean, that probably makes you more difficult, right? Because you don't just kind of go in and blend.
- [10:54]
B
And I think that's why events like the International ADHD Conference or the Neurodiversity Conference or even my LD conferences, at those events where you can meet your own zebras, where you find people that are not wearing matching socks, where you find people that want to be unique for the sake of being themselves, but also they can connect to your ADHD brand, where you can see Seen, I think are so important. I think that's why having other ADHD support groups or community or a coach, it makes. It makes it so important.
- [11:25]
A
Okay, Daniela, as I mentioned, I was so interested in having you join us on the podcast because of your research and expertise around memory. And of course, my poor working memory, which seems to be getting worse. And as I was reading about what you do, I got this sense that actually we can make it better. Yes, I just assumed poor working memory is poor working memory. You know, there's not a whole lot that you can do. So where should we start in this? What does the research say about ADHD and memory? That most people don't know, but we really should.
- [12:06]
B
So we talk a lot about ADHD and working memory, but we really need to talk about ADHD and prospective memory. So prospective memory is the opposite of retrospective memory. So retrospective memory is remembering the past. So I tell you, like, hey, what's the, you know, the date you started your first podcast? Like, that's kind of remembering the past. Prospective memory is remembering to remember in the future. So that is, let's say I tell you take your medications at 7pm that uses your prospective memory because you need to remember to do an action in the future.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay. Yeah. So when we think about actions in the future, there's basically a lot of steps that happen. And the more steps our brain needs, the more it can break up, basically, the more chances for failure. So step one is you need to remember the instructions, right? I told you take medication. You need to remember which medication, and then you need to remember when I told you so. Those are the instructions, the code, what needs to be done. If we have adhd, we could be very much distracted. We could not understand, we could think, we know it, but we're not attending to the instructions. So step one, to remember something, we need to give it energy, attention, time. We can't be doing our dishes when our spouse comes up to us and asks us about a meeting tomorrow that they need our help. We're not attending to the message, then we can't remember it. The step one for remembering it is paying attention to the instructions, which is not easy as an ADHDer. Then we need to retain it. We need to put it in some storage in our brain to be able to grab it when we need it. We also have a challenge as ADHDers, because we know this phenomena that we have where we put things without thinking about putting them away when we leave them in the space. We don't organize it. We do that in our brain too. I only found out after doing research with ADHD memory researchers and memory researchers in the world that they don't do that in their brain. When they need to remember something, they actively store it in a place they can take it later. It's this aha moment that happened to me when I'm like, what do you mean? You think about where you're going to put it in your memory. And they're like, yeah. We're like, oh, this is related to things I need to do at home. I like literally kind of like store it in that category. Now I categorize things as I'm, as they're given to me. And I looked at that person and I'm like, I don't do that. I looked at all the other ADHDers in the room and they're like, we don't do that. So we struggle with storing the information. We don't put the effort that needs to be put into storing better the information, into coding it and giving it categories, giving it things that will be easier to retrieve. Then we need to retrieve it in the right cue example is take medication at 7pm the cue would be time. Well, I'm sure you know how bad us ADHDers are with time. So that is a terrible cue. It's the worst cue we can rely on. So if there's any tip your listeners can take out from today is if there is something that is time dependent, convert it to become event dependent. And that's also what my research showed. My research showed that individuals with ADHD struggle more on time based events in the future than event based. And what do I mean by event? Event could be an alarm. Event could be dinner. Instead of telling a kid with ADHD take your medication at 7pm, it should be take your medications with dinner. You can use the timer as an extra tool. And this is my other tip to we should be double using cues. So if everyone else can use one cue, one alarm or one reminder or one thing to start an event, we need a bigger push, a bigger thing to start our engine. So we need more cues. So the alarm and the post it and putting the medication next to your dinner plate, like using more than one strategy is the best strategy you can take. And then remember we stored the information, we waited, then we retrieved it with the right cue. Now what we need to do is execute. And here's another track. You know where we can fall with ADHDers, where we can fall with ADHD years is in the execution too because we remembered we need to take medication, but, oh, we also need to take vitamins. Let's go look for the vitamins. And now we forgot our original task. We got distracted. We might have taken our vitamins, might have not, Might have taken our medication, might have not. And that comes the last step, and that's closing the loop. What happens is we need to say, we're done. We did it. We took our medication. We finished the task. And instead of that many times, because we do things automatically and we don't necessarily register that we finished it, we could be laying in bed saying, wait, did I take that medication? Yes. We don't close the loop.
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A
How do we close the loop?
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B
We use active activities to close the loop in the way that we literally tell ourself out loud when we're doing something. So one strategy is reinforcing it with verbal and audio clues. You can tell yourself out loud, hey, I'm taking my night medication. I know it sounds funny, but it does reinforce that I took it. Because then when I'm laying in bed, I'm like, I'll remember that. I stood there in my pajamas and I said that. Another trick is we can use technology. I have these stickers that I put on. There are RFID coded things and they're on my medicine pillow. And I scan it every time I took my meds. What it does is it sends myself the text message to myself that I took my meds. So then if I'm laying in bed, I can always go check if I have that message for myself. Then we can use strategies depending on which loop we're trying to close. We can only do that if we have awareness to where in the process we failed. And that is another tip. And one of the things I work with my clients is trying to understand where are you having the memory challenge? Is it in the encoding? Is it in the cues? Is it in the closing the loop? And it surprising with ADHD and not surprising. It's sometimes like this and sometimes like that. And we need to be able to kind of analyze ourselves and say, oh, my God. Most of my mistakes in relation to medication are closing the loop. But most of my mistakes in relation to taking all my stuff in the morning when I'm leaving to the office and remembering to take my phone and my charger and my thing actually are about remembering what are the things. So maybe I need to create a checklist. So figuring out where the failure is will help us find the right strategy.
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A
You went through that pretty quickly. Pull out for us the three top.
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B
Best things, the best top three thing is multiple cues, paying attention to what the cue is and adding another cue. So if the cue is I need to do something in 20 minutes, let's put a timer, let's put a song that will come up in 20 minutes. Let's listen up podcast. That's exactly 20 minutes. Multiple the cues so it will be easier to do the task. So that's the first one. Don't rely on one cue. Don't rely on one thing that will like, that's the one thing that will remind me to do it. I, I want multiple reminders and they need to be different, not like the same alarm multiple times. Then here's my next one. Make the cue relevant to you and to the task. And I didn't say that. And I think that's my biggest kind of like, this is an example that a lot of parents might like. When I was nursing my kid, I was trying to remember to drink water. It didn't help me if the reminder was all the way downstairs on the phone, right. And I was in the kid's room, right. The reminder needed to be where I could see it. My loving husband made a whole heart of water bottles and he would like check that the heart is full all the time and he keeps him like, here's another water bottle you're not drinking. Here's more here like, because I can tell they're still here. I keep on. He found a, a meaningful way to make a reminder for me because that alarm downstairs wasn't going to help. So making it meaningful and location based and, and relevant. Putting a post it on your fridge that you need to get milk on the way home is good. It's better than nothing. But putting it in the car where you're going to see it on the way home is a lot more useful. So. And it's the same tool. It's a post it. So it's about putting the right tool in the right place. And then the last thing I think is if you have a memory failure, instead of just saying, oh shit, I have bad memory, going back and trying to figure out which of the five steps is where the failure keeps on happening. Am I keep on not paying attention to the instructions? Am I struggling with the cook? So doing some, a little bit of detective work, trying to figure out where the biggest challenge is instead of just saying I have bad memory. Because that may be a true fact. It still doesn't help you in your everyday life.
- [21:07]
A
The problem that you talked about where our brain doesn't Store the memory in the right spot and so we don't retain it. How do you make sure that the brain actually can do that?
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B
So we can't always. I'm going to say this. I'm going to give everyone permission to understand that we are not machines. We don't want to remember everything. I don't want to remember that kid that sat next to me in fifth grade and had a fart after lunch and now I have to. Why do we want to remember that? There are things we want to let go of. If we remembered everything, we would have end up in a mental institute. And it's a fact. There are a few people in science that we know that are in mental institutes because of having a deficit where they cannot forget. They cannot live in society with us without forgetting stuff. So forgetting is not the enemy. Forgetting is a strategy that is useful for our brain sometimes. So instead of being mad at ourself when we forget something, we need to say, okay, this forgetting strategy is not working for me. Now I need to choose a different strategy. And if that is the case, if I'm choosing actively a different strategy, one of the strategies I can choose is when I'm given instructions. I try to use the what, where and when. So very simple. If someone says, can you pick up milk on the way home? My question is, what milk? I don't know, my house. It could be soy milk, it can be well milk. It can be making it personal. What, like what am I doing? I'm getting milk for my coffee from breakfast, I'm getting milk for my kids cereal. The what am I doing the where instead of just get milk on the way home, I kind of like literally think about the way home and I'm like, oh, I'm going to stop at the grocery with the green awning. Like, so I clear the where, I make it more specific. Then it's easier to sit in the right spot in our brain instead of just on the way home. That's such a, like, what if I take that route? What if I take this route? What if I. If you make it kind of like on the way home, I'm going to stop at the green awning, I'm going to get milk. Then the last thing is the when we say in this case, it's in the instruction, it's on the way home. But sometimes when we need to remember things, we don't know exactly when we're going to need this. Okay, so I'm talking with you and I want, you know, if I see you Next time I want to, like, say hi, give you a hug, so I can kind of think, when is the chance? Where. Where are the likelihood I'm going to meet you? And I'm going to try to make that connection in my brain. So then there's more likelihood for me to look for you and. And do that next time I see you.
- [23:37]
A
So that actually, if I'm using the term correctly, because I'd never heard prospective memory, but is that perspective memory, where you're actually putting it into the future and connecting. That is so fascinating. And so when you're thinking, okay, I gotta get milk, and okay, I know it's gonna be cow's milk, do you actually picture yourself at the. Wherever all the milk is, looking at the cow's milk.
- [24:02]
B
So the level of picturing is very individual for me. I like to picture me going into the store. Okay, that helps my brain because if I go to too much detail, what if I end up. They move the milk? The thing, like, there's something like. I think that the level that you need to go to is very individual. And it also depends on what you need to. What you're trying to remember to do. Let's say you need to try to remember to drop off this, like, check in the mailbox for your landlord. Okay. Maybe imagining this, like, stopping at that specific mailbox because it's so unique and it's not, could really help the when, where, and what. Okay, I don't want to be homeless. I need to drop this check. I like, that's the what and what am I doing and why am I doing it? And then the where. I know where that mailbox is. I can imagine it. I can see it in my head. And then when I'm going to do that in the morning as I go before I make it to my car. So, like, I put the when. So I kind of put it in that sequence. It helps us store it in different spots. Because now, believe it or not, if I need to pull that memory, I have it more strongly connected. It's not this, like, one sentence. It has links to other parts in our brain.
- [25:09]
A
That is fascinating, Daniela. And what just came up for me is that when it comes to this kind of memory, like, remembering to do things, things that I want to do, I think the biggest problem for me, and probably many and most ADHD brains, is our brains are moving so fast from one thing to another that we never anchor to any. It's just kind of an afterthought. It is like when my husband's like.
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B
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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A
And I'm, you know, I'm like, working. I'm not listening to him. And then he comes back and says, but I told you. I'm like, no, you didn't. I. I have nothing to connect it to because I wasn't even paying attention.
- [25:49]
B
Yes. So that's why Attention. Attending to the message is the number one tool to. I mean, this might be, like, unrelated, but when we look at success in college, you know, people are like, what helps college kids succeed? In general, we know there are three criteria, and one is attending class, going to classes. If they're online, if they're present, going to class, getting the information. You don't go to class, you don't study, you're not going to get your degree. The other thing is what we call charging your battery, Sleeping, eating. Then the third, which might surprise you, might not, is the ability to ask for help. That is the third predictor of success at college. It's not how much money, if you're working out of jobs, how good you are when you came in, even not your SAT scores. It's the ability to ask for help, the ability to go to classes. The third one is charging your battery. We know in order to learn and to have memory, you need to be able to get the information. We know you need to be with your battery charged. What happens a lot with ADHD is we're not paying attention to the message and we're not really charged in our battery consistently. This is the part where a lot of people look at me and they're like, so basically you said, we're doomed. You know, like, I. I have people go like, okay, I'm giving up. And I'm like, no, no, I just gave you easy tools. Because if you are coming to class, if you are joining the conversation, if you are taking notes, if you are able to tell your spouse, I know you said important stuff, but can you put it in a text message? Can you put it on a post it. Can you help me retain this information? If you're able to ask for that help in a way that helps, that's clear, then you have a higher chance of success. And those are three easy tips. Pay attention to the instruction. But if you think there's a chance you're not, ask for someone else to. Did I get it right? Hey, listen, I love that podcast. Can you tell me the three highlights? Can you get me the essence that I might have missed something? Can you tell me what you know now? If you go to a zoom, you can have AI tell you if your name was brought up and any tasks you were given.
- [27:58]
A
Once you record it, even while it's.
- [27:59]
B
Live, you can ask the AI on the side to tell you if your name came up and any tasks were given to you. Okay. So there are technologies that are out there now that we can also use to help us. But I think the number one message is that it's not lost. That even if you have memory struggles, even if you have learning challenges, there are things we can do to have a better life. Doesn't mean you're going to now be a miracle. Like, I'm going to never forget. That's the worst. Perfection is our enemy.
- [28:34]
A
Yeah. No, I think that is brilliant. And it really is so much about the awareness for these kinds of memory challenges. So this kind of memory challenge, I have so much less shame around it in terms of, oh, whatever, I forgot, I'll, you know, as long as it's not something really serious. And if it's really serious, I probably have so much anxiety that I will make sure it gets done. But I just love how you made it so real and you broke it down into, you know, the three things that are most important. And then I love the analogy of, well, if you want to be successful in school, this is what you need. So if you want to be successful in these other things, you can apply that as well. Like, it all makes sense. The problem that I have, or I would say the kind of memory problem that I have that causes me the most, like, ah, is not remembering words or phrases or things that I already know where. Or even, like, sometimes I'll be talking and I'll literally be talking about this thing, and all of a sudden it'll just go, what kind of memory is that? And is there anything that we can do for that?
- [29:51]
B
You're talking about retrieval challenges when you're talking about the word, the tip of the tongue effect, or when we're talking about the feeling that we knew something and then we forgot it. And that's about the challenge of retrieving information. Truthfully, we know that as we age, unfortunately, we will have more incidence of retrieving challenges. Part of it is because retrieving is about sorting information quickly in our brain and taking the most important stuff quickly out. Our ADHD brain, what it does is it's thinking in seven speeds. I try to give the example of if you are riding a bike that had seven wheels and each of them going in a different speed, that's our brain. What happens sometimes when we Talk about retrieval challenges is that one wheel is just going too slow. And so we can't get that word we want. We know we know it, but we can't. We don't have enough time to sort in our memory to get that word. When we were younger, that wheel might have been going a bit quicker or didn't squeak as much or didn't struggle as much. So one thing we know is that we can't fight aging like it's, you know, the alternative is not good. Like we don't. We don't want to die young. We want to be smart and old and pretty. We want that. We want that option in our life. So aging is natural. What we need to understand is that when we get retrieval strategies, struggles, we get sometimes more anxious, and then we can't even retrieve the word. So what happens is it's kind of like the anxiety makes us kind of press a brake and suddenly none of the wheels are going. So understanding that that's what's kind of happening in our brain and a giving ourselves permission to use other words, we kind of really want to be perfect and get the right word out all the time. And we need to give ourselves permission to substitute words. Also, we need to understand that retrieval challenges get worse when we are emotional, when we have anxiety, when we're tired, when we're sick. We need to give ourselves grace.
- [32:04]
A
Then.
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B
The last thing I have to add about retrieval is, yes, there are strategies to develop our exercise our brain a bit about being better at retrieving, playing memory games with words. It really is something we recommend people to do only if we're seeing significant declines in the retrieval process that are negatively affecting their life. Otherwise we're too busy, we have too much to do. And I'm really not sure it's very useful if you're just having normal retrieval challenges.
- [32:36]
A
How do you know if you're having normal retrieval challenges?
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B
Do this thing where you, like, have on your desk maybe a bunch of beads. And every time you feel like you had a retrieval, move a bead to another bowl, or mark it on a piece of paper, or track it on a tracker, like, you know, use one of those water drinking tracks. Instead of tracking your water, track the retrieval challenges. If you feel that it's becoming a significant number, that there's a major increase than what like, and then go to a neurologist and they will be able to tell you, is this a normal or abnormal situation. But also rule out the other stuff, the stuff that you can control. Rule out sleeping and eating problems and just hormonal change that us women have. Let's rule out that before running to see we have a significant memory decline, which we could. Unfortunately, there's a bunch of studies out there that are showing that puts ADHD individual in a higher risk to suffer memory decline. On the same side, there's almost the same amounts of studies that show that if we control for early diagnosis, it's not there. Actually, if you were diagnosed before you were 18, and we take that into account in the studies, suddenly your likelihood of having memory problems are lower. I don't know yet. We don't know yet because so many of us that are in our 50s and my clients that are in the 60s and 70s, they were not diagnosed before 18. So we just really don't know if this correlation is causation or correlation for the sake of correlation.
- [34:14]
A
You know, when my book first came out, I was so worried about this, like, not remembering words. Like, I wrote a book, you know, about this subject, and there were certain words. And you know how it's almost like I think of it as a Runway. If I get that one word right, then that connects to the rest of the memory about that concept. And I remember my publicist saying to me, tracy, what I notice about you is if you forget a word, it comes back in five seconds. And of course I'm thinking, well, great, I'm thinking about that word the whole time. I'm trying to get on to the next thing, right? Trying to remember that word. And then that screws up what I'm going to say next. But once she said that, I realized, yeah, that really is true. And I just started to laugh about it and say, okay, my ADHD brain on display. And so that is. That's kind of what has calmed the anxiety down around not getting the word right or not getting the word immediately, which then allows the word to come quicker.
- [35:19]
B
Yes. So I think that your example is very true about how we use humor and also awareness to address our adhd. I think that those two tools, being able to laugh about something, being able to make it a joke, really helps. When I started working at the university as the head of student services for disabilities, I some almost forgot to pick up my kids one of the days because I was so encouraged in the work, I was so involved. So I created an alarm that sounds like these aliens. And I would literally say, listen, I have to get out of this meeting because otherwise the aliens are going to get my kids. And I did that. It made people laugh. It made me laugh. And it made the fear of forgetting my kids less stressful. Using humor is one of the best tools we have, especially if we can use it for our own benefit. Like, you know, like, oh, yeah, this is something that will make me laugh. And I can use. It will make others laugh, too. Great. That's a bonus.
- [36:20]
A
Well, and that also helps them keep you on schedule, because I am the kind of person that if we're engrossed in this, you know, incredible conversation, I'll just kind of like, oh, they can wait five minutes, they can wait ten. Like, it's bad.
- [36:33]
B
Yep. When I went to one of their memory conferences, one of the researchers I met said that he got involved into the research. Research of prospective memory because a relative of his forgot their kid in the car. They drove to work, and they were on the way dropping the kid at school, and they forgot to drop the kid at school, and they got to work, started working, got a phone call from the spouse saying, the kid. The daycare called, where's the kid? And then they found out the kid. Like, luckily nothing happened. Everything ended up okay. But that researcher said. Woke up in the morning and said, how can my relative forget their kid in the car? How can a doctor forget an instrument in a patient? How can a pilot forget a step? Like, he was really curious about how we forget to do things in the future, even though they're really important to us. So there is very bad consequences to forgetting extreme things. And we need to always remember that even though we're like, yeah, forgetting is. There could be bad consequences. And this is the situations where we need to use all the battery of tools we can have to avoid extreme consequences. Now, there's apps. My sister had it when her little one, whenever she'd walk out of the car, she'd walk a certain distance from the car. It would say, did you take your kid? No.
- [37:53]
A
Thank God for those.
- [37:55]
B
So we do have so many tools to support our memory these days, and we need to use them. And I think the number one understanding is finding out where we need the support, figuring out where we could. Where we could fail and do it before we fail, or where we could support ourselves if we failed once to avoid failing again.
- [38:15]
A
So you talk about all these prospective memory kind of hooks. You know, where the problem is? Do most people have just one of them or are there people who have literally all. I think you gave us five.
- [38:29]
B
So I think it's dependent on the task. You know, even as a memory researcher, you know, I almost forgot my camera. Kids. Right. We all have Chances to fail in all five opportunities. It's understanding what happens more frequently in what situation so we can build a strategy and knowing that there are situations. The more we. If we're tired, if we're sick, if we're overwhelmed emotionally, there's more chances for memory failure. So we need to support our five stages and not just say, oh, I'm going to remember tomorrow. I'll put an extra post to it because I'm tired. It's easier to kind of to do that, but sometimes it's good to take a breath in and say, okay. Daniela said there's five steps and I need to remember to do this tomorrow. It's important. It's my mom's birthday. I really want to remember to call her. Okay, what can I do? Okay, I. What am I doing? I'm calling my mom. Where and when am I doing it? Okay, I can imagine that now. I need to like, what, What. What cues can I do? I can put an alarm. I can put a post it put a picture of my mom, like, whatever I need to do to kind of like. And because I know I'm tired, I'm sick, I really need to, like, put effort in this. And sometimes it becomes a habit. Okay. So I used to leave the house and I used to sing the Head, Knees, shoulders, wallet, keys, glasses song. I would go, like, do I have my keys, my wallet, my like. And I didn't even realize how much I do it till my toddler started doing it too. Okay. So he did not really understand that it's head, you know, knees, shoulders. He thought it's keys, wallet, glasses. So sometimes we use the tools and they become so automatic, we don't even think about it. So it really. You need to, like, kind of. Again, there's effort that has to be put in here. And it's a little tragic sometimes that we have to put so much effort and other people can just do it. But on the other hand, we're creative and we're amazing. And when we come up, we come up with silly songs and we come up with alarms and we color codes our books because it helps us. Except your pink book did not fit with any of my colors.
- [40:40]
A
Oh, is that it up at the top?
- [40:41]
B
Yeah.
- [40:43]
A
Thank you.
- [40:44]
B
We use strategies to work with our brain and we get creative. And I think that that is another tool that we have that maybe non adhders don't have.
- [41:00]
A
Before we dive back in, a quick reminder. Your brain is not disordered. The problem is no one ever gave you its manual. But I Can and I will. Your ADHD brain is a. Ok. Academy is my step by step patented program to help you figure it all out. Click the link in the first line of this episode's description to learn more or book a discovery call. Now, let's get back to the show. You know, as you're talking, though, I'm thinking, I mean, like, I have almost burnt the house down so many times and I'm sure it's because I would never think of boiling water and sitting there and just relaxing and watching the water boiling. It takes a few minutes. I would never think of that. No, I'm boiling water while I'm running to go do this and, you know, changing that.
- [41:55]
B
I bought a kettle. I bought an electric kettle so I won't burn the house down when I'm boiling water. And then.
- [42:01]
A
And you know what? I should pull mine out, Daniella. Because I was like, it's glass and it's big. And I'm like, I don't like stuff on the counter because it hurts my brain. But you're right, that's a lot cheaper than burning your house down, right? A little visual pollution.
- [42:15]
B
We sometimes have that. Strategies, competing world. That's a great example that you brought up where here's a strategy, no pollution, less clutter. Helps my ADHD brain. It's really important. But here's another strategy. Having a kettle helps me from avoiding burning the house. Sometimes our strategies compete and we have to make a conscious decision. This is what's hard for us, adhd, because we go with impulse decision. And I think that the awareness, the understanding, saying, okay, wait, that's great. I have two strategies. And then competing, which one is more important? Which one can I live with? Which one? Like, maybe if I'm trying to sell my house or maybe if I'm filming in my house all the time, I do have to get rid of that kettle because it really is an issue. But maybe if I am living my life for myself in that space and there's no one viewing because I'm not a, you know, a podcaster of social, of cooking or whatever, then maybe I put that kettle out there. So. And it's worth the clutter, but I don't put out the sugar and I don't put out the thing and I don't put. I just limit it. That is hard for us sometimes making the decision of which strategy should win. So I literally put value into it. I put. Or like, I tell, like sometimes if it's someone that's money driven, I said, okay, what Is it worth this strategy versus that strategy? Like you said, burning down the house is a lot more expensive than putting out a kettle. Sometimes if it's someone that's not money driven, we think about a different strategy. Sometimes people are time driven. It's figuring out what drives you. So will really help you make decisions between competing strategies. Yeah.
- [43:49]
A
Nope, you're absolutely right. And then if you take the time to make that decision, like you finally made a decision, commit to it, you know, do it. You're right. I'm gonna get the kettle out. One last question for you. Well, one last, like, big question. Memory around memorizing, which is probably the worst thing that I do. In fact, I cannot. So it's so interesting. From the time puberty, like 13 and before I was the lead in all of the plays, I could memorize anything. Literally at 13. ADHD, estrogen, dopamine, all of it. I couldn't memorize anything. So I literally have songs that I know from before I was 13 and after 13, I can't even remember one line of a chorus. If someone says here, I've had, you know, when I've been filming, I've had, you know, producers tell me, okay, I want you to repeat this back to me. Because they thought using a teleprompter would look worse. I could not repeat one line back to them. And the more anxious I got, the worse it got. What is going on there?
- [44:59]
B
So in general, we know that repetition is the number one strategy for remembering. And you'd be surprised that one of the big differences, in addition to your hormones, in addition to your adhd, was that you had limited more data coming at you before 13. And it was easier to recall those things because they were repeated so much time. Those few songs you heard, they were a lot more like you weren't having other things going on in your brain at the same time as much as you have as you are older. So that is one thing to take into account. I tell people like, you know, I read Good Moon, Good night Moon to my kid. I don't know how many times. Because that repetition, their brain loves it. At age 13, 14, 12, depending on, like your hormone, you stop liking repetition. You want unique, you want interest. Your brain suddenly says, I don't care for that. To hear that song again and again and again, it sounds a little familiar. I don't want it. So what happens then is that that mechanism that would help you learn, suddenly you hate it. Suddenly that repetition that is so good for you is your enemy.
- [46:13]
A
And I think that's totally true. And especially if we're talking about how originality is so important to us, you know, learning new things. Okay, so that's part of it. But today, I mean, I can't memorize anything. Literally nothing.
- [46:26]
B
So we're back to our aging brains and our brain capacity and our hormones and our ADHD medication. We're back to those things that really, we can't. It's not a machine that is designed to work this, like, totally age 50 is. Should have been expired a long time ago. Our body was not designed to live as long as we are living. Truthfully, our executive functions peak at 21, and then they start declining. There are some researchers that say that the peak is between 21 and 27. I'll give you that. There are a few researchers that show that with the right diet, the right exercise, the right thing, you can even push it to 30 and then start the decline. But it is part of what's going on in our brain. Saying that. I will also add that there is an element of our hormonal balance in our adhd. Dopamine, and all the chemicals in our brain is serotonin. In order to store information, we need to have the brain capacity, availability, the neurons to be working, and what is happening with our adhd. If we're riding that bike with seven wheels going in different directions at the same time, we're really leaving limited resources for our memory to function. If you are not even aware, but you're paying attention to the message your stomach is sending about being hungry and to maybe the tag on your shirt and maybe to the hairspray that they put when they were preparing to film, and maybe to the fact that the glasses are moving in a specific way. You're paying attention to all of that. And if there's other people, you're paying attention to their emotions, because us ADHDers are very good at paying attention to other people's emotions. So you're getting that, and then you're also getting the stress of, like, the. You need to record a message, and. And all of that is coming up. Suddenly, there's only very limited neurons available to be devoted to memory. So do you know what you can do? No.
- [48:31]
A
Well, I can get rid of some of that other stuff, but I'm telling you, like, I can focus on trying to memorize a paragraph until I'm blue in the face. And the only time I remember, one time, that medication worked for me, and I'm so grateful for it because now I know how other people feel who Use medication and it really works for them. I was trying to memorize this speech, could not memorize it to save my life, and I was prescribed Ritalin. I tried it one time. I remember driving home and I had taken the Ritalin and I recited the speech five times perfect. And then it never worked again. And so there was something going on in my brain that allowed that. Right.
- [49:14]
B
One thing we can do is talk about medications, which I am not a medical doctor and I think that there are better speakers to address that. But I am a strong believer in medicating both our ADHD and our hormonal. I'm a big friend of hormonal patches and shots and, and oral medication and anything. If you told me, like the estrogen cream, like, whatever would work, give it to me, give it to me and give it to my clients and give it to, like, it's, it's, it's kind of like, why not wear glasses if you can't see? That's kind of how I see it. So I would say put on your glasses, get those prescriptions that you can find that work. Find one of those amazing women doctors that are out there that I'm sure some of them are guests in your own, your podcasts and have an appointment and say, this is what's going on. My memory is getting worse. I think it's related to my adhd. Can we treat my ADHD before I run and do neurological exams to see if my memory is really, really having a decline that's not related to my adhd. One is, we can do medication. Two, we can go explore in case there is a real neurological condition going on here. Unfortunately, statistically there is a chance. Okay, one out of ten women will have a memory related decline. If it's Alzheimer, if it's dementia, if it's just mild cognitive disorder. Those numbers are staggering if you ask me. 1 out of 10. So yes, it could be that you're not sleeping well. And I know it's hard to hear that because we think we're like, but maybe you're at that point in life where you need more sleep than you needed in the past and you need help with that sleep. If it's medicated sleep, if it's APP induced meditation sleep, if it's buying the cutest, softest eye mask, if it's sleeping in a different room than your spouse. I know that sometimes really hard to hear, but whatever would work to increase that sleep might help the memory. Another strategy that we have sometimes is admitting that we can't remember Texts and lines like, I'm very dyslexic. I cannot remember names. I, you know, I always called Berkeley broccoli, whatever. I. I really like. And these are people that I've been doing academic research and living in the world of ADHD since I started my. My undergrad in special education. And I still struggle with these names. One of my strategies is saying out loud, I'm gonna get your name wrong. I'm gonna get. Get broccoli's name wrong. But my message is still valid. I'm going to try to ask for help. I ask for people to come on board and they introduce me instead of me introducing them or things like that. I find strategies to reduce the names I need to remember. So the ones I can to reduce the mistakes and admit that that is my weakness. I'm amazing in other things. I really am. And it's okay to say I'm not the best at this. When I took my kid to the pediatrics a long, long time ago because she was like, a little bit small. And I told the doctor, I'm a little bit concerned. She's really small. And he looked at me and he's like, it's because you're a basketball player because you're so tall. I see why you're concerned about your kid. And I looked at him and I'm like, you're right, we're small. And why am I surprised? My kid is small. So sometimes we need to kind of use that metaphor for, yes, we're human. We can't do anything, everything. So, yes, that's my weakness. Memory of names. But I have so many other strengths, so many amazing other strengths.
- [52:47]
A
So to follow up with that, are there any hidden strengths in the way our memory works relative or vis a vis, you know, other people who have no memory problems?
- [52:58]
B
So I think that there's something positive about forgetting. There is something really healthy about letting go and being able to forget. Okay. We sometimes benefit from the. That ability, from the ability of, like, you know, being like Elsa and letting go. So. So that sometimes serves us. We also come to situations with a lot of curiosity. Even though we might have done something before, we were like, oh, yeah, let's learn to bake cake. You baked a million cakes. What are you so excited about? Sometimes that forgetting helps us be curious and excited about something in the future because we don't have as much the recall of the failure before or the it could serve us. And then it also teaches us creativity in a way that when we have to overcome challenges, those Strategies like, I have execs in big companies that come to me and like, teach us how to manage our time like you do. Teach us how to remember. You know, these things. Teach us how you do these strategies. Because they are not in any situation where their memory is failing, but they still want to be more creative about remembering. They still want to be better at performing in the future. So that gave me a tool personally. And then the last thing I have to say about remembering and forgetting and stuff, it is so not black and white. We don't always remember and always forget. And we need to use that lens when we're thinking about. I heard so many HDRs tell me I'm so terrible at remembering, but they can tell me the phone number of their neighbor's aunts from when they were kids. They can tell me all these interesting facts. If I play trivia, I always want the adhder in my team. That extra knowledge that they collected, the unique memory of information that might not be relevant can be crazy useful in life.
- [55:05]
A
I always joke about I can't be mad at anyone because I can never remember what I was upset about after like a day or two.
- [55:12]
B
And that's so healthy. Think about it. You don't hold a grudge because of that.
- [55:16]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. I seriously cannot. I don't remember what I was upset about. Okay, so let's wrap up here. This was an. An absolutely fascinating conversation and I'm so grateful that you agreed to have it with me. So let's do a lightning round. Favorite ADHD hack coaching.
- [55:37]
B
I love doing it for others and I love being coached. I think that's my favorite ADHD hack currently.
- [55:44]
A
Why?
- [55:45]
B
Because I feel less alone when I have someone walking with me that understands me. And when I get to coach others, I feel that I get to share the knowledge and I feel. So I'm very driven by helping others.
- [55:58]
A
Love it. The last thing you lost, I had.
- [56:03]
B
A set of these coffee mugs that are like, my, my.
- [56:05]
A
Is that a squirrel?
- [56:06]
B
That's a squirrel. I lost one of those. I took it with me outside. I must have left it outside and then I think someone grabbed it. That was my last thing. So now I'm done to one. One of them. Yeah.
- [56:16]
A
Yeah. Now you gotta really hold on to that.
- [56:18]
B
Yeah.
- [56:19]
A
One system that you'll never give up.
- [56:21]
B
That relying on people that love you. Accountability with others. I think that the, like my spouse, my siblings, my. My mom, like, even my kids. I'm relying on people that love me, really care about me to be accountable when it's okay. I'm not making my husband my secretary obviously, but having that true accountability without cost, without, with like, just like, you know that I'll never give that up.
- [56:51]
A
I love it. Daniela, are you working on something that you want to tell us about or where can people find you? All of it.
- [56:58]
B
I have a course about prospective memory where anyone can buy it and take it and learn about their prospective memory. And at the end of the course, they get one session with me to talk about the things they learned, to ask questions about things they might have not understand, to try to walk through the five steps of a specific problem that they might have experienced. So I have a prospective memory course. It's a self learned course, but at the end of it you get time with me. So that's one thing that's out there. And then I also have a free book club. It's called Focus on ADHD Books and we meet once a month and I created it as an accountability group because I had bought all these books at conferences and then I didn't read them. So then we meet once a month and we read the books. I want to read about adhd. It's called Focus on ADHD Books and it's open for anyone that wants to join.
- [57:48]
A
And so where do they go to find all this?
- [57:50]
B
So you can find me@adhdtime.com and you can find the course there and I can also send you a link that you can put. So it's prospective memory course dhd.com and then the focus on ADHD books is under a website that's called Book Clubs. But if you go onto my website, there's also a page about that too.
- [58:10]
A
Okay. And the website is adhdtime.com.
- [58:13]
B
Yep.
- [58:14]
A
Okay. This will all be in our show notes. Daniella, thank you so much for spending time with us here today. It was really insightful.
- [58:22]
B
Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun.
- [58:24]
A
So that's what I have for you for this week. If you like this episode with. Hold on one second. If you like this episode with Dr. Caridi, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal 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. Hi, I'm your host, Tracy Outsuka. Join us at adhd for smart women.com where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women and my patented you'd ADHD Brain is a okay system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. ADHD is not the problem. The way we've been told to manage it is. If you're tired of feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or like you're not living up to your potential, I want to help my you. ADHD Brain is a okay is a step by step patented program that actually works for ADHD brains like ours. No more forcing yourself into ordinary brain systems that just don't fit. If you're ready to thrive, find the link in the first line of this episode's description. Your brain is brilliant. Let me prove it to you.