[0:38] Ian: Hello and welcome back to the smart ADHD podcast. Today we're diving into the topic of families and ADHD. In a previous episode we talked about the fact that ADHD is almost as heritable as height. So if you have ADHD it's highly likely that other people in your family also have ADHD. And so today, I'm thrilled to be joined again by the fantastic Dr.
[0:58] Tamara Rosier to discuss families and ADHD, as well as her new book, You, Me, and Our ADHD Family. Tamara is the founder of the ADHD Center of West Michigan, and as well as her recent book on families, she's also written the fantastic book, Your Brain's Not Broken. Let's get on with it right now.
[1:15] tamara, welcome back to Smart ADHD. I think this is like our fifth episode. This is very exciting. How are you doing?
[1:22] Tamara: Great. I always love talking with you. I could just spend all day just chatting. So, I'm glad to be here.
[1:29] Ian: Thank you. I, and I'm really excited because next month I'm going to be meeting you in person at the International ADHD Conference in Anaheim. In California, that's going to be a lot of fun today, though. I want to dive into the whole area of ADHD and family. And this is partly because your book is out your new book which I haven't actually got my hands on a physical copy yet, but I'm listening to the audio version and I can't wait to actually get the book as well.
[1:57] So this is you, me and our ADHD family. And I know this is something you've been working on for. I don't know, at least a year and a half, two years, maybe something like that. So you tell me, so how did this book come into existence?
[2:09] Tamara: Well, with my first book Your Brain is Not Broken, I remember telling you it's like a love letter to all the clients I'll never meet. I just wanted them to know they're okay. And then my practice started to expand and I started to work with more and more families. And the first, the title of my first chapter is called Welcome to the Goat Rodeo.
[2:28] And having a family affected by ADHD feels like a goat rodeo sometimes. I wanted families to figure out a way to cut through the chaos. and learn to love each other better. And that's just my driving hope for the book is that people read it. So this isn't a parenting book. It's a, if you are in a family affected by ADHD, read this to understand yourself and those you love.
[2:55] Ian: I think this book is for many people. It's not specifically for people with ADHD because you may know people with ADHD, and it's such a powerful book. I was saying just before we started recording, there was one chapter where I was laughing and crying at the same time, in a good way, because it just brought a lot of clarity and your use of metaphors and stories.
[3:18] I can tell you taught English with some of these titles of the chapters, it's great, you got widening the window, perils of the telephoto lens. This is great. So you talked about the rodeo, but scorpion skunks and pesky peccadillos. And I, do you know what, I'm going to be, I'm going to be really honest here.
[3:34] And I had to look up the word peccadillo.
[3:36] Tamara: You're
[3:37] Ian: I'm expanding. I know I'm expanding my vocabulary.
[3:39] Tamara: No, just to be clear. I'm telling everyone in the U. S. Oh, it's okay if you don't know the word. It's a British word. And Yeah, that's why. I'm not shaming you into your vocabulary. I'm just like, Oh dear, I might be wrong.
[3:51] Ian: No, you're not wrong at all. Cause so I went to the authorities of source on this, which is chat GPT and it said it's used a lot more in English literature and I, so I probably it's one of, one of the things I beat myself up about, which I shouldn't do is I don't read as much as I should.
[4:09] I did as a kid, but we're not going to
[4:11] Tamara: Oh, Okay, you know what? That makes sense because I taught British literature. And pecadillo makes sense to me. But, yes, yeah. That was, that's an important chapter for families to understand.
[4:23] Ian: it is. It's great. And yes. And we're not going to have the time to go through the whole book, obviously. So you need to get the book. And, I really mean this, I think this is. One of the most important books I've read on ADHD. it just shines a light on so many issues and gives a vocabulary.
[4:40] and an understanding to so many things. So definitely highly recommend that. This is like a big question, but see if you can answer this in less than two minutes. does how does ADHD.
[4:51] affect families in particular.
[4:53] Tamara: Challenge accepted. Okay. It affects us in a lot of ways. First of all, in families, ADHD is highly hereditary. This means where there's one, there's usually others. And a premise we have to really understand is ADHD affects how we think and how we communicate. And so there's there's a later chapter I talk about communication quirks of those of us with ADHD. By the way, I just want to say this, those of us with ADHD, guys, we're not dumb. We just do everything differently. Let's just wrap our heads around that. It's just different. It's not worse. It's not better. It is different, though. And we have to acknowledge those differences.
[5:34] How does it affect? First of all, Ian, you and I both have ADHD, and we know that we have limited access to our prefrontal cortex, where our short term and working memory are.
[5:45] Which means, we can have conversations, forget they ever occurred, and ask the same thing. And if we don't have understanding families, to go, oh she's, it's not that she doesn't care, she literally forgot we had this conversation. And just to be clear to everyone, I don't have dementia. That is ADHD.
[6:03] I know I don't because I keep asking my doctor to make sure. And he's no, that is ADHD. So working memory glitches. And we go to work all day. We're exhausted. We come home. We've been trying to hold it all together with all the executive functions. And we come home, let's say five, six o'clock at night. We're exhausted. How well equipped do you think we are for family life at that point? So that's something we have to pay attention to. Then there's the whole emotional dysregulation issue that can accompany ADHD. Ian, I love your face. Your face is yeah that's the truth. And the truth is we have big feelings about everything and sometimes those big feelings can cloud other facts that could help us problem solve differently.
[6:47] So those are a few. Also, rejection sensitivity. Before the show started, Ian, you said something very gracious to me. You said, I really love your book. And, you sense my awkwardness about, accepting compliments. And that's very true. But at the same time, I'm like, But don't hate the book!
[7:04] I'll feel rejected! So really it's a tough place, right? So many of us have rejection sensitivity, and you can see how all this makes being in relationships very complicated.
[7:15] Ian: You did an amazing job there. That was very succinct. So thank you. And thank you also for taking the compliment. Yeah. It's I've, I was nodding my head all the way through that, you know, and as like, my wife will say, well, maybe be talking to me at lunchtime. And I realized like 30 seconds in I'm not listening to her and it's not it's not because I don't care or I'm not interested in what she's saying.
[7:39] I am interested. It's just my brain is focused on something else. And I find it very difficult to close off those loops before I get into that. And I think this understanding of ADHD and what's happening. It does it in a sense. It's still hard. It was still hard for Helen when she realized I wasn't listening and I had to say I'm sorry, sorry, Helen, I wasn't listening.
[7:59] Can you repeat that again? But at least now she understands and she's done the same to me like, and the rejection sensitivity could kick in there and think she doesn't love me, she doesn't care for me. But now at least we have an understanding and a vocabulary to explain all of this.
[8:16] Tamara: When I was younger, I didn't know I had ADHD. But I would say things like, oops, I'm sorry, I thought I was listening, but I wasn't. And, it bugged, especially my phys ed teacher growing up. I'd be like, whoops, what are we supposed to do? I thought I was listening, but I forgot.
[8:33] And she was so irritated with me. And I find I didn't grow out of that trait, except now I, Just pretend that I was listening to Catch Up Better, right? Because my head still goes, Whoops! I forgot to turn on the recording. Could you say that again?
[8:49] Ian: yeah,
[8:50] Tamara: follows us into adulthood,
[8:52] Ian: Yeah, definitely. And I wonder whether there's, there should almost be a book giving us phrases that we can say in those situations I'm not saying we should go, whoops, I wasn't, but it could be that. And I was chatting with my son about Small talk. There should be a guidebook on small talk and I was trying to teach him small talks and we were joking.
[9:12] It was like, so what's the weather like? Oh, it's lovely weather and all this kind of stuff. And I just wonder whether there should be like a book on helping us with these situations with ADHD to just help people understand
[9:24] Tamara: I'm going to tell you the hack because this works all the time. I'm I'm lousy at small talk because I just don't care. I don't care about the weather. I don't care what, where you got your shoes. I don't care. So what I do is I steer the conversation to what interests me.
[9:39] So I ask the person questions that I really want to know answers to. And we end up in the most fascinating conversations. People think I'm a, I care about them, which I do, but I, because I'm Walking around the small talk and I just find the questions I'm truly curious in. And let's face it, if you're, if you have ADHD, you're curious about everything.
[10:00] And obviously we have to be the socially appropriately curious, because there's many times I'm curious about things I really should not ask about. But you know a lot of times one time I was at a party and I heard Someone, had chickens. And I was thinking about getting chickens, and I'm like, Can you tell me more?
[10:18] What kind of chickens do you have? Where's the coop? And the person was delighted to tell me all about her chickens. And left feeling cared for and I was interested. That's my little hack. Just steer the conversation
[10:30] Ian: yeah, that's great
[10:31] Tamara: many questions.
[10:32] Ian: a win win situation. That's what you want. Love that. Love that. So monkey malarkey, which is a great title for a chapter. And, when so it, by the way, if you're listening or watching this, and you didn't realize this Tamara has actually been helping us as a family. I, Tamara was actually talking about part of this, these concepts to us in the past, it's been immensely helpful.
[10:56] Tell us a little bit more about what this is all about. Cause monkey malarkey just sounds really cool and interesting.
[11:02] Tamara: Yeah. For those of us with ADHD, I have my clients imagine that they have monkeys in their head. And the monkeys represent different aspects of their ADHD qualities. And so what are the, some of the monkeys that you really thought, Oh, I've got that monkey in my head. I have time blind Timmy. I've got critical Kelvin.
[11:24] Ian: I've only thought about one or two. So I've got like Lawrence, he's Lawrence, the librarian, he overthinks things and he's always over preparing. And and then there's a, almost like an anxious person, anxious monkey as well.
[11:38] Tamara: yeah.
[11:39] Ian: Yeah. Yeah.
[11:40] Tamara: Yeah so what we do is we the chapter takes you through naming the monkeys you have in your head. And so I give you a whole bunch of different categories of monkeys to consider, and I ask you to choose five. And then you choose five, but then we want to imagine them talking.
[11:56] Okay. And hearing how our monkeys are interacting with each other can really give us insight. In the book I talk about the time, I don't know if you remember this, right before I released my first book. My monkeys were chattering, and all of a sudden, I'm driving down the road, anxious Amy pops up on my shoulder, little monkey sits right there and says, Hey I'm pretty nervous because I think everyone's going to hate your book, and I should have told you earlier, I'm really sorry, but I'm really nervous about this.
[12:26] Critical Kelvin! Pops up, puts his arm around Amy and says, Girl, she's right. You did a bad thing. You were too vulnerable, and now people are gonna know you're really stupid. I'm like, okay, so the monkey chattering's starting, right? And then, perfectionist Penny pops up, and she has to be perfect.
[12:46] She's you could have done better. You just really didn't even do a good job on this book. And I go, no, the monkeys are really taking over. And so I literally for a second fantasized about calling the publisher and saying, just take all the books back. I'll give you all the money back you paid me. I'll pay you more money, but just let's just bury this whole project. I got a handle on my monkeys. And so I went, I started with Anxious Amy first and I said, Hey, Amy, Anxious Amy is showing up because she cares about me. And all these monkeys are really trying to protect me in some way.
[13:18] And so I'm like, Amy, I get it. We've never done this before. And so we're very nervous. We're going to be okay. And we're going to have to be brave. So can you just be quiet for a little bit? And so she went away for a little bit. Critical Calvin, he's a stinker and he just hangs out in my head a lot. He likes to criticize me to make sure I'm on the right track.
[13:39] I'm like, Kelvin, dude, I don't have time for you right now. I need you to take a back seat. And he just plopped down on my shoulder and he's I'm not going anywhere. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll talk to Perfect Penny. Hey, Penny, we had great editors. And you know what? They were doing a great job for us.
[13:56] So they really helped us carry it across the line. Can you agree with that? Yes, and so I talked to all my monkeys just to try to get them under control and It turned out okay, and I shared that because it was very vulnerable the monkeys popped up again Like before this book launched too, by the way, I'm going you did this again, and you were more vulnerable.
[14:18] Why? Why Tamara? But the value of the exercise is to get some insight into how my ADHD thoughts are almost turning into action, and I can keep them from turning into action that way. Now in families, my monkeys, if we're related, my monkeys are going to talk to your monkey. And I'm positive that monkey malarkey in your family. Right?
[14:42] Ian: Yeah, definitely. I, before we, I was going to ask you a little bit more about how that works in families, but just reminds me of a friend of mine who was launching a book and had those similar kind of thoughts. And, you could say it's the monkeys, but she went so far as she actually deleted her book.
[14:59] She actually, and it wasn't until the following day. She just woke up from her senses and she realized she did actually have a backup, but there were a few missing chapters. So she had to rewrite those. So like these things can really affect you if you let them go. And I think what I realized was going on in my head is I just let those monkeys chatter and I wasn't even aware that they were talking.
[15:24] And so this actually personifying these different aspects of your ADHD. brings them to the forefront and then you can have a conversation with them like you're doing. And it strikes me, the thing that you were doing there is you were having compassion. You were, okay maybe with Calvin, you were saying, okay I've done with you today, but it's not like you are completely, you're shouting at them or there's any kind of negativity.
[15:46] They, cause they are part of you. How in a family you, you touched on this, but how does knowing about these monkeys in our brains, help us in our families, interact with each other and support each other.
[16:00] Tamara: Yeah. Let's see. Oh, I work with, by the way, many families. It's quite common to have more than one ADHD person. Okay families will come and say, Yeah, we need help with my son. My son has ADHD. And then I gently prod and go who else does? And if it's a family of five, odds are at least one other person does, if not two.
[16:24] And there's usually a parent going oh, I get this. And the first step is to understand who has the monkeys? Who has the monkey chatter in their head? But let's say mom has ADHD, but a lot of women don't know they have ADHD because they're high performers. They keep their act together, and they adjust by developing, over developing Perfect Penny. So Perfect Penny is, I, she is going to keep us on the straight and narrow because she demands perfection and Critical Kelvin is going to back her up and say you're a lousy, no good, blah blah blah because you weren't perfect. So mom has those two monkeys. Critical Kelvin, Perfect Penny. It's time to leave for something.
[17:08] Let's put it on Sunday morning you're trying to leave for church because that's when No one is at their best, right? Mom is at the door, yelling, saying, We need to get in the car, right now! And Perfect Penny's Yeah, you tell her! You tell her, Margaret! We're doing this! And Kelvin's Yeah, you gotta get your family out in the car, or else, you're probably not a good mother.
[17:30] So that's the chatter. Meanwhile, the son is going around the house looking for his shoes because he can't remember quite where he left them because he has the forgetful part. But mostly, time blind Timmy, his monkey, is really acting up going, I don't see the problem, right? Meanwhile, you have the daughter in the bathroom, also with ADHD.
[17:53] She has overwhelmed Oscar. It's just getting ready and trying to look okay. Has overwhelmed her and she's almost near tears. And so you start to see how all the monkeys start to interact with each other. Perfect Penny, it will get in, finally get her family in the car. And by the way, Dad doesn't, in this case, doesn't have ADHD.
[18:14] He's just trying to stay out of all this. But in the car, on the way, now the monkeys start chattering. Because Perfect Penny is now angry. And critical Kelvin is also critical toward mom and the kids. So mom's not letting this go. When I ask you to get in the car, and then meanwhile son has rejection sensitivity in the backseat his monkey starts going, wait, is she insulting us?
[18:38] We can't take that. You should fight back on that. And so you hear how all of these discussions start to happen. And when I help families understand that, they can be more compassionate to each other. And we can see each other better,
[18:53] Ian: Yeah, definitely. And you can then start to develop strategies. There's that compassion and that listening, that understanding, and then strategies to help, which I'm not always going to in the best, in all families, you can have the best strategies in the world, but it's still not going to mean that these things don't happen.
[19:12] They still do.
[19:13] Tamara: And I'm still responsible for managing my monkeys, right? But can I tell you about a time when I really learned to have compassion for my own monkeys? I was always knew it as a concept, right? I knew, one should be compassionate, but it's something I really have to. learn and keep relearning.
[19:30] In my office I was working with a mother and a child, and both of them had ADHD. So I have a basket of monkeys. I take them out. I have little name cards in front of them, and I asked them to do the exercise of choosing the monkeys. And this little boy, I'll never forget, blonde, really thick glasses.
[19:49] I think he was like six and a half or seven. I said, okay, buddy, So you have Anxious Andy. How are we going to talk to Anxious Andy? Now, some boys I've worked with will throw Anxious Andy up in the air and pretend to machine gun him. And I'm like no, we can't do that to our monkeys. And so we use that as something to build off of.
[20:09] This little boy picked up, cuddled Anxious Andy, the little stuffed monkey, and said, oh, Andy, I know this is a big world, and was cuddling him. And I looked over at the mom had tears, I had tears because the compassion that he had on anxious Andy was really beautiful. And that was actually a breakthrough moment for this boy using anxiety as part of his ADHD.
[20:35] So it was just such a lovely moment.
[20:37] Ian: you know, anxiety,
[20:40] Anxiety is, as you talked about in the book is a very common thing for many of us with ADHD. It's a big part of my life. And I think I've in my worst moments, I've just I don't know if I'd use the machine gun, but I can maybe almost like I just if I could choose one thing, it would be to get rid of that.
[20:59] And but actually to have compassion and because the anxiety is not there to destroy you. It's actually there to try and protect you. It comes from a kind of a compact, a caring point of view even if it's misplaced. So I think understanding that part of how those various monkeys work in all of our brains is so helpful.
[21:18] I wanted to then move on to, we've talked about, so you came on an episode to talk about emotional dysregulation, and I think that is definitely a big, In a sense, it's related to what we've just been talking about, in, in with the monkeys. But then there's also, there's the nervous system side of things as well that you again, talk about in this book.
[21:38] And when you mentioned that in our coaching sessions, like that, I found fascinating. So how does that work in families? Because I might be in a heightened state. My, I don't know, my sympathetic nervous system might be through the roof. I might be really stressed and anxious. How do I try and sort myself out?
[22:00] Or how does my wife, how does my family do that? How do we interact with each other and understand and help each other in those situations? Because with, as you say as families, we're all living together under one roof. This sounds
[22:14] Tamara: And emotions are contagious. Right? Emotions are contagious. Naturally, when you have ADHD. Emotions are contagious for every human, but for those of us with ADHD, We just, we can feel other people's emotions, many of us can very quickly. And so if you feel that your wife isn't happy with you, you're going to like, Oh, there's something going on here.
[22:36] I have to make meaning of it. And yeah, it's quite difficult. And if you feel that your wife is out of sorts. Then you're like I should probably join her in being out of sorts, right? And there's this concept and I didn't create this concept, I just wrote about it in the book, called window of tolerance.
[22:55] It's not a new and sexy thing. I think it dates back to the seventies. So if you imagine a window, the wind within that window is your body being at this healthy balance. And what research tells us is that those of us with ADHD have a tiny window opening, whereas other people have a wider window opening. And our goal with ADHD is to increase the width of that window. In other words, to increase that space where we're okay. So something can happen. I can always tell if I'm in my window of tolerance when I drop something and a cuss word doesn't come out of my mouth. I'm just like, Oh, I dropped something.
[23:38] No need to respond. Yeah. And so what happens is above the window of tolerance is hyper arousal. And a lot of us with ADHD are in hyper arousal a lot. So we're in hyper arousal. This, that's the fight or flight, AHH! Kind of feeling. Last night, I was trying to work on something. It was a PowerPoint.
[24:02] It was due to this person at this time. It was due at 5, and it was 6. 30. I'm still working on it because I just really have this thing about fonts that just drives me crazy if it's not right. And so I'm working on it and getting very anxious. I'm in hyper arousal to do this, like AHH! And my sweet husband brings home food I think it was brisket last night.
[24:24] I'm like, I love brisket! At the same time, I'm like, oh, I don't want to eat right now. I'm in hyper arousal. I just want to focus. Everyone shut up! I didn't say any of that. That's how I was feeling in my brain. I was in hyper arousal. As soon as I, he brought the food, I'm like, feeling aware of all that, I'm like, Oh, Tamara, you are out of your window of tolerance, girl.
[24:44] You literally wrote about this, so how about we go back into the window of tolerance. So I had to bring myself out of hyper arousal to calm my body down into this natural state. Of where I can breathe. I'm not clenching my shoulders or my jaw. I'm not thinking resentment feelings towards myself because I should have started it at noon.
[25:06] Blah, blah, blah. You know, All those things, right? So in hyperarousal, we have to bring ourselves down back to the window of tolerance. Now, some of us Also go below the window and that's hypo arousal and hypo means without, right? And usually when I teach this concept, people are like, I don't understand what that means.
[25:26] Well, hypoarousal is when it's like you're glued to the couch and you're on the sofa and you're on your phone. You're doing the death scroll. I would never do this, but I hear other people do it. You're just like, just a couple more videos, just a couple more videos, right? Instagram. I'm sure I can watch this cookie being decorated and you just keep that is not fight or flight.
[25:53] That's freeze. That's part of our brain almost like shutting down. And what we're trying to do is put ourself into really a low state, because let's face it, we're exhausted just being us. And hypoarousal is, I see it in some of my clients a lot of my younger clients, I'll see their parents are in hyper arousal over them, they're like hovering going, Son, you need to write this college essay! And son goes to hypo arousal going, I'll be in the basement playing some games. And it's almost like they, I'm thinking one client, I swear he moves as slow as a sloth because he's telling his brain, Oh no, we're not going to get excited about anything. And so he's in hypo and you see how the two are like the two extremes.
[26:41] Some of my clients will go from hyper arousal to hypo back to hyper and we forget to develop that window of tolerance. And that is the key to our development.
[26:51] Ian: Yeah, that's so helpful and I hadn't come across those terms before so if you on a typical day, maybe your son is in the hyper arousal is maybe anxious. And I assume it's not just negative stuff. It could be like really excited. It could, it's in terms of the emotions or is it, yeah. So and then maybe your daughter is, Is hypo, I always get these mixed up.
[27:15] What, are there any kind of strategies to help them through that? You've, we've talked about the pool metaphor in the emotional dysregulation episode. One of the pool rules is not to try. If somebody is in the swimming pool and it's having a night, a splash, a toddler's tantrum, it's not to try and get them out because you're going to get pulled in.
[27:34] But when it comes to these nervous system states the hypo and hyper other strategies that we can use as families to help.
[27:41] Tamara: Yes. And no one's going to like this answer. Stop trying to control someone else's behavior and get within your own window of tolerance. And I do a lot of parent coaching and they're like, you don't understand. I have to remain vigilant because this kid is doing this, and this. I understand because I'm a parent.
[28:01] And I love my kids dearly, but if I'm in my window of tolerance, cueing their brain that it's safe to go into their window of tolerance. If I'm in hyper arousal, they're going to respond either by going hypo arousal, like just sloth like movements or to back with me to hyper to a shouting match.
[28:21] But if I calm my body down, my brain down, my spirit down, and I'm in my window of tolerance, I'm un mess withable at that point because I've controlled myself. And stop trying to control other people's behavior. Now, afterwards you can do the debrief. I talk about that later in the book. Hey son, we gotta talk.
[28:41] You weren't hyper arousal and punched a hole in the wall. We've gotta work through that. And you do what I would call a debrief. That's later. That's back when he's come back into a window of tolerance.
[28:53] Ian: Yeah that's so helpful. We are out of time, Tamara. We could, I feel we could, we've only just touched the surface, but so much of this is in your book. So do check it out. It's on in all good bookstores and and it's also on Audible as well. So you can even listen to it and listen and read at the same time, if you really want.
[29:12] Thank you so much, Tamara. Looking forward to having you back on the show to talk about some more ADHD stuff. But yeah, thank you so much for plugging us into your ears, or for watching on the YouTubes. And until next time, I encourage you to be smart with your ADHD.
[29:26]
