[0:38] Ian: Hello and welcome back to the smart ADHD podcast. Today we're diving into managing anxiety and ADHD within the creative process. And I'm thrilled to be joined by Cathy Rashidian, a certified executive coach with over 20 years of leadership experience and a personal journey with ADHD.
[0:55] Cathy specializes in ADHD in the workplace, combining traditional and ADHD specific strategies to help clients and organizations unlock potential and foster growth. This was such a fun episode and she shared her own journey, practical strategies and insights on building a board of brains, setting boundaries, and we chatted about using tools like ChatGPT to support creativity.
[1:18] We'll also tackle perfectionism and understand how anxiety impacts creativity and explore ways to break free from stress cycles that hold us back. Let's jump in, right now!
[1:29] Hello, I'm Ian Anderson Gray, and this is the smart ADHD podcast.
[1:43] Now if you're a smart, creative entrepreneur or business owner navigating your life with ADHD, This is the podcast for you. Now, I'm no ADHD expert, but I'm eager to share my story on what I've learned by talking with experts, as well as digging into the personal ADHD stories of successful creatives and entrepreneurs.
[2:06] I was diagnosed at age 46, and it answered so many questions in my life. But of course, that was in many ways, only the start of my journey. So let's learn together. Smart stories, smart strategies, smart ADHD.
[2:33] Hi, Cathy. Welcome to Smart ADHD. How are you doing?
[2:37] Cathy: I'm good. How are you?
[2:39] Ian: I'm good. After I got the tech working, I had a moment there, but I think we're all good. So you're dialing in from the beautiful country of Canada, which we visited over the summer holidays. It was a fabulous place. Loved it.
[2:52] We've been trying to organize this for like over a month, so it's great to speak to you. And we're going to be talking about a topic that is close to my heart.
[3:02] Maybe we'll say that anxiety and ADHD, but particularly focusing on strategies for managing stress in the creative process, which is interesting. So I want to just ask you quickly, like what got you interested in ADHD, anxiety and creativity, that the mix of those things.
[3:20] Cathy: those are just some of the things that I'm interested,
[3:22] Ian: just a few!
[3:23] Cathy: Overall, if we go back to just talk at ADHD in general is my own diagnosis in my early forties. And I'm one of those that was like, Oh wow, I have ADHD. This is cool. What do I do now? And who do I tell? this is so awesome. And my whole life makes sense.
[3:42] And I know not everybody has the same reaction. There's some that are really emotional about it and go through a grieving process. But for me, it was finally it all makes sense. And then I went down the rabbit hole. And, I've always had this fascination with human behavior. My background is 20 years in corporate marketing and tech transformation and just this how do people decide? How do I how do why do people think the way they do? So it took me down the rabbit hole out of even Wow Let's think about our brain and why our brain does what it does. So the rest is here I am six years
[4:19] into it and all about ADHD
[4:21] Ian: Wow. It's that, it is that rabbit hole. And it took me a little bit of time to get really down that rabbit hole, but that's where I am with this podcast. And I am eager to learn. And I'm really excited to talk to you about all of this stuff today. So one thing I've realized is that A lot of people with ADHD don't just have ADHD.
[4:39] There's another, I'm going to use a posh word now, comorbidity, I believe is the word. There's some other thing that is, is there. For me, it's definitely anxiety. And I know a lot of people have ADHD and anxiety. So why are they often both there for particularly for smart creatives and entrepreneurs?
[4:57] Cathy: I could give you scientific, but let me, let's just break it down and give you a straight talk. I think with the comorbidities or I call them the cousins or the co occurring conditions is as the therapists would like to say it's when it's unmanaged, I feel like these cousins play louder.
[5:18] So when your ADHD is not managed, the anxiety comes out loud. As I'm saying this, it makes me think of Inside Out 2 and all the other characters in there and all the other emotions that came in loud. So when it's not managed, when your ADHD is not tamed or seen for what it is, Anxiety comes in, depression comes in.
[5:37] Mine was depression also was my second cousin to my ADHD. So it's the untreated, unmanaged, unaddressed ADHD that these other co conditions come in and they're louder, but also at the same time, I like to respect also, sometimes it's the other way around, somebody is chronic with one of the conditions, and that's just the way it is.
[6:00] But also that's where you bring in the experts and the professionals to say which one is the predominant one, and which one is due to unmanaged ADHD. So at a high level, that's what I'd like to leave you with.
[6:11] Ian: That's something I should have said before, which is, of course, I'm no expert on this. And if you're listening to this, and anything that we talk about, you're thinking about do. Don't just struggle alone, go and seek an expert and get the seen to.
[6:28] Because anxiety, it's always it's been an issue for me, anxiety and depression, I think, for years and years. And I thought when I got diagnosed with ADHD, I thought, ah, okay, But how does anxiety play into that? Maybe I need to sort out the anxiety first and then the ADHD.
[6:41] I've come to realize actually, I think the anxiety, at least for me, comes from the ADHD. And if I focus on the ADHD bit first, that is going to perhaps help the anxiety and the depression. But of course, as you said, we're all different, aren't we? And so it's working that out.
[6:58] Cathy: If I could add to this a little bit about Dr. Hallowell talks about this nicely about the default mode network of our brain. Everybody has a default mode network. It's the creativity side of our brain and we can talk about it when we talk about creativity also. When that's activated, you go from this sense of, wow, look at this new idea.
[7:16] I have this new thing I want to do, the innovation, the creation and all of that to, Oh my God, what if it doesn't work out? This is going to be crap and nobody's going to like it. And why am I even doing this? And if I don't get it right dah, dah, dah, dah, you know, the rest. And so we'll end up in the land of doom and gloom and catastrophization and rumination.
[7:35] rumination And for us with ADHD, we don't have that switch that brings us back to wait, task at hand, just do the first part of the project, the rest will follow. So that also creates that, that anxiety also with Oh my God, look at all these things I got to get done within this. And then you go into freeze mode and nothing happens.
[7:55] So the overwhelm, so it's to be also aware of that when we're able to catch ourselves in that. Wait, this is my ADHD or this is my anxiety running the show. I'm in charge. Where do I begin?
[8:07] Ian: Yeah, and this is why I've started to delve a little bit deeper into the neuroscience of this. Although these are big, scary words, like you've used, default mode network, and then there's the task positive network, I believe. And, but I think, yeah, I've, as soon as I've started to realize that, I thought, Oh yeah, that's exactly what's happening in my brain.
[8:26] And if the kind of analogy that I like to think about, I don't know whether this is a good analogy, but it works in my brain is it's like a signal worker on a railway line. And. They're trying to move from one track to the other, but it's stuck. And so I can't really move from my, the default mode network into the task positive networks.
[8:44] My mind is cycling around all these things. And I wanted to ask you this is the smart ADHD podcast. Does, is this a particular issue do you think for those smart individuals, those who are higher in intelligence, do they tend to cycle more in The thoughts and the default mode network. What are the particular issues for smart individuals with ADHD?
[9:05] Cathy: You're bringing out the controversial side of me now.
[9:08] Ian: Okay go ahead. Yeah,
[9:13] Cathy: community as I don't equate the IQ with ADHD. It's my personal thing. And I'm being completely transparent with you. We're all smart in our own ways. We're all creatives in our own ways. And I don't think this is just because, you have a higher IQ, this is going to happen.
[9:29] I think a lot of different things contribute to it. It's the beliefs that we grew up with, the way, our parents raised us, blessed their heart. They did their best and did whatever they needed to do to raise us. It's the narratives that are out there in society of this is if you're this, you need to be this.
[9:46] I know within our community, we do have twice exceptional folks where, you know, high IQ so I it's not about the smartness part of it per se, it's everything around us. It's how society, your work life the beliefs that you have about yourself, what you value, all of that kind of contributes to this whole umbrella of anxiety, if you will.
[10:09] Ian: that's fascinating stuff. And as I said I'm no expert.
[10:12] Cathy: So I don't equate it to being smart and then you're anxious. No.
[10:16] Ian: Okay. Okay. No that's cool. Okay. Can you share maybe some common situations where anxiety affects creativity specifically and maybe focus with ADHD individuals?
[10:27] Cathy: it's it affects it when it really paralyzes us, right? When we go into this, I can't, I just can't, I can't. I, so we really get ourselves into this place of saber tooth tiger running. And I just need to fight, flee, freeze, all of that good stuff that happens, right? So we block our creativity, like we cut access to it.
[10:49] And it's not we, it's the brain does that. So brain goes, I'm in fight or flight mode. And there's also controversy around the myth of fight or flight. I'm in high intensity. My body is right now trying to survive because emotionally I'm like, wow there's boiling point happening. And so really at that point your brain goes, all we need to do is just survive.
[11:10] So just chill. We're surviving. We're not going to go get creative. We're not going to go do new things. We just need to survive. And what do we do when we're surviving? We're just like, we either crawl in and shut down. Or run away from it or don't do anything at all. So I think that's where it can impair creativity because it literally creates a block in your brain.
[11:29] So you can't access that, that creative side of yourself, the critical thinking part the front of your brain the executive functioning part of your brain. And if you, that becomes your chronic state, then it's this vicious loop that wait, last time I did this happened, and I'm going to go back to that, which is to freeze, to fight.
[11:48] Ian: yeah. And I think this is a common thing. I speak to other people with ADHD who have similar things. It's been a constant issue for me. I think that I get into this state where I'm Constantly overthinking and become a perfectionist. I cycle in these kind of like never ending circles that and it just means that my creativity goes out the window.
[12:12] I also it's exhausting. It's totally exhausting. And then for me, I think it contributed to burnout at least two times in my life as well. So what is going on there? And what are the practical steps that we can break free of this never ending cycle? Because it could, it feels like we're trapped.
[12:31] Cathy: And it is a trap, honestly. It's the perfectionism kicks in, like you said. I don't have all the skills, so let me go study some more on the skills and learn a little bit more before I do the thing. So for me, the way I look at it is a couple of things. Talk it out. As opposed to keeping it in your head, one thing is to truly find your, I call them your board of brains, where you imagine you've got all these other brains that are not attached to the same thing that you're so attached to, and that they can facilitate a conversation with you where you can just talk out what's happening.
[13:04] Most of the time when we talk it out, it starts to click into place and you will self correct yourself. As you talk it out, you're hearing it you're discussing it. Energy is getting up there. People are like, Oh wow, tell me more about that. You remember, you recall why you even wanted to do this thing in the first place.
[13:21] Sometimes we forget the why because we're now so much into the execution and the doom and gloom of how the heck am I going to do this, that it's nice to bring back the, why did I even start this podcast in the first place? So it's to talk it out with somebody. And usually I like to set boundaries with my board of brains.
[13:38] Wait till I ask you for advice, so for a while just listen to me ramble on. So I have some really patient Board of Brain members that, that are there for me at the right time at the right place for different projects. The other thing is, what's the story that you keep telling yourself or keep rehearsing?
[13:54] That rehearsal is quite entertaining for our brain. Unfortunately, it's wow, let me tell you 20 ways from Sunday, why I haven't done this thing. And in detail, my clients will tell me why they haven't done it. Like in depth, right? And then when I go, okay what do you want? Actually, they freeze.
[14:11] They're like, huh? Never thought of that. But I know pretty damn sure why I don't want. So we try to create a different story that they can rehearse. That rumination, because it's so entertaining, and I always like to tell my clients, look, part of this story is serving you. It's keeping you safe. What parts of it can we just try to tweak a little bit, give it a different chapter, give it a different narrative.
[14:34] So I don't do a complete overhaul of their story, but I come in as the director. I'm like, okay, you as the actor, where do you want to go with this? And you have autonomy to ad lib. You can modify the script a little bit. What would you like to do? So those are two things that are coming to mind right now.
[14:50] There's more, but I'll leave it
[14:51] Ian: Oh, wow. You've already got my brain buzzing around with thoughts there. I love that idea and I definitely find speaking these things out like I there's so many negative thoughts sometimes that are spinning around and I'm feeding this narrative to myself and unfortunately like my wife sometimes gets the brunt of this like I will then go and talk to her about all these things and for me it comes out in this like big spurt of negativity and like disaster the world's gonna end kind of narrative. And we've been married long enough for her to know I just need to get that out of my system. And then once I've got that out of the system, we then are able to talk about actually, you know what? It's not that bad.
[15:29] I love that way that you tweak the system slightly and i'd love you to go over that again. So is this kind of negative cycle that we're going through, which is not true in many cases, you use the word entertaining, is that kind of entertaining but in more of a negative way?
[15:43] Are we using that because our brain almost enjoys that,
[15:48] Cathy: Yeah, it's dopamine it gives you the dopamine so it is your brain goes, you know what you didn't give me an alternative This is the way I'm gonna do it I have an eight year old who is conflict seeking like it's nobody's business. This morning she did literally that my socks don't fit full blown tantrum And I knew it's because she's hungry.
[16:08] She's bored. She doesn't want to go to school. So instead what does she do? creates a volcano But also her executive functioning at eight is not developed. So here I am trying to calm myself. I was thinking about our podcast. I'm like, okay, I'm going to be talking to Ian soon. I'm going to be adulting soon.
[16:24] So just be with us for a little bit. But for her, she can't, there's nothing. It's gone. The whole brain is hijacking everything. And the brain is in charge of her emotions in that moment and good or not. So it's almost like Ian, it's for me as for myself, as an adult, it's there's little Cathy and then there's the adult Cathy.
[16:44] Oh, little Cathy hasn't played in a while this week. She's been hyper focused into work. She's been doing. We haven't had enough play time. One of the things I do with my clients is when was the last time you had seven minutes of joy in your day? I'm a big fan of play and seven minutes is just the arbitrary number I came up with.
[17:02] And it's to just chill the hell out and not be so wound tight. We usually are. And it's just got to do this. I've got to do this. Oh my God, I'm having an unproductive day. Doom and gloom. No, actually you did two days of hyper focus and you're in hyper focus hangover right now.
[17:17] Be with that. And the hyperfocus hangover is your dopamine is rebalancing. It's coming back down because you went up so high. So what can I do right now? Just tiny little bit to give the right kind of dopamine to go after the right kind versus this conflict seeking with myself and I,
[17:32] Ian: Yeah, that's so interesting. So the brain is pretty clever. It can come up with all these scenarios. If you're not giving it a story, it's going to come up with its own and it's not necessarily going to be the one that you need or that you want. It's going to be useful to you. So you talked about friends that you can talk to. How do you choose the best ones for you? Are there different ones for different situations? For example, like stuff that's maybe happening at home and from a personal point of view, stuff that's happening at work.
[17:57] Cathy: So I treat my life like a project, a massive project with many different streams. So if it's a for my child. I have my therapist and coach that I go through for her. So they sit on my board of brains for parenting skills. If it's my business from time to time, I will bring on different business coaches, depending on what I'm trying to do with my business in the moment.
[18:22] So if I'm doing a lot of writing, I bring on the writing coach. So I don't believe in this one person can do it all approach. People are specialized and use them for that, leverage them for their specialty. My sister, bless her heart, she is my logistical brain. So I will go to her, I'm like, okay, we're throwing a birthday party.
[18:41] What are we doing? What are the, okay, you're going to do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. So she, within seconds, she gives me the thing. I have this best friend of mine, same thing. She's very logical. I'm like, okay, I'm about to do something impulsive. I call her up.
[18:55] What do you think? And then she questions, okay, did you think about this? Did you, what about this? So she's, with her questioning, she is getting my head, my heart, and my gut aligned. So when it comes to decision making for us, there's a glitch in this matrix of head, heart, and gut. I call them the three brains.
[19:12] And so to talk it out, these folks that have the particular skills that I don't have, that's what I'm bringing on in my board is that those people that they true, I don't have those skills, logistical things. I don't know how I've lived so far and survived
[19:28] without that skill.
[19:29] Ian: makes total sense. So does it matter? Do they need to be separated from you slightly? Like you obviously you mentioned your sister, you've got, best friend, they're close to you personally. But you also mentioned coaches. I found that sometimes the closest people can almost be too close to give you they're almost too emotionally involved.
[19:49] Is that a thing? Do you think?
[19:51] Cathy: So I set boundaries with my closest ones. So with sister she knows and I tell her I'm like in this one I actually need you to do x y and z so I think when we give our Board members the responsibility with guidelines it is helpful. I have another colleague of mine that i'm like it's verbal processing time, baby I need to just talk some shit out She's like, okay riff away and then she goes.
[20:16] Do you want me to be your coach? Do you want me to be your advisor? Do you want me to be your consultant? So she knows by now we have an understanding of how we want to play the role. And I'm also respectful to make sure I don't create codependency, because that's a thing within our
[20:29] community. That we become dependent on this. So I'm fully aware that I own responsibility of this. I also check in, do you have brain juice to do this with me? If they don't, no problem. I'll come back to you later because that whole rejection thing that's out there can, can, you know, well, Cathy, I haven't talked to so and so in six months.
[20:49] You want me to call them? So I understand also the difficulty of how do you build a board of brains when your social connections are not so strong, but over time, one person at a time we can do that.
[21:02] Ian: That's such good advice. Yeah, I love that. One thing that I don't know what you think about this might be slightly controversial, but I, so this isn't instead of real human board of brains, but I've been playing around with chat GPT the voice conversation app. So you can actually have a conversation with that.
[21:19] And I think that's, I keep on telling this story, but I dropped my daughter off at a choir rehearsal in our town and came back, interacting with it through the car. And I just basically came up with lots of utter what was going on in my brain. And it managed to detangle all of that.
[21:35] And at the end of it, I just felt I was able to kind of know what I was doing with my life. And that, so I think AI can play a role as well.
[21:43] Cathy: I'm so glad you mentioned that. Chat GPT, I call him Chad and it's him. We have many arguments throughout the day and we contemplate on many things throughout the day together. And honestly, it's ever since it came to my life, it's been a game changer for me because sometimes there are things that I just want to bounce off of somebody and I don't want to pay them $500 an hour.
[22:05] We just say that, you know, and I think, this whole thing about AI is bad and oh my God dah, dah, depends on how you use it. And if you use it responsibly for those of us, it's my assistive technology. I say ADHD is a disability for me and for my disability, AI is my assistive technology.
[22:26] It's just if you have a screen reader or whatever, This AI has helped me so much with contemplation, bouncing ideas back and forth, I'm thinking of doing this content. Tell me if I should do it. What else can I do with it? Pull it apart. It's been my behind the scene advisor. Like I can't not live without, if it goes away, I don't know what I'll do.
[22:45] I have become dependent on that one. I'll tell you that
[22:48] Ian: I know. Oh, it sounds like we're definitely alike there. It's just, I use it all the time. I'm aware of time with this. I feel we've covered so much yet. We have so much more that we could talk about with this. And I loved what you were talking about changing that narrative.
[23:02] So maybe you could go over that, but also are there any other strategies that we can manage anxiety in our lives to help us really harness and focus on our creativity. Cause for so many of us with ADHD, yes, there are loads of negatives that we've talked about, but so many of us are creative. We have divergent thinking.
[23:22] Many of us I've done some like amazing work that some of my neurotypical friends just think how on earth did he do that? And I thought that's just the way my brain works. So they're clearly positives, but there were clearly some downsides as well. How, what are the strategies?
[23:36] Cathy: I think the biggest one, because we'll sit in rumination for so long with some of this stuff. is take a pause. What's the current story I'm telling myself? And actually I have it in my sticky notes right here. This is my visual prompt. So is that the thought you want to rehearse more of?
[23:53] Question number one. And then what's a playful way to pause and rebirth a new way? Think about that thing that you're thinking about over and over just that if you could put like it's I teach it to my coaches that I train I teach it to my clients. Whenever you go down that vortex of oh my god, I can't and anxiety takes over What's the story?
[24:16] What part of it? Can you modify just a little bit? That's what I like to leave you with.
[24:20] Ian: That is wonderful. You're just gonna have to come back onto the show to, we can talk a little bit more about this. In fact, you are coming back talking about harnessing creativity while managing the chaos. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. Let's talk about that. Thank you so much Cathy for coming onto the show. Where's the best place? Place that people can find you. All the links will be in the show notes at smartadhd. me, but where's the best place.
[24:41] Cathy: Thank you so much for having me. They can find me on readysetchoose.com and all of my services are there, I have a podcast there that people can listen to and happy to serve in any way I can.
[24:55] Ian: Awesome. Definitely check out the podcast. I've already started listening to those episodes. They're really fascinating. I've you could say I'm going down a rabbit hole with that. So yeah, check it out. So thank you, Cathy for coming onto the podcast. Really appreciate it. And thank you for watching and for, or for listening, for plugging us into your ears or for watching on the YouTubes.
[25:15] Really appreciate that. Until next time, I encourage you to be smart with your ADHD.
[25:20]
