Ep 048: Women & ADHD Round Table - Part IV - Our Bodies
David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how much shame we carry around our bodies and how that impacts so much of our wellness, the way women's pain and experiences are minimized and questioned, the need to stop protecting men from discomfort, and what advice they would give their younger neurodivergent selves. (Part IV of a series)
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Full Show Notes:
Sarah names we do not talk about bodies—as women, we are sexualized, but we don’t talk about our bodies, we carry so much shame around our bodies. How much about her body she didn’t know until pregnancy. This is a systemic issue, that we are not informing about things we need to know. For example, one of her friends was embarrassed to share a story about poop. But we all poop! Everybody poops, that’s a good sign when we poop. But there’s so much shame around everything related to bodies, it’s not surprising that then we don’t talk about ‘hey my period seems off,’ and ‘this one day I feel so low’ because no one’s talking about bodies. Or it falls under this ‘mystery’ of PMS or menopause or postpartum—there’s a ton of needless suffering, including the way endometriosis is treated, and the way our pain is minimized. When Isabelle was birthing both of her children, she was not on painkillers, and these doctors—who were women—did not believe she was having contractions, and she was saying ‘I’m about to push” — it’s an unmistakable feeling. To demystify it, it’s the biggest poop of your life and you can’t stop it from happening. It’s ostensibly a very different poop and location (because it’s a baby), but it's that sensation nonetheless. David makes a great joke that it is a “holy shit.” Isabelle was conscious and there and happened to be in pain, and nobody believed her pain or experience. The resident replied, “I just checked you, no you don’t have to push, there's no way." The moment when Isabelle started getting angry and not overriding whatever anyone told her with what she knew in her bones—the “I will never betray my own knowing” kind of feeling is the moment that she felt her womanhood. The resident checks for dilation again when Isabelle insists, and goes ashen and states “I see a head" and suddenly everyone is mobilized for a very imminent delivery. This is just one example of how women's experiences are minimized, and doubted, and the internalized misogyny and minimization we carry within ourselves. It relates to minimizing and dismissing ADHD as well; Isabelle notices a pattern where the men who come into her office state they have ADHD or suspect they do; the women typically go around and doubt themselves so much—which comes from a lifetime of being doubted. David acknowledges that this is so big, there’s no way to have this whole conversation in one go—so it’s a lot of little conversations that are so important to have. David states that we cannot take care of men in having these conversations: if a man can’t handle having a conversation about a period, that’s a threshold measure—if you can’t pass a driving test, you don’t get a license. If someone cannot understand hearing about a menstrual cycle, which are things that happen with frequency to people we care about, we (as dudes) project that we are fragile, and that we put that out into the world. That’s all of our learning in a pretty toxic system. He describes how with his colleagues and friends, isabelle, Sarah, and Caily, they often talk about trauma all the time, we share the most intense stories, but we keep this real lived experience of something like a period in a gendered silo? It creates a lot of opportunity to marginalize people. David has bought tampons before and is now the dumb dude talking and recognizes this is so complicated—Isabelle points out that the tampons cost x amount of money, and that the costs of being a woman in the world, the so-called ‘pink tax’ is real. And what’s marketed to women and upcharged? And David hates that as a man he gets blue and only blue as his color choices. In some grocery stores, Caily shares that tampons are listed under “luxury items.” The amount of years it took for people to realize that scents and chlorine found in tampons could be harmful to our bodies—the layers of the anger you could sit with this, is real. David gives the time machine question, to their 9-12 year old self, to do it in a short amount of time, with lasers and chaotic lightning. Sarah had heinous periods, and was the latest to get it in among her peers, and she wants to say to herself “you’re going to get a period.” And also “be prepared, you’re going to have a very heavy period and you’re going to need lots of supplies, and it’s okay to carry a pad to the bathroom and for people to know, because bodies are normal.” Isabelle: “people exist because of periods! We all exist because of periods!” Sarah would also go back to pre-having a child moment, and “FYI, your estrogen levels are going to go up and down and you have ADHD, and this will be exacerbated…” Caily would go back and say to herself “as long as it gets done, and nobody gets hurt, and you don’t get hurt—you got there! And also, it’s okay to procrastinate.” How many Sundays she couldn’t get a start on homework and wasting time procrastinating. She would normalize procrastination, and being in touch with her anger in a healthy way that’s self-protective, and “it’s not your fault you have a hard time paying attention sometimes, you’re not lazy.” Sarah realizes that she wants to redo her answer because she was hyperfocusing on periods, but then Caily thought she was mishearing the question. Isabelle would go to her pre-pregnancy days or preadolescence, she’d say some combo platter: “it’s not your fault, I got your back, you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, there is help, and the world’s absurd.” She holds a deep appreciation for her younger self, and is so grateful to little Sarah, and little Caily, and little David—it’s not certain if she would’ve understood what ADHD was before she reached the age she did, it feels like the most important thing is you’re not alone. And that you will find your tribe. We are here for you, we get it, go Team Shiny!
Pink tax - gender based price discrepancies, so that products marketed toward women are typically more expensive than similar products marketed to men (and that basic needs for women, like menstrual products, are so costly and considered "luxury" items) For more on this, check out this article by the World Economic Forum and the UN call for countries to end the pink tax.
Menstrual Care products with harmful chemicals and toxins...what? See below:
Tampons and other products and vaginal routes of exposure to harmful chemicals (NIH Paper)
Cleveland Clinic: Why scented products aren't great for your vagina and health
Sanitary pads and diapers have higher levels of toxic chemicals (2019 Reproductive Toxicology study)
Menstrual cycle hormonal changes (in a nutshell): "Estrogen levels rise and fall twice during the menstrual cycle. Estrogen levels rise during the mid-follicular phase and then drop precipitously after ovulation. This is followed by a secondary rise in estrogen levels during the mid-luteal phase with a decrease at the end of the menstrual cycle" (from a comprehensive endocrinology book found in the National Library of Medicine)
Menstrual cycles and ADHD (source CHADD.org)
PMDD (Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder)
Ties between Post partum depression and hormone changes
Menopause and ADHD (from AARP, quoting a number of studies)
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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez
Technical Support by: Bobby Richards
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