3 Hidden Signs of ADHD You’re Probably Ignoring with Skye Waterson

If you think you might have adult adhd, this is the episode for you. Today I sit down with Sky Waterson and we go deep on adhd. Enjoy. Sky, a huge welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's really great to be here.

I'm glad that we can sit down because what we're going to talk about is something that's coming up more and more in my radar, personally, in my own life, but also everywhere I travel. So there's a lot of misinformation out there about adhd. In your experience, what's the biggest myth that you've came across?

I have to pick one? No, I think the biggest myth is that people think that the people who have ADHD are always employees in lower level positions, but often it's the CEO or the management or the team leader who actually has adhd.

Interesting. And when I was younger, I was led to believe that ADHD is a childhood thing that we, quote, unquote, grow out of.

Oh, yeah, that's another myth.

Right. So is that true? And tell us, tell us more about your experience.

That's a good question. So there is some research to indicate that there is. You can grow out of experiencing the symptoms. Sometimes you can actually experience more symptoms. When you're older, though, really comes down to your environment. It's more about. ADHD is a particular executive functioning and dopamine difficulty. And if you're in a position where you are.

In an environment that doesn't gel with how your brain would work, really naturally, you're going to struggle more. And if you're in an environment where you don't have that issue, then you're going to struggle less. And that tends to be what it is.

Great. And when you talk about struggling more, what might that struggle feel like or look like?

Yeah. So what it would tend to look like, at least with people I work with, is you'll be more impulsive. You will struggle to keep track of what you're doing next, when you're doing it. You might struggle to manage your time, and you'll also struggle to work on sort of bigger projects, or you might have more on your plate than you did before. And sometimes that can be a sort of last draw for people when they realize that they have it.

Hmm. And is ADHD a spectrum that we all, as humans sit on? There's an opposite of adhd or is it something totally different?

I don't think it's a spectrum. I think that you can have, you know, when you look at the research, a Lot of the times people do talk about this idea of having subclinical adhd. So you might have strong symptoms, but you don't meet the requirements. A lot of the ADHD diagnostics are sort of built on that scale. But I would say that we can all do things that would seem similar to ADHD on a bad day. You know, I often say ADHD is you. When you haven't got enough sleep, you had a little bit too much coffee. That combo. That's adhd, at least.

Yeah. And ADD versus adhd.

Yeah. So nowadays it's called ADHD combined or inattentive. Primarily inattentive or, you know, primarily hyperactive. But yeah, when I was getting diagnosed, it was hyperactive was adhd, which is the more, you know, outward, you know, driven by a motor is a big thing that people talk about. And then ADD was more distracted.

Interesting. And your experience of it was this as a kid, was this later in life?

It was when I got my PhD. It was when I started my PhD.

Wow. So how did that strike you? And you're an adult. You're clearly very successful, very switched on. And how did that strike you when you got that diagnosis?

It was a lot. I had been an academic for a while at that point. I also taught developmental psychology. So I had taught in the place where you would think we would talk about this. But yeah, when I went to do my PhD, I'd burned out a number of times on the way there, and I really wanted to figure out, was there anything going on. Sometimes my writing was great, sometimes it wasn't. And so I was able to get, you know, go to the student learning center just down the road from here. Love them. Amazing. And they said, we think you have adhd. And it was a. I mean, I had to go home and Google. I had to go home and look up what that meant. I had so little knowledge at the time.

And it's interesting, you know, I look at ADHD as a. It's an incredible thing to know about once you know about it. But it can be a big hamstring and it can hold us back if going through life and we don't know that we've got ADHD 100%.

I mean, I was. The problem for me was I was burning out. Every few years I would go really hard on a Masters or an honors or something, and then I would burn out. I mean, the year before, I got a scholarship for my PhD, which was amazing. And I didn't even remember getting it. I was so burned out, I. I Went and I worked in a bakery for a year before I went back because I just didn't have any way of managing my energy at the time.

It's interesting you talk about burnout. I think back, like, my younger years. So I was a drummer. I learned drums as a kid, and it was a competitive type of drumming where you could get adjudicated and go to competitions. So I was very competitive from a very young age. I was traveling the world playing drums, teaching drums, selling drums. Eventually, everyone was drums. James, the drummer.

That's awesome.

Came to New Zealand teaching drums. Got here on a visa, culture visa through drums. I got to a point where I hated it. I hated it. The thought of lifting a pair of drumsticks, oh, my God, I can't be bothered. Like, it just brought me so much. Like, I was drained.

Yeah.

Is that me getting towards burnout? Would you say that was me, like, burning out?

It's. It's an interesting one. I mean, I'm not a burnout expert. I have learned a little bit of it because so many people I know experience it. I think often when people come to me, it's because they've been. The best way I can describe it is if you're doing something that doesn't quite. You're doing it in a way that doesn't quite fit you, and you're doing it a lot, and you're maybe having to put in like 130% extra effort compared to other people because you're doing it in this different way. Eventually, to hit a high bar, you are going to burn out. So for a lot of people, you know, sometimes I work with people and it's really sad. They've actually. They've stopped even allowing themselves to have goals because they have burned out. Because they don't know how to go for something in a way that doesn't take everything or, you know, they just. They just don't even try.

Yeah. And they probably sacrifice things along the way.

Oh, yeah, I did that too. I was like, as long as I don't have a social life, you know, I can do this academic thing.

And you probably justified the lack of social life. Like, this is what I need to do.

I mean, it was kind of the thing in academia, to be fair. It's not. It's not unusual.

Yeah. To be more, maybe introverted.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Interesting. Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London To Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes. And if someone's listening or watching right now and they're going, I wonder what I have adhd. What are the top three things that people come to you going, think I've got adhd. What are they?

Yeah, so this is an interesting one. And actually, you know, a lot of times I don't work with people who are only diagnosed. People don't realize that because I'm an executive functioning style coach, you don't have to be diagnosed. So the people who come to me, usually the people who, they forget everything, they've got working memory problems. They're like, if I am in a meeting and somebody says, hey, can you remember to do this thing? I'll say, yeah, 100%. And then I will 100% forget and I will never happen. And that will happen all the time. People who are time blind. So a great way you can see this is if somebody says, how long do you think that project will be? They will usually pull a number out of thin air.

And it could be next week or it could be next month, or it's probably tomorrow. And then the other one is just impulsivity. So people do struggle with impulsivity around kind of wanting to throw everything up in the air every six months. Especially if you're a business owner, it can be very easy. They call it Shiny Object syndrome, it's the colloquial term. And yeah, I've seen that, seen a lot of people taken down by shiny object syndrome.

I bet you have. Me too. I see it all the time.

Yeah.

And even like I think about it from a personal perspective, I, in terms of working memory, I think I've got a reasonable working memory. I read a lot, I teach a lot. From what, you know, what I've learned years ago, so I remember that stuff. But to come up here today and sit with you in Auckland, I had to drive my car to the airport in Christchurch and there's a multi story car park. Every time I go back to the airport, I have no idea which floor.

No idea I know I have to take a photo of the car.

I get the feeling I do the same thing at home. Seven to ten times a week. I will misplace my keys or my wallet for both and it will take me 10 minutes of being a little bit flustered, trying to track them down.

Yeah.

So should I be considering that maybe I have adhd?

Well, you are an entrepreneur and the research wouldn't. I think it was like 300% more likely to be an entrepreneur if you have ADHD. So if you have ADHD, I would say you should probably just get checked.

Just for that 100%. And let's talk about that. Do you feel ADHD is on the rise?

That is a good question. I definitely feel like an understanding of ADHD is on the rise. An understanding of adult ADHD is on the rise. I don't necessarily think that there is a. I don't necessarily think that ADHD is on the rise. I think that we're just broadening our understanding of what it is and a little bit of a. There's a little bit of a move away and a shift away and it's controversial. Away from the idea of it just being purely. I can only get it if I'm really struggling. I can only get a diagnosis if I'm really struggling.

Do you feel like. So on TikTok and the other channels, there's a lot coming up about ADHD and yes, there's some really great information, but 100%, there's lots of misinformation. Do you feel that there's maybe some problems around people being misdiagnosed or, sorry, self diagnosing and doing that in an inaccurate way?

Yeah, I think that that can be the case. You know, one of the biggest controversies in the last couple of years was the BBC. They did a whole presentation on, you know, diagnosis and the idea, not even of just self diagnosis, but of getting a private diagnosis. And it was a big thing in. In the uk. We actually got to speak to some people who wrote for the Guardian on it and what the NHS psychiatrist who diagnosed people said was that if you are spending a thousand dollars because it can be really expensive to get a diagnosis of adhd, you probably have something. It just might not be adhd. It might be more of a mental health struggle that you have. So you definitely have something and we probably need to give you some support. It's just unfortunately, sometimes people get told that it's ADHD when it was something else, in the same way as people might get told that it's you know, people used to get told, oh, you have anxiety when they had adhd. When they got the support for that, their anxiety reduced. So I think it's always good to, to figure it out. But you're probably not wrong that it's something.

Yeah. And there's these tests, I've taken one on online, so an assessment, ADHD assessment. And it pretty much said, james, you've got it.

And you were like, that's it, I'm done.

Yeah, done, take that. And then I thought, okay, so that's that. And then I started looking into it. Actually, no, there are clinical diagnosis. So to say that you've got ADHD and say you actually got it, you need to have a clinical diagnosis in New Zealand. So I had a friend that did this recently. It's very, very expensive. And there, I mean, we're talking, I think it was two or $3,000. And it's a long process and there's a big wait.

Yeah.

So do you feel that potentially there's a. Not money grabbing, but there's something in this where there's criticism around to get a diagnosis, you've got to be paying a small fortune.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really expensive and I don't, I don't know why it's expensive. I, you know, I think psychiatrists just, you know, there's a waiting list. There's the medication side of it. But I do think that if you, and this might be controversial, but if you do feel that you are struggling with executive functioning difficulties, which I separate from adhd, because executive functioning difficulties, which you can have with adhd, you can also have, if you have post traumatic stress disorder, for example. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you have it. If you want to get support for executive functioning difficulties, I don't think you should have to wait for a diagnosis. That's one of the reasons I don't make people wait for a diagnosis, because it can be years, 100%, and you need help.