“This is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental illness is more prevalent than cancer, diabetes, or heart disease in the world and behavioral health disorders are the number one cause of disability worldwide. One in four people suffer from a mental disorder.  50 percent of people show signs by the age of 14, but it takes more than 10 years for most of them to get treatment.” - Dawn Calvinisti

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Mental Health Awareness Month with Dawn Calvinisti

Welcome to Imperfection in Progress, a podcast for ambitious women who are people-pleasers, perfectionists, or procrastinators. Want to feel less stress and more joy in your life? Then this is for you. I’m your host Dawn Calvinisti.

Today I’m sharing why I chose to focus on ADHD for this month even though I personally don’t believe I have ADHD. I hope that some of the revelations I’ve had will be interesting for you to think about.

As my network grows I have been surprised by how many women have told me they’ve been diagnosed with ADHD in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s. I’m a curious type and love to learn and believe what I learned will benefit you as well.

Check out my website www.pursueprogress.com to learn more about how you can work with me and to grab my free clarity workbook.

This episode has a lot of great insight and questions to consider whether you have been diagnosed with ADHD or not. Please share this episode with others you know need to hear it.

Now onto the episode.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Dawn Calvinisti: Welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited to have you here today as we kick off the month of May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. And this month we are focusing on ADHD in adult women diagnosed in adulthood. I think this is such an interesting topic. I hope you do too. I would say about I don't know, maybe two and a half ish years ago when I first started to move into the areas of summits and doing more online work.

I developed a bigger network. I was dealing with a lot more women who are also growing their network, doing more online. They are all entrepreneurs, developing great businesses, having great successes. And I was meeting a lot more women who called themself somebody who had ADHD and many of them did not know that until they were in their late 20s in their 30s some in their 40s Finding this diagnosis out and this was really curious to me because I could see in some of them again Not everybody but some of them had some really fascinating traits And I thought wow, like she's so good at this and she's so good at that and you know She's really quick on this and in my head I think because ADHD to me was what I knew when my children were in, early stages of school when people wanted diagnosis for their kids because, they were usually problems in class and they were causing a lot of issues.

They weren't sitting down, they weren't paying attention, they were standing up, they were causing distraction for the other children. They weren't able to focus and get things done. And sometimes grades suffered because of that. And so everything that I knew about ADHD seemed to come from that bent.

And so in my mind, if you had ADHD and you were saying that, then you wouldn't be a very successful entrepreneur. How on earth would you stay focused to get things done? How would you keep yourself moving forward and be motivated and not get distracted and go wandering off and doing other things.

And so that was my mindset. But as I spoke with more of these women and would hear. what it was like for them. I could see how some of this played out in their businesses and in their home lives and their, their relationships and other women had more or less problems when it came to trying to work with ADHD and building their businesses.

And so I thought this is a really interesting, thing that I'm seeing more and more of. And is it really a surprise that we see more of it? When we hear more and more children being diagnosed with all kinds of things right, Is it not going to show up in the parents? Maybe we just never knew.

In our time of life, it wasn't really, spoken about much. Diagnosis maybe wasn't even a possibility when we were children. Maybe we were, taught to, in my day and age, it was like you. were quiet. Like you sat still, you did your work, you didn't do anything and so maybe that was torture for some people who are now adults to have to try to live in that world.

And maybe they were the kids that didn't do well in school, or the kids that got in trouble, or maybe they were kids that did buckle under into the system but it just didn't work for them. So I don't really know in that part of it, but. I have found it totally fascinating to be able to talk to these people that will be throughout the rest of this month.

We have an expert coming on. We have three women who are diagnosed in adulthood. And all of them have different stories. Some of them share a bit about what it's like to parent as somebody with ADHD. Some of them share about what it's like to grow a business. Some of them share about what they've found.

As far as wow, now I understand who I am and why I'm like that. So it is really interesting to hear each of their stories, and I hope you really enjoy it. Some of the things I wanted to mention to you, because this is Mental Health Awareness Month, is that mental illness is more prevalent than cancer, diabetes,  or heart disease in the world and behavioral health disorders are the number one cause of disability worldwide. I did not know that. One in four people suffer from a mental disorder. 50 percent of people show signs by the age of 14, but it takes more than 10 years for most of them to get treatment. There we go. That's why we're seeing a lot of this not showing actual diagnoses until adulthood. And then 450 million people worldwide have some type of mental disorder. Mental disorders are 20 percent of the global burden of disease. But only 3 percent of the world's health care budgets go to mental health needs.

And by 2030, we will spend 6 trillion worldwide on mental illness directly or indirectly. 27. 2 percent of women experience a mental disorder and 18. 1 percent of men experience it. I thought these were really interesting statistics to kick off this month and to hear more about as we go through. 

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One thing I want to mention too, if you listened to last month or maybe you've just found us recently, you can go back and listen to April's podcast. We focused on anxiety and so that's also classed under mental disorders. And so if you would like more info on that, go back and listen to those podcasts.

Now, the other thing I wanted to mention today is why, why do this? If I don't really feel like I have any issues with ADHD, why am I focusing on that this month? And I guess the main thing is, and I say this to my coaching clients, be curious, right? Be curious when you come up against something instead of judging it, or criticizing it, or getting upset by it.

And I think this is one of those areas where I started to become very curious because of how many of the women I was networking with were mentioning being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. And that made me super curious okay, so what does that mean? And what does that do for you to have a diagnosis of that?

How does it show up for you? And where does it help you in your business? Where does it hamper you in your business? And I was just really curious about what is it like to have that diagnosis and live life? And I think for me, again, because on this podcast, we often talk about people pleasing and procrastination and perfectionism, and for me, perfectionism is probably the top of those three.

I tend to fall back into that more often than the other two, but that also means I can be really critical and judgmental and I'm the worst with myself. I criticize myself the most but I can also turn that on other people, especially those close to me. And then, others. And so what I've tried over the last probably two decades, really at this point when there's something that I don't understand, or there's somebody that, that rubs me the wrong way, or I just, they annoy me, or I find them difficult to be around, or to work with, or any of those things.

Instead of just getting upset at that, or being frustrated by them, or getting angry, I've tried really hard to start to ask myself, okay, but why? Why is that affecting you? What is it about them that affects you? You can, avoid, ignore? Is it something you need to address? Is it something you can ask a question about?

Is it something that maybe you're misunderstanding? And so I'm trying to be much more aware and compassionate, both with myself and with others, so that I'm not criticizing, nitpicking, judging putting people down, those types of things. I love, I have a very sarcastic nature. If you know me closely, you'll know that.

But I also, I have to be careful that sarcasm isn't directed in a mean way, and it's important to me that I learn, first of all, so that I am knowledgeable and understand what's going on, and two, that I do stay curious and ask questions so that I can be educated, so that I can have compassion, so that I can understand, and also, and I think this is important, So that I don't turn it around to make it about me, right?

So if somebody is frustrating to me, or annoying to me, it's not about they're doing that on purpose, or they're trying to get under my skin, or they're doing that to frustrate me, or they're trying to make this a problem for me, right? So learning to be able to say to myself, okay, so where's the grace that I can give them here?

Is this something that is out of their control? It's just how they are. And I need to learn how to respond in a way that's appropriate and encouraging and can help them and me move forward and have a decent relationship, right? So those are all things that come to mind. And ADHD is one of those things that I think of because there are people that I've had to work with that have ADHD that have traits that I don't understand and when there's a lot of distraction or they're not able to, have a back and forth conversation because they're constantly, off or standing up and going to check something or and not really focusing, that bothers me a lot.

I love deep conversation where we're staring into each other's eyes and we're just focused and we're getting really deep with each other. And sometimes people are not able to do that, not just because of ADHD, but for whatever reason. And I've had to learn that's just not their nature and that's okay.

And not everybody has to be like me, right? So learning that and learning that my way is not the only way for all my perfections out there. Like I know that makes you cringe but my way is not the only way. It's not the best way. And everybody else does not have to do it my way. And so those are things that again, I still work on.

But it's something that I've started to learn to let go of and allow others to be themselves and be happy for the variety that's around and that way I'm never bored, right? If everybody was like me, man, it would be a boring world.

The other thing that this journey has helped me with in speaking to all of these different people for this month's podcast were things that they were learning. How can those things help me in my life? And so some of the things that were really useful to me this month and I hope will be super useful to you is learning.

Why developing habits are so important and you've heard me speak on habits before if you've listened to any of the podcasts I am very habitual. I love to make less decisions in a day. I like to, I get up, I eat the same breakfast, I have the exact same morning routine, Monday to Friday at least and most of it still stays in play on the weekends.

I go to bed at the same time every day, I get up at the same time every day and that's just because I don't want to have to make more decisions when the rest of my day has a lot of decisions. And so I learned, in the habits part of things, how that helps people with ADHD as well, and what else I can be doing to really help with that and minimize the amount of things that are going through my head.

I also learned about multitasking and, the fact that maybe doing everything at once, especially with everything that's coming at us all the time, is not the best way to go about the day, and I'm going to be less productive, and so what can I do? So learning some of those tips that we'll learn this month to really be more productive and how I can implement them in my business is as important to me as somebody who has a diagnosis of ADHD.

And then doing less, I loved hearing that this month too, and you're going to hear it in the next few episodes, but how doing less and actually taking down time being aware so that we don't burn ourselves out, learning to relax, learning to do things that we enjoy and taking that time out. And again, self care, we've talked about it on the podcast before, but why self care is so important.

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Why we need to implement things that fill our cups even more so now than ever, I'm very aware that there are things that I can do besides just getting a good night's sleep, time during the day when I'm awake, where I can actually recover actively. In order to feel more rested, feel more renewed and energized.

And for me, those things are things like yoga, like sitting down with a cup of tea and reading a book. And even going for just a stroll, not really a walk not with any real energy to it, but just enjoying being outside in nature, breathing fresh air, looking at things that are green. Learning, again to deregulate and allowing my system to not be overwhelmed by everything that's coming at me if I'm on the screen or, working on something really dedicated throughout the day.

And again, part of that is doing less, part of that is slowing down. And we've talked about this before as well, that Our lives, if we are not loving, and if you are not loving exactly how life is for you right now, the best thing you can do is get off the hamster wheel and take an assessment, right? Take that time, get some clarity.

What is filling you up? What is not working? What would you like to change if you could? Where are you actually heading and why? And then being able to say to yourself, okay, What does that mean? I need to change now. What do I need to stop doing? And what do I need to be doing more of so that you can change the direction, right?

So if we continue to move forward and move forward doing exactly what we're doing today, we are going to have more of what we're getting right now. And if you don't like what you're getting right now, then we do need to make those changes. And sometimes just a small change is to change the entire direction, right?

Of where things are going. But I would really encourage you as you're listening through the podcast this month, whether you have ADHD or you don't to take the tips into account, are these things that could work for you in your life? Are there things that you need to start implementing? Are there things that you need to do more of or less of?

Do you need to Pay attention. Are you in state that stage of early burnout and you need to pull back? Or are you somebody who actually needs to step up and start doing more taking action to get to where you want to go? And I think that's the other thing we can be aware of too, is sometimes it's easy to pull back, but then we forget to actually step forward and take the action to make things to make the change that we really want to happen.

So be aware of that as you are listening through this month. I hope that. All of these episodes really excite you in the possibility, in the encouragement from these women that are sharing and even in just curiosity, maybe to, ask yourself are these symptoms, things that I'm experiencing, or maybe it's one of your children are experiencing or a friend that you know, share these, there's something else that you're experiencing?

Something really awesome, I feel like about podcasts, when I listen to an episode, I'm like, okay, this was so good. And I need this. I often then I'm thinking like, who else do I know that needs this? And we'll share it out with them. So feel free to share this episode, any other episodes that you've been listening to that you think, yeah, this could really benefit somebody from listening.

It's one of the best ways that you can help me to get my podcast out to more women. And that's really the reason that I'm here is to be able to help people. you and help others like you to learn from the women that I'm bringing in as guests. I so appreciate everybody that has been on the podcast every month, but last month and this month, especially because it is so much more vulnerable and personal to be sharing your mental health journey.

And so I appreciate every one of these women who have shared on the podcast. I hope that you love all of it. If you are wanting a free resource, Just go to my website. It's pursue progress. com. And on there, there was a clarity workbook that is really good. If you need to take that step off of the hamster wheel and actually figure out what is it that I want, what do I need to be doing right now?

in order to take the first step towards what I really want. So you can really not make any changes very well without knowing where you're at now and where you're trying to go. And I think sometimes that can be the hardest part and then you can actually start creating the path to get there. So I hope you'll take advantage of the clarity workbook that's on pursueprogress.

com. Also, don't forget, we have two fantastic Deep Dive episodes that are 7 for both of them. It just helps support the podcast. And again, you can go to pursueprogress. com forward slash deep dive, and you'll get both of them there. I hope you'll take advantage of them. They're fantastic. One is a mom who is on our show as the expert last month.

And she's really sharing about anxiety and how it can Help help as a mom, how you can help your children work their way through it. And the other is a coaching session with me and Leslie Cooney, who was also on the podcast last month. And it's really sharing her journey as a people pleaser and ways that she can work through being able to say what she needs to say.

in a way that feels good for her and not hide from areas that are hard for her to confront when it comes to chatting with people. So we have a coaching session on that in there as well. So I hope you'll take advantage of that. I appreciate you as my listener and I hope that you enjoy the Every single podcast that I bring to you.

If you have ideas, if you have people that you would love to hear interviewed, I am always open. Feel free to send me an email. You can find my contact info again on pursueprogress. com. I'm looking forward to sharing the entire month with you. Have a great rest of your week.

[DAWN CALVINISTI]

Thanks for listening to today's show. If you found value in what you heard, please share it with a friend and rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps get us out to other women who could benefit from listening. 

Check out our show notes for details from the show and to connect with me or our guests. Want to continue the conversation? My website is www.pursueprogress.com or DM me @pursueprogresswithdawn on Instagram. 

Until next week, pursue progress no matter how imperfectly.

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Private Podcast Deep Dive on Anxiety: https://www.pursueprogress.com/deepdive