Behind the scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)

Summary

Summary of "Behind the Scenes of 'Climbing the Walls' (from 'Hyperfocus')"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Climbing the Walls
• Host/Author: Understood.org
• Episode: Behind the Scenes of “Climbing the Walls” (from “Hyperfocus”)
• Release Date: May 28, 2025

Introduction to the Episode

In the episode “Behind the Scenes of ‘Climbing the Walls’” from the Hyperfocus podcast hosted by Ray Jacobson, listeners are taken on an intimate journey with Danielle Elliott, the creator of the investigative limited-series podcast Climbing the Walls. This series delves into the delayed diagnosis of ADHD in women and examines the surge in diagnoses following the pandemic. The episode provides a comprehensive look into Danielle’s personal experiences, the challenges faced during her reporting process, and the broader societal implications of ADHD awareness and diagnosis.

The Surge in ADHD Diagnoses Among Women

Ray Jacobson opens the conversation by highlighting a significant trend: “During the pandemic, ADHD diagnosis rates in women nearly doubled” (00:51). This uptick puzzled experts and journalists alike, including Danielle, prompting a deeper investigation into the underlying causes. Danielle explains her initial skepticism and the complexity of understanding whether this increase was due to genuine heightened awareness or other cultural shifts.

Danielle Elliott’s Personal Journey

Danielle shares her personal connection to ADHD, revealing that her own diagnosis played a pivotal role in shaping the Climbing the Walls podcast. She recounts, “When I got diagnosed, I was like, oh, that makes sense” (02:53), illustrating how the diagnosis provided clarity for her long-standing struggles. However, Danielle also candidly discusses the emotional turmoil that followed her diagnosis, including feelings of frustration and rejection, as she grappled with the stigma and negative perceptions surrounding ADHD.

Challenges in Reporting and Understanding ADHD in Women

As Danielle delves into the history of ADHD in women, she notes the recurring nature of ADHD discussions in the news but emphasizes that the recent surge felt unprecedented. “When I first started hearing ADHD was on the rise, it was like, truly every woman in my age range was saying it” (04:08). This observation led her to explore whether cultural changes or broader environmental factors were contributing to the increased diagnoses.

Societal and Environmental Factors Influencing ADHD Diagnosis

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the environmental triggers and societal pressures that may mimic or exacerbate ADHD symptoms. Danielle introduces the concept of “environmentally induced ADHD,” explaining that modern lifestyles—characterized by constant stimulation, overscheduling, and lack of restful environments—can lead to behaviors resembling ADHD (06:10). This insight raises critical questions about the balance between true neurodivergence and responses to our fast-paced world.

Evolutionary Perspectives on ADHD

One of the most intriguing segments of the episode features a conversation with an evolutionary psychologist who posits that ADHD traits may have offered communal benefits in ancestral environments. “Groups need risk-takers... to do things differently, regardless of the consequences” (09:10). This perspective suggests that while ADHD may have hindered individual success in certain contexts, it played a crucial role in the advancement and adaptability of early human societies.

Balancing Overdiagnosis and Underdiagnosis

The episode tackles the contentious issue of overdiagnosis, with Danielle acknowledging the concerns that ADHD diagnoses are sometimes handed out too liberally. However, she counters this by emphasizing the crucial need for accurate diagnosis and the dangers of both overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis. “If everyone’s diagnosed, it doesn't mean everyone has ADHD; it means our environments are not suited to our brains” (07:52).

Community and Support: The ADHD Camp Experience

A poignant moment in the episode describes Danielle’s visit to a camp for women with ADHD. Initially feeling like an outsider, Danielle becomes immersed in a supportive community where women can freely express themselves without the need for masking their neurodivergence. She observes, “I kept hearing from women, I've never felt so safe and so free to be myself as I do here” (20:10). This experience underscores the importance of community and understanding in managing ADHD.

Reflections and Lessons Learned

Throughout the episode, Danielle reflects on her growth and the insights gained from her reporting journey. She discusses how working on the podcast has deepened her understanding of her own ADHD, particularly regarding decision-making and intentionality. “I've realized that ADHD continues to have more of a role in my life than I realize” (23:34). Danielle emphasizes the importance of making deliberate choices and recognizing the impact of ADHD on her personal and professional life.

Future Implications and Takeaways

In concluding the conversation, Danielle outlines the primary goals of Climbing the Walls. She hopes to dispel myths surrounding ADHD in women, reduce stigma, and provide a nuanced understanding of the diagnosis surge. “I hope it minimizes doubt about the diagnosis of women in their lives and helps them understand that we don’t fully understand ADHD yet” (26:02). Danielle advocates for a balanced perspective that acknowledges the complexity of ADHD, beyond simplistic explanations.

Notable Quotes

• Ray Jacobson (00:51): “ADHD was constantly in the news. For better or worse.”
• Danielle Elliott (02:53): “When I got diagnosed, I was like, oh, that makes sense.”
• Danielle Elliott (04:08): “Truly every woman in my age range was saying it.”
• Danielle Elliott (07:02): “Our brains are just never in a state of rest anymore, except maybe when you're actually sleeping.”
• Danielle Elliott (09:10): “Groups need risk-takers... to do things differently, regardless of the consequences.”
• Ray Jacobson (13:03): “When Danielle got her diagnosis in her 30s, she was almost immediately diving headlong into reporting about it.”
• Danielle Elliott (23:34): “ADHD continues to have more of a role in my life than I realize.”
• Danielle Elliott (26:02): “I hope it minimizes doubt about the diagnosis of women in their lives and helps them understand that we don’t fully understand ADHD yet.”

Conclusion

The episode “Behind the Scenes of ‘Climbing the Walls’” offers a compelling exploration of ADHD in women, blending personal narrative with in-depth investigative reporting. Danielle Elliott’s journey from diagnosis to podcast creation highlights the multifaceted challenges and societal dynamics surrounding ADHD. Through candid discussions and expert insights, the episode underscores the importance of understanding, community support, and the ongoing quest for accurate diagnoses. Climbing the Walls emerges as a vital resource for anyone seeking to comprehend the complex landscape of ADHD in contemporary society.

Transcript

[Danielle Elliott]

Hey, it's Danielle. When I was reporting and writing Climbing the Walls, there was a lot happening. ADHD was constantly in the news. For better or worse. I was navigating my own diagnosis and I was digging into the long, complicated history of ADHD in women. With so much to unpack, I joined another podcast called Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson. It's a show that dives into the most fascinating parts of adhd, most mental health, and learning. In the episode you're about to hear, I talk about how climbing the walls came to be what surprised me most during the reporting process, and more. If you enjoy it, be sure to follow Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson wherever you get your podcasts or just click the link in the show. Notes.

[Ray Jacobson]

During the pandemic, ADHD diagnosis rates in women nearly doubled. For people like me who follow this kind of thing, it was a huge deal and one where we couldn't really pinpoint why it was happening. There were a bunch of different reasons, but none seemed all encompassing. There was a fair amount of news coverage at the time, but most of it was pretty surface level. Someone needed to go deep, and eventually someone very cool raised their hand for the challenge. Danielle Elliott is a health and science journalist based in New York, and since last year, she's been working with some of my [e-mail] on a new investigative podcast that digs into the reasons behind this rise in ADHD diagnosis and uncovers what going undiagnosed for so long has cost women. It's called Climbing the Walls, and it's a limited series told across six episodes. The first is out now. Now that Danielle has done all this reporting and immersed herself in the ADHD world, I wanted to talk to her about what led her the series and what it was like to be living the story you're trying to tell. This week on Hyperfocus, Danielle Elliott shares her journey from a big question to a new podcast.

[Danielle Elliott]

I had started working on a book proposal about adhd, but it was interesting because the response from a lot of editors was, we've already had so many proposals about ADHD in women, but the process of publishing a book takes a year to two years. So it's going to be behind the news cycle.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I feel like this is like. Tell me if you agree with this. This, to me is like the ADHD thing in life, both in, like, your personal life and also as, like, as a sort of like the disorder itself is like it's never the right moment. Like you're always a little behind or A little ahead in everything, all the.

[Danielle Elliott]

Time in everything, always. Like, it was almost like when I got diagnosed, I was like, oh, that's like. That makes sense.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, I see.

[Danielle Elliott]

I think I feel like three years behind still in a lot of things.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, my gosh. And, like, I mean, in both little and very big ways.

[Danielle Elliott]

In little and very, very big ways. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. It's kind of like, story of your life if you have adhd. But I'm interested in that in part because, like, when you hear about, like, ADHD as a cultural moment, right? Like, and it is for sure happening. And I've, like, kind of watched this come and go over years, like, in different ways. Like, women in ADHD feels like the now thing to me, but, you know, adhd, people talking about it, people freaking out about it, people, you know, denouncing it or wanting to do more for it or whatever it is. Like, it's. It's a pretty easy thing to, like, slot into the discourse. Do you know what I mean?

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And as somebody who has it and I'd be interested to hear how you feel about this. Like, it's not a moment for us. It's our whole lives. You know? Like, it's like, okay, maybe people either, like, didn't care before and then cared a lot, and then they stopped caring or whatever it is, but, like, you're, like, still there being yourself. So what's that been, like? Like, studying it from this sort of, like, cultural moment perspective, but also living with it?

[Danielle Elliott]

Well, it's been interesting because I think that what seemed different to me about the moment with women was, like, when I first started hearing ADHD was on the rise, I was like, yeah, we go through this every five years. Like, I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, right. Like, I have seen the news cycle cover ADHD, but this one just felt different because of the sheer amount. Like, it just seemed like truly every woman in my age range was saying it. And so I wanted to understand if there was something different happening now, like, if there are other elements of our culture that were contributing to this or is it exclusively adhd? And I think reporting on it was a really interesting process because there were moments where I started to doubt the rates of diagnosis, and then there were moments where I thought, oh, we haven't even slightly begun to diagnose the true number of people who have this. And then, you know, others where you're like, oh, if we continue to live the way we live in 2024, 2025, like, 100% of the population will have ADHD 100 years from now. Which is not a scientifically backed statement at all. That is completely just me saying things. But.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, this is something that I'm interested in that, like, comes up a lot. Right. Which is. And you and I have talked about this through, like, learning about the show, which is not everyone has adhd. And a lot of people who get diagnosed with ADHD don't have adhd. Yeah, it's a diagnosis that is, like, kind of given, like, sometimes too cavalierly. Like you said, like, a lot of people who get diagnosed actually are experiencing something else. And a lot of the, like, perfect nightmare conditions, various current way of living make that feel really real. Like, you know, we're over scheduled, we're overstressed. There's a billion screens, like, I go on the subway and there's a screens, like in my car flickering on and off. It's.

[Danielle Elliott]

Your brain is never at a state of rest. Like, our brains are just never in a state of rest anymore, except maybe when you're actually sleeping and a lot of people are not sleeping enough.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And if you have adhd, you sleep even less.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

But that thing, the idea that, like, the conditions of life are not suited to the way that the human brain works, which is definitely true to me, the interesting piece of that is that still doesn't mean that everybody who's experiencing that has adhd.

[Danielle Elliott]

No. Well, they are. Like, one of the experts I speak to in the podcast talks about what he calls environmentally induced adhd. And I think as the environmentally. As the environment people live in becomes less and less conducive with brain function, a lot of people are exhibiting symptoms that look very similar to adhd. Like their. Their brains are functioning in a way that an ADHD brain functions. But for many of them, if the environment can be shifted and changed, their brain will go back to functioning in a typical way, whereas the neurotypical brain is functioning how it functions.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I think that that to me, is the thing that people miss now, where it's like, yeah, once the conditions change, like, everybody gets distracted, everybody gets overwhelmed, everybody loses things. Right. But for us, you could take away all of that and we would still have adhd.

[Danielle Elliott]

Right. But it sort of becomes right. It's not a response, but it's like the question that kept coming up for me and the reporting was sort of like, it's pretty tough to escape the environment that produces the symptoms of adhd.

[Unknown Speaker]

Now it's interesting to me that all that stuff gets kind of attributed or like, lumped in with being adhd, when in reality it's something with a very different name. But it is something that, like, since it bears resemblance to this real disorder, it kind of like becomes like a. Like a melange is not the word, but, you know. Yeah, there is a word for it, but it can feel like discounting for the. Like, if you have the disorder in a way, you know?

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah, I think it really can. And I think it's sort of like a. I've wondered if the relatability of ADHD descriptions now has made some people start to think, well, if everyone has it, I don't really need to be treated for it, you know, so, like, you. It, like, makes me question over diagnosis and under diagnosis, I think.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, this might be my own, like, kind of irritation in it, but, like, I feel like it's less like, should I be treated for it? And more like, well, I should just be better, right? Like, everybody struggles with this. I should just do a better job. Like, I should just try harder. I should just be better.

[Danielle Elliott]

And I'm guilty of that myself.

[Unknown Speaker]

You talk to a lot of people for this show and people coming from different backgrounds and researchers and people who had lived experience and your own experience. Like, what were some of the things that kind of, I don't know, surprised you is the right word. But, like, what were you, like, wow, that's something I wasn't really expecting.

[Danielle Elliott]

I think the most surprising conversation I had was with someone who studies the evolutionary benefits, and he said that where we're getting things wrong, this is his opinion, right? So this is one researcher's opinion. But he said, when we talk about these evolutionary benefits, we tend to look for the ways they're beneficial to individuals. And the thing that people are missing about ADHD is that it's beneficial on a communal level, and that might not be great for the individual. And when he first said it to me, I was like, are you telling me my brain took one for the team? And he's like, yeah, kind of. Because the entire group that, like, he's like, humans evolved in groups. Groups need risk takers. They need people who are willing to do things differently, regardless of the consequences, who are just motivated to do that for whatever reason. And that's the only way cultures advance. So it was just really interesting to me to hear him say, like, the whole group learns when someone does something risky, and they either learn, you shouldn't do that or you should do that. And it's like, whether you're talking about, like, I mean, when we're talking about hunter gatherer times, thousands of tens of thousands of years ago, you're talking about like, somebody ate that berry, and that's how we know we can eat strawberries. Like, somebody did this, but it's probably a person with ADHD who did that. And then in plenty of those cases, they probably ate a poisonous berry that didn't, like, their risk taking, didn't personally benefit them, but it benefited the rest of the group because then the group knew, don't eat that berry, you could die. It's like such a simplistic. It's like my favorite conversation that I had in the whole thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

We're the community canaries.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah. Kind of like, we're just like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, I'll go down this hole to see if there's gas down here. Just because I want to see. I'm just. It looks interesting.

[Danielle Elliott]

Just because I want to see. I'm curious. There's a hole. Let me see what's down it. Like, somebody's brain had to work that way to learn things.

[Unknown Speaker]

I kind of love that.

[Danielle Elliott]

Oh, I love it. It's.

[Unknown Speaker]

It doesn't really benefit you as an individual at all.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah. So he's like, now that it's been like. Like rebranded as a superpower, he's like, it's missing the point. He's like, communities need people.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Danielle Elliott]

With adhd, at least they used to. He's like, I don't. He. He was like, I'm not saying there's benefits now. I don't know that it confers benefits now.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, this is a genuine question I have for you. But, like, you know, you write and you're a creative person and you often hear ADHD being called, like, you know, very conducive to creativity. Right. Like, that's one of the things about it. And I think in a lot of ways that can be true. Like that risk taking, that interest that, like, well, let's see what happens if I do this. But also, I don't think that necessarily ends it up being a super. I just, like.

[Danielle Elliott]

I mean, I can see ways that ADHD has really benefited me personally, but only because I was able to. I was privileged enough to not be like, I didn't have a ton of student debt coming out of college. I didn't have financial reasons why taking risks was potentially going to really. I had a safety net, is ultimately what I'm trying to say. And so I was able to quit my first three jobs within six months of taking them. Not a good move. That's really not a good thing. But I'm kind of like, my ADHD is the only reason I was able to keep pursuing different things until I found a way that works that I really like. Right now, I don't think that my career would exist as it does without adhd. But there was a lot of depression and worrying and fear that I would never have another job. In the midst of the last 20 years, it's easy to look back and be like, now, yeah, my career seems to be working out also. It's working out right now because I have projects I'm working on. Six months from now you might like. I might say, I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever work again.

[Ray Jacobson]

Getting diagnosed with ADHD can bring up a lot of different emotions. And what I gathered when I met Danielle for the first time quite a.

[Unknown Speaker]

While ago was that that was the.

[Ray Jacobson]

Case for her, too. She didn't want to have ADHD at all. Part of my job now is talking about my own diagnosis, which for me was a huge relief. When it came, I cried in the doctor's office, not because I was sad, but because I finally had a name for the thing that had dogged me for so long. But it's not the same for everyone. And when Danielle got her diagnosis in her 30s, she was almost immediately diving headlong into reporting about it. But now, having listened to the podcast, I know Danielle shares a lot of her own story, and I wanted to know how she got from bucking a diagnosis to deeply researching it to becoming this sort of public voice on behalf of women with adhd.

[Unknown Speaker]

When I met you, at first, you were just sort of, like, figuring out your diagnosis. You'd mentioned almost that you weren't sure if you really wanted it. In some ways that it was like you'd gotten it and then you weren't sure kind of what to do with it once it was in your hands? Like, was there a personal motivation for jumping into this that was, you know, not so motivating that it was the only motivation, but something that was, like, important to you? Like, I want to know more.

[Danielle Elliott]

I think right immediately following the diagnosis, I did dig in pretty deep, but I didn't like the stuff that I found. What do you mean? Like, almost like, I found a lot of the negative descriptions and, like, the negative outcomes, and, like, it sort of started to feel like, oh, ADHD does explain a lot of the ways in which I have not lived up to what I would have liked to have done. And it's really, really frustrating to think that I went to therapy for years, that I tried every approach to dating. Like, I'm. Like, when I think of all the things I tried without knowing that there was this fairly simple answer that is treatable, I was just. I was almost so mad that I wanted to reject it and believe that actually, no. Like, I just had to keep trying harder. So there was a rejection period, I would say, of the diagnosis. And I should say that you can probably see the roots of it in conversations with my mom. Like, when I tell her anything about it, she's like, no, there's nothing wrong with you. Like, you're not broken. Like, she's very much like, no, I don't believe. Like, you did well in school. Like, she says a lot of the almost cliche things at this point that are said about girls, but it's more so her coming from this point of, like, I don't want you to think you're broken, because if you think you're broken, you might think you can't overcome things. So I hear in that initial reaction, I can kind of see, like, you know, the environment I grew up in, right? Like, how neurodivergence was talked about or just the stigma that was around it. And not wanting a stigma to be associated with us, it's hard to have.

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, a narration of, like, what it means to be neurodivergent from someone who's seeing it only from the negative, and then to read the stuff that is, like, ostensibly negative, you know, that is a serious thing.

[Danielle Elliott]

Well, it was when I read ADHD 2.0, Ned Hallowell and John Ratey's most recent book, where they talk about. They don't say everything's a superpower, but they talk about pairs of opposites. And kind of like. I think a good example, one that really helped me was that creative people, you can understand that they ruminate a lot. And that rumination is potentially described as creativity applied to the past. And I ruminate kind of horrendously. And I think since reading that, I've been able to recognize when I'm doing it. And they give you some tools in that book for essentially changing the channel in your brain so that you're not ruminating anymore. And some of the tools are so simple. But as I was reading that book, it was like, oh, I can do things about this, and I don't have to spend money every week to see an ADHD coach. Which I think ADHD coaches are incredibly beneficial for a lot of people. But for me, it's like financial insecurity will always be the thing that stresses me out more than thinking I'm living with untreated adhd.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I think that's the way for a lot of people.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah. So anyway, I think it was just like the acceptance kind of came when I saw other framings of ADHD traits.

[Unknown Speaker]

So it was initially, like, hard to just see the kind of, like, downsides that it sounds like you saw yourself in.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah, I mean, my takeaway from my initial stuff was like, oh, my relationships haven't worked out because they don't work out for people with adhd. And, like, things that I've wanted to fix about myself, quote, unquote. Like, you can read every book you want on relationship theory. I'm not going to, like. I kind of had this, like, my read on. It was like. I think the three things I remember the most were like, ADHD is really hard on careers, relationships and parenting. And I was like, I can completely see the ways it negatively impacted my career. As much as I love where I am now, it would have been interesting, I think, to have a brain that likes a straight path. I just don't know what that's like.

[Unknown Speaker]

I know what you mean.

[Danielle Elliott]

And to not. I have never stayed happy in anything, whether it's a relationship. I don't know how to sustain interest in anything beyond. When I really do the math, it's like, for four months, I'm really interested. I can last a year. Anything beyond a year. The second year, I'm miserable. And it's a really sad way to do that math. And I don't think that's true of everyone with adhd. But when I first got that diagnosis, it was like, oh, yeah, no, I can see how it affected my career. It's tough to change anything now. It's like, you're almost 40. You're not going to restart your career. I can see how it affected relationships. I was diagnosed right before my 37th birthday. So I was sort of like, it's pretty late. It would have been nice to know this at 30 is how I felt. Because it's like, if there are ways to approach dating with ADHD that are slightly or just things to be aware of, it would have been nice to know them when you're in the heart of your dating period, I guess you could say. And then with parenting, it was still a thing that I wanted to do. And it was like, oh, great, now you're telling me that's going to be really hard too. I just don't want to hear any of it.

[Unknown Speaker]

But it's hard to hear it too, especially to be like, oh, if I had known this, maybe there is something that I could have done.

[Danielle Elliott]

Could have done. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Which is why that late diagnosis piece for women is so insidious. In the show, you talk to a lot of other women with adhd, like, you talk to Sari and Emily and Terry. Like, all of these people who speak specialize in it, but just women at the camp, for example, who have it. In one of the episodes on the show, Danielle goes to a camp for women with adhd. And that experience of being, like, among your people, like, people who just get it. That thing where you, like, you don't have to apologize all the time or explain why you want to do it tomorrow or why you're, like, moving your leg or whatever it is that, like, you know.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah. Or taking your shoes off in the middle of a room or whatever.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whatever.

[Ray Jacobson]

Whatever.

[Unknown Speaker]

Your neurodivergent thing that you do, that masking thing can just drop, like, was. What did it feel like doing that from, like, a reporter? Since, like, sitting down with people and being like, we are from the same place.

[Danielle Elliott]

I felt sort of invasive, to be honest, at first, because I was like, everyone is here because it's. It's a camp for families and it's really designed. It's like the kids have ADHD and the parents are there to learn about adhd. But it turns out that in the last few years, all of the parents who are coming to the camp for the first time have recently found out that they have ADHD also. And for a lot of them, I think it was this really. I don't think they would describe their typical lives, like, day to day lives as unsafe, but I think that I kept hearing over and over from women, I've never felt so safe and so free to be myself as I do, knowing that I'm in a room full of people who understand what's going on. And it's funny, Sari actually describes the same thing from a conference in the 90s, that it was the first time she was in a room full of adults who all knew that the others had ADHD and. And so they could fully be themselves. They didn't have to try to pretend to be, quote, unquote, normal. And for me, at the camp, there were like, the first two days, my interviews with women were sort of hesitant because I didn't want to be interrupting this experience that they were having. But then as we talked more and more and they Started to realize I also had it. It just became this, like. It was like I was one of them, but also not. But it just. The camp was really amazing. And I think most of the credit for that is just the. It's just a product of being in the same room as other people, like, being surrounded by people who, you know, get it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Part of what I'm wondering is, like, when you say you see all these people with this comfortable shorthand, and you got the chance as a woman with adhd to be in a room full of people who were open about their ADHD and talking. And of course, you were in, like, the reporter's role, but, like, in those conversations with the people you spoke to for the show, did you ever have that moment of, like.

[Danielle Elliott]

I'd say most of the women I spoke to at camp, but especially there's one woman who I speak to who'd only been diagnosed a couple of weeks before she came to camp.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, wow.

[Danielle Elliott]

And she was meant to be at camp with her husband and two children to learn ways. Like, she just. She spoke very eloquently, and she said that they wanted to learn how to have more harmony in their home with two children with adhd. And then a couple of weeks before camp, she was diagnosed, and I related to truly every word that came out of her mouth. It was just like, oh. And like, she was talking about how she felt like she was already a better mother because she could now look at her kids and be like, she's like, I've always looked at my kids and thought, oh, no, you do things the way I do them. Like, I don't know what to do. But she never that. It was only once she was diagnosed that she's like, oh, that's why I see that in my kids. Like, there's, like, an understanding. But I related to almost everything she said. And also, just like, her anger at the expectations that are placed on women in the world. We talked a lot about that because she was only just starting to piece it all together.

[Ray Jacobson]

I've spent a lot of my life working in media and reporting on mental health. And being in that space, I learned that it is a super rare opportunity to get to do. Do what Danielle did, to spend months going deep on a topic as niche as women diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic. So before I let her go, I needed to ask a couple of big questions.

[Unknown Speaker]

Did you learn anything about your own ADHD or, like, about being a person with ADHD that you didn't know before you started the show.

[Danielle Elliott]

That's such a great question, maybe that I haven't tamed some of the ADHD pieces that I would like to. That I like to think I have. I don't know if that's true in the context of reporting this show. That's a good question. Is there anything I learned? I think it's just that over the last year, I've realized that ADHD continues to have more of a role in my life than I realize. Yeah. I think I also learned that this wasn't necessarily a learning from the course of reporting, but it happened in the course of reporting was just like some of the bigger things. I might never actually. And I think this is an ADHD thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think decisiveness is really not one of our hallmarks. Like, it's not a thing that we're good at. And I don't think we're particularly decisive people. And I think I started to realize that I just have to make. You just have to make a decision and go with it. You can't always consider all options. And, like, you can't keep all doors open, so you ultimately have to just pick one. And I think that's just something that in the course of speaking to all the experts and everyone, it's like, yes, you can let life, like, keep unraveling. Not in the sense of going poorly, but I just mean, like, let it go in whatever direction it's gonna go in, or you can direct it. And I think I've gotten better at trying to actually direct it and make intentional decisions, not just assuming things will fall into place. Cause they rarely do for anyone. But I think they especially don't with adhd. And as much as we can make the most of what doesn't fall into place, I do still think that there's certain things that you're like, no, I want this to happen, so I'm gonna have to make it happen.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I feel like that's the thing about understanding adhd. It's why it's worth knowing the stuff that we know about our brains. Because then you can actually apply it like it has a function. My final question is just, like, what do you hope that people take away from this? Like, this is a really cool thing that you've put an enormous amount of work into. If somebody comes to the podcast and they haven't heard climbing the walls, they're just coming in cold. Like, what do you hope people take away?

[Danielle Elliott]

I hope it minimizes their doubt about the diagnosis of women in their lives. And I hope it helps them understand that we don't fully understand ADHD yet and that the next time diagnosis rates rise. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's just because people want to get their hands on medications that there's a very real chance that it's because there's an increased understanding of this disorder. Yeah, I guess that's really because I think, yeah, ultimately I wanted to understand, and I hope that on the most basic level, I hope that after listening to this podcast, they understand why so many women are being diagnosed and that it's not as simple as any of the individual answers that a lot of people often give. It's not as simple as we didn't understand how it affected girls and women. It's not as simple as TikTok told a lot of people. They have ADHD and they believed it. There's a lot of layers to why, and I think I often see it simplified into one or two sentences that don't even slightly capture the full picture.

[Unknown Speaker]

I love that. Danielle, thank you so much. This was awesome.

[Danielle Elliott]

Yeah, this was fun.

[Ray Jacobson]

The first episode of Climbing the Walls is out now. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on our YouTube [e-mail] hyper focus is made by me, Ray Jacobson and Cody Nelson. Our music comes from Blue Dot sessions and Justin D. Wright mixes the show. Samaya Adams is our supervising producer, Brianna Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voicemail by to hyperfocusnderstood.org this show is brought to you by understood.org our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Koshir, and Seth Melnick. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, [e-mail] give SAM.