Navigating the Waves of Grief with ADHD

Welcome to Ambitious ADHD, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of ADHD, embracing all the challenges and victories along the way. Today's episode is a heartfelt exploration of a topic that touches us all: grief. Join us as we share our personal journeys through loss and uncover how ADHD shapes our unique experiences of mourning.

In this Episode, you'll discover:

•    The intersection of ADHD and Grief: How our ADHD brains process the intense emotions that accompany loss differently.
•    Emotional flooding: We delve into the concept of 'flooding'—when overwhelming emotions take over—and its profound impact on those with ADHD during times of grief.
•   Personal stories of loss: Your hosts share their own stories of loss, offering a window into the deeply personal side of grief through an ADHD lens.
•    ADHD strengths in times of crisis: A look at why people with ADHD often excel in crisis situations and how this can affect the grieving process, sometimes delaying it.

 Cruse: https://www.cruse.org.uk/

MIND resources: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/bereavement/support-and-self-care/

 We're Here for You: Remember, you're not alone in your journey with ADHD or in facing the tides of grief. Through sharing our experiences, we hope to offer comfort, understanding, and a sense of community.

 Connect With Us: We love hearing from our listeners! Share your thoughts, stories, or feedback with us on info@katiestibbs.com

 Subscribe and Share: If you found solace or insight in today's episode, please subscribe to Ambitious ADHD and share this episode with someone who might need it too.

Transcript

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Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the podcast Ambitious.

Speaker B: ADHD, where we aim to change the conversation around neurodiversity, to talk about our challenges, our strengths, but to really learn to finally be ourselves because everyone else is taken. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. We are so happy that you have joined Sara and I here this morning, and this episode is going to be exploring grief. And grief is obviously a really tricky subject and full of so many ideas, but this is pretty relevant to both of us right now because I've recently lost somebody in the last six months that was very dear to me and Sara has lost someone very dear in the last couple of weeks. So we really wanted to explore grief and the fact that ADHD women are known for their big emotions, know, just allowing ourselves to just be who we are in this expression of grief. So. Hello, Sarah.

Speaker A: Hi, Katie.

Speaker B: Hello. And firstly, I'm so, so sorry that you have lost somebody that's so dear to and, but also really important, this topic, I think to kind of, I don't know how you would say unpack it, that's not the right word, but explore.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. I think grief just in society in general, doesn't get talked about enough. I think there are so many taboos around death and around mourning and how we mourn and how we grieve, what kind of normal or what. I hate this idea of good grief. So grief that kind of follows this natural trajectory and it follows these kind of linear steps and then it's over. So I was really curious to explore grief this week just because, as you said, we've both been through this recently and post diagnosis, I now understand that. I think I experience grief differently, but it's always impossible to say, isn't it, because we don't have neurotypical brains. So I'm not saying that it's worse for ADHD women. I think it is different. And I was really keen to kind of explore that in today's episode, especially because there will be plenty of people listening who are experiencing loss or have experienced loss. And I want those people to know that they're not alone. Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. That we are all connected, we are supported, and all of us will obviously experience loss. And in this country, you're right, we don't talk about it. We hate to see our relatives and our friends suffering. And oftentimes we just kind of pretend it's not happening or try and offer solution. So it's really important. And how do you think, and why do you think we experience it differently?

Speaker A: So I've only come to the why very recently, but the how has been kind of rattling around my brain for. For quite a while. So I've had a few experiences of major loss in my life, but I've been to lots of funerals, and that's just unlucky, I guess. I've lost colleagues. And I remember in my 20s, maybe late 20s, going to a funeral with a colleague who was young, very young, far too young. And I remember just being in such a catatonic state of grief. And I remember she wasn't a blood relative, she was a colleague, a former colleague at the time, actually. But it was somebody that I really had a great friendship and relationship with. I'd really enjoyed her company. And I found that at the funeral, I was in such a state of almost like catatonia. I could not stop crying. And it felt so overwhelming and so all consuming and it's so hard to explain unless you've experienced it. And I'm sure that listeners will kind of understand this feeling and then that kind of sense of not being able to stop the tears and this just deep, intense sadness. And I felt it at every single funeral that I've ever been to. And sometimes it's reached the point of almost being inappropriate, like crying so much that people are kind of looking at you thinking, what on earth? Because you're not in front row, you're not close family. And I know we talked about this recently, didn't we? That idea of if you cry too much, then people think, well, what a drama queen, or she can't contain her emotions. And then with that comes a lot of shame. Now, I didn't know that I had ADHD when all of this was happening, but in the last year and since my diagnosis, I've been to three funerals and I have been exactly the same at all of them. I have felt almost crying to the point of being unable to breathe. And they were all people that were dear to me, but not close until the funeral that I went to recently, which was last weekend. And that was just the most horrific experience. It was very quick, and I think that definitely had an influence. So I was very sadly lost a very dear, close friend and colleague very suddenly just over a week ago. And he was a Muslim, which means that his funeral happened very quickly, as is the tradition after he passed away. And I was just an absolute mess at his funeral, just absolute mess. And I hadn't prepared myself because he was in an open casket. And I've been very lucky never to have seen a dead body. And so this was the first time I'd ever seen somebody with my, you know, not on tv or on a film in real life. And he looks so peaceful. But I was not prepared for it. And I think I have completely blocked. I almost have a memory blank of the rest of that afternoon. It's almost like it was so traumatizing that my brain has just kind of deleted what I did in the few hours afterwards. I just found it so overwhelming. And has this been your experience, Katie, of funerals?

Speaker B: How do you. Yeah, it's literally an opening up of a well so deep. That's what it feels. You know, I can only put it down to. And you might have a different explanation for it, but this idea of this kind of unity, this, like, feeling everybody else in the world's pain at the same time. And, yeah, I have also had that experience at every funeral I've ever been to. Yeah. Apart from others, which we didn't go to, which is just the most bizarre thing ever. But in those days, it was not the dumb thing. But yes, I have experienced those outpourings of huge emotion.

Speaker A: Andy, have you ever felt conspicuous, like people are looking at you because you're a snotty mess and it's almost felt sort of disproportionate to the love?

Speaker B: Absolutely. I didn't feel shame over it, if I'm honest, because I just allowed myself to do it. But I have had to hold myself back from really doing what I really wanted to do. Yeah, I hear you.

Speaker A: And it's not. I've been talking to quite a few women with ADHD about grief and about this feeling. And I think you posited the theory that it's because we feel everything so deeply. And I think, absolutely, yes. We don't have more emotion than other people. We just feel that emotion more deeply. I think it's important to say that. And there's this idea with ADHD. There's a chemical explanation. There's that process that's called flooding. And it happens with sadness, but it happens with excitement and it happens with all kinds of emotions, strong emotions, where when they happen, they happen so quickly that it feels as if your brain. I don't know about you, and this is going to sound so weird, but I can sometimes feel. It's almost like I can feel the chemicals surging around my brain, particularly around sadness, particularly when it's very sudden or a shock. And there's this idea that suddenly you're kind of drowning in all of these strong feelings and that's the best way I can describe it. It's like your brain. My brain is being flooded with all of these kind of. And I don't want to say negative emotions because I think we try and teach our children, don't we, that all emotions are valid and important. And it's important. It's part of the human experience that we experience all of them and we experience all of them fully. And that is what it is to be human. So I don't want to say negative emotions, but certainly emotions that can make you feel like you've been winded, they knock the breath out of you and genuinely, aren't they? So intense? Yeah, so intense sometimes in terms of almost forgetting to breathe. The funeral that I was at last weekend, I was almost hyperventilating. And I was so lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing women who are colleagues and friends and who were able to hold my hand and just remind me to breathe. In for four, out for four. But I did feel that shame. I do feel the shame of people kind of, even if they're not. I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, do people think that I'm being a huge drama queen? And what will think? And is this appropriate? And almost. There have been times when I've been more visibly upset than family members and I think, well, that is not. People are going to think it's inappropriate, but I can't stop it. I can't do anything about it. But I feel that shame.

Speaker B: Yes. And you just reminded me of a really good friend of mine that has been really traumatized recently from her outpouring of emotion for a friend and then was literally made to feel so awful by her other friends, dear, dear friends, that she was absolutely kind of shunned and shamed. So she's also ADHD. So this is obviously very difficult for her. But there's something going on with the other people in the circle or whoever circle not being able to, not knowing what to do and judging and having their own rules around what is appropriate.

Speaker A: And having these very neurotypical rules around what is appropriate and what is appropriate grief. What should it look like and how long should it last? And I think, yeah, it's important that we talk about it. And that's why I'm really pleased that we're able to talk about it today, because I think it's really important for people to. I think there's a growing conversation around neurodiversity and there's more kind of understanding that people work in different ways, perhaps, or prefer different environments. But I think it's really important that people understand that it applies to the absolute, the entire spectrum of human emotions. And that does include grief. And so if there's somebody, if you're stood by somebody at a funeral and they're struggling to hold it together, you could be stood next to somebody who's neurodivergent. And just because they're processing it differently to you or their emotional response is different to you, it doesn't mean that it's wrong, and it doesn't mean that their feelings are any less valid or more valid than anyone else's. It's just a very personal emotional response.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So important to remember that, especially as buttoned up Brits. And it is that, isn't it? I think it does have a lot to do with that cultural aspect.

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. We are so british people. Just that stiff upper lip thing and that idea that for 2 hours in a church or a crematorium, you can grieve and then you go away, and then within a few weeks, your grief is supposed to be over. I think there's so much we can change about our culture's attitude to death, to dying, to what we do and how we behave post death. It's such a natural. Somebody said something really beautiful, actually. It was my friend's daughter, and I was expressing my deep sorrow for their untimely and just tragic loss. And she said. She held my hand and said, it is the only thing we are guaranteed in life is the end of it. And I just thought, that is so beautiful. And she was being so strong and able to kind of recognize that. That it is such a natural, but it is a natural order of things, that there is life and there is death, and we have new life, we celebrate new life, and there is loss. And I think we are just so clinical about the way. And this is everything from hospitals to care homes to just end of life in general. I think we're so clinical about it, and I think we really could look to other cultures personally. I think there is so much that we could learn and change about grief and death and our attitude to all of those things. I think so much of it is cultural. And I think we kind of neurodivergent women. There's no wonder we struggle, because we're dealing with these huge emotions, fudding emotions in a societal context, context that expects us to be sad, but just sad enough.

Speaker B: Just sad enough.

Speaker A: And that's not how we work. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And just you talking about then. So it's literally like a barrier. The barrier is so thin that we experience everything so viscerally.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Something else I really wanted to talk about today was kind of ADHD and grief and some of the other things that come up that are perhaps unexpected. So we've talked about the big emotional reactions, but something that I found when I've experienced loss is we've talked about before, haven't we? The idea that we are as ADHD as. I can fall apart if a delivery is ten minutes late or if something tiny goes wrong in the day, I can completely fall apart. But if it's a real, genuine crisis, I'm probably the person you want around. And I don't mean me personally, but just we as ADHD people, because there is something about us that means we are great in a crisis. I think it's partly hyper focus. As soon as we know that it's a real crisis, we can go into this mode where we can get stuff done. And so I've been reflecting on this as it kind of manifested itself last weekend at my friend's funeral. So because the funeral was so sudden, the family, very sadly, hadn't had time. It was less than 48 hours later and they hadn't had the opportunity to think about funeral flowers. So when I got there, I had a conversation with his daughter whereby she was worried that they didn't have flowers. And I said, right, leave it with me. And I don't know if you've ever tried to sort out funeral flowers at 45 minutes notice, because that's the deadline that we had. And whereas anyone else might have just thought, well, this is impossible, it's not going to happen. And it was a Saturday and I just switched into this kind of focus mode where I thought, right, we need these flowers. We have 45 minutes. Go. And I was very lucky. I had some brilliant female colleagues with me who were able to help me, but we called around every florist in Cardiff until we found somebody who could do exactly what they wanted. And one of my friends kind of rushed across town, know, busy traffic, and she managed to get the flowers back. We found a florist that we got the flowers, and afterwards I was reflecting on just. That's a classic example of how give you a crisis and we can be really good in those crises. Even in the middle of this kind of depth of feeling, I'm looking back and just think, how the hell did we manage to get those flowers in time? But I knew that it was important for his family and for me, it was important. It was my tribute to my friend that he had beautiful flowers and we made it happen. And I just think there's something. And I did exactly the same at my dad's funeral as well. I remember when I was 21 and my father passed away, my mum obviously wasn't in a great place and so I switched into this hyper focus where I took all of the paperwork and admin, all stuff that I'm really **** at in normal life. These are not things that I like to do, these are not things that I'm good at doing in my own life. But I could see my mum couldn't cope and I took it all off her. And I was 21 and I hadn't really had time to process my dad's loss. But literally the next day I was sorting through paperwork. I was calling up about his pension fund and his mobile phone bill and telling all these kind of service providers to change the name on his account. All these really kind of cold, clinical things that have to be done in the aftermath of a death. And I look back and I think I was 21 and I'd just lost my father. And just, again, that ability to just switch into that real focus on what needs to be done, isn't that paradoxical? Yes. I don't understand it at all. Yeah.

Speaker B: But it's so relevant and it's happened so often that it can't be just a trait. And I just wonder if that's nature's way of kind of helping us out.

Speaker A: Yeah. And to get back to the science, the tricky bit for us as ADHD is the switch. So we have a faulty switch between the TPN, which is the task positive network. So that's when we're kind know, doing something, focus on something, and the DMN, which is the default mode network. And that's where we kind of ruminate, where we overthink. And we have a very sticky switch between those two networks, which is why we procrastinate so much, which is why we often struggle with deadlines, often struggle with getting tasks started. But when we're in them and we're enjoying them, we can completely lose track of time. All of that is to do with the difficulty that we have. So for neurotypical people, it's easy or easier to switch between those two modes, but for us, it's very difficult for us to jump between one and the other. And I've been wondering whether, because that task positive network is the kind of staying busy isn't. It's the getting stuff done, it's ticking things off. Whereas the DMN the default mode network, that's the space where we ruminate, that's where we overthink things, and that is probably where processing happens as well. And I almost wonder if there's an element of us that we stay in that TPN mode getting stuff done, the being there for other people, the staying busy, because it means that we don't have to think about the thing that's so painful and we can put that off for as long as possible.

Speaker B: It's a forced deadline. Yeah.

Speaker A: I don't know about you. I do know about you, actually. I think I know you well enough now. But give me a deadline, a genuine deadline, a genuine crisis, and I will absolutely just smash it. But if there wasn't a deadline, or if it wasn't urgent or it didn't feel urgent or necessary, then I'm not going to be able to find you flowers for three weeks time, never mind 45.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's the emotion as well behind it. It's for people that you love. It's the compassionate nature as well, of the empathy. There's no way you're going to let anyone down in that situation when there's a deadline and love and care and a task to do.

Speaker A: Yeah. And not kind of being with them in their pain and absorbing, you know, that thing about it. As ADHD people, you can read a room, so your intuition is so finely tuned that you walk into a room and you can feel the emotion or the mood. I hate the word vibe, but that's what I mean in a room. And I think there's something about funerals and grieving where you just. It's almost like you're absorbing people's pain by osmosis. You would do anything to take it away. And I think that hyper empathy is one of our superpowers. I think it makes us amazing at a huge amount of occupations. I'm grateful that I have it. I wouldn't want to be any other way, I don't think. But I think when you're dealing with loss and pain and you're surrounded by people in pain, you're not only dealing with your own, but you're almost kind of breathing all of that pain in and exhaling it.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, it's huge, isn't it? Absolutely. I totally relate to that and I.

Speaker A: Can'T tell you how validating it was because it was really. Of the funerals I've been to in the last year, this is the one I found the most difficult, I think, because I'd seen him just a couple of hours before he'd passed away. It was so sudden. And I think there was something about this one that felt really tricky. So tricky is a terrible word. Actually, it was worse than that. It was so much worse. And in the aftermath, I was reading, I just googled ADHD and grief. And it was so validating to realize that there are reasons why it might feel, and I'm not going to say more difficult, but just more intense and different for neurodivergent people to deal with grief because you think, oh, is it just me and years of feeling like a weirdo at a funeral, like in Wales? This is such a tangent, but we have a book of legends called the Mabanogyon. Have you heard of them? Oh, my God, it's such a great book. So it's all these kind of absolutely mad stories. They're so mad that you think they must have been on acid. They absolutely must have. How did they come up with this stuff? So we've got like giants who lie across kind of land masses to make bridges and all kinds of things. But there's one story that I remember about a woman who displayed. She went to a funeral in these myths and legends, and she laughed at the funeral, and she was punished for laughing at the funeral because it was an inappropriate reaction. But I kind of wonder retrospectively if obviously she's not real, but was there something going on for her, that kind of idea of an inappropriate reaction? But again, it comes back to what is appropriate and what isn't really. But I think it's really important that we have more conversations like this. And it's really important for women, people, not just women with ADHD, to understand that there is a chemical reason, there is a biological, brain based reason why grief might feel particularly overwhelming for you. And that's not to say that everyone doesn't struggle and suffer because of grief, but the intensity of it for us has an explanation. So I just found that really validating.

Speaker B: That is so validating. And I love that idea of those fables or legends or whatever, because obviously they're based on something originally kind of. Who knows?

Speaker A: Yeah, true.

Speaker B: And the human condition. And I know so many people that laugh when they are totally overwhelmed, or that's their inappropriate response. But what is appropriate and inappropriate? It's nuts, really, if you.

Speaker A: They're just social constructs.

Speaker B: And can I ask you, this is just something that just came to me just then in your experience, which has been now I think about it, the weird way that my grief is processed is that my grief, I think, and this could be wrong for when other people die in my life, is much more extreme with people I know a little less.

Speaker A: That's so interesting. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's vicarious.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And I'm just thinking maybe there's something in there.

Speaker A: When I think back to my dad's funeral, and by the way, I'm so sorry to hear that you didn't get to go to your son. You were only ten, weren't you, when you. So I still think it must have been really difficult to not have that opportunity to say goodbye, even though I know things were very different back then. I was 21 when my dad passed away and I did go to his funeral. I actually read one of his favorite pieces of poetry at his funeral. But you know what? I held myself together at his funeral and I felt like I probably was, in inverted commas, more appropriate during my father's funeral than I have been at any funeral since. And I really wondered what was going on for me there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I wonder if maybe I just wouldn't let my brain stay in the sadness long enough. You know that idea that we struggle to focus, right, like, focus is a problem for us. I think that I really struggle to focus on the grieving process with my dad. And I think keeping myself busy by helping my mum with the practical stuff meant that it was actually years until I processed the grief over losing my father. But to come back to your point, I have been more tearful, more kind of snotty mascara. Mascara and snotty at funerals of people that maybe I haven't seen for a little while. And last year, a very dear friend lost her husband. I didn't know him that well, but my friend is just an amazing person. And my reaction at his funeral, again, disproportionate. I felt like the legs were going to go from underneath because I felt her pain. And not just her pain in the moment, but what was coming for her.

Speaker B: So it is almost an allowing for somebody else's grief, but not allowing your own. I wonder if there's something in this, because I thought this was just me, but maybe it is an adhd tendency or a human tendency. I don't know. I think there might be something in this.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really interesting. I know we've talked about before, when we have brains that work so fast, we do something I call fast forwarding the logic tape. So what you're doing is kind of always working out. What does this mean tomorrow? What does it mean in a year's time? Kind of because we think so quickly and that's why we can struggle to take people along with us in a work setting, I think because you're always thinking, right, what does this mean now, tomorrow? And that process happens so fast that you have no control over it, but you're always trying to think, not even trying.

Speaker B: No, it just happens. Feeling into all of the feelings over the next ten years.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I think at my friend husband's funeral, my logic tape was fast forwarding to just the enormity of the grief that she would be feeling over the next year and thinking about what's it going to be like for her. He did all the cooking. How is she going to manage? Will she be eating okay? How are we all going to make sure that she eats all of these kind of things? And that, I think, is what was coming out in my tears was kind of obviously sad for his untimely death, but he had been a little bit poorly for a while. But really it was grief for her and grief for that hyperempathy bit again. And then fast forwarding into this kind of imaginary feature where everything was going to be terrible for her. Those two things combined is what resulted in that. For me, anyway.

Speaker B: Yeah. So fascinating.

Speaker A: It is, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah. And also, I just want to point, after witnessing, like, for example, my mum's grief, which was absolutely beyond. Well, not beyond it was her experience of grief, but having witnessed that, just for anybody that is experienced that totality of just total devastation where, quite frankly, nothing, no words, people saying the right. I mean, it's just indescribable. And having read about it and other people's and helped other people with their grief, it comes in all forms, all sizes, all experiences. There are no linear stages. Even though people like you to kind of go through this process and then finish now because your pain bumps up against their pain and their pain is activated, then they would rather not, like you said, face their own mortality, face their own struggles. And even though other people mean well, it's really difficult. I remember my mum being devastated. And this is something, since I explored it in depth, that is very typical. Her friends, people she knew well, would literally walk, cross over the road.

Speaker A: In.

Speaker B: The distance because they didn't know what to say. And rather, lots of people lose lots of friendships in grief because, yeah, I've.

Speaker A: Had this too, and my mum did too. People who didn't come to see her because they didn't know. What do you say to a 40 year old woman who's just lost her husband.

Speaker B: And it's double grief, double, double pain for the person that's just lost their brother, their son, their partner, whatever.

Speaker A: Definitely. And I learned something about valuable, I think, about grief that I'll carry with me last weekend, which was when I went to see my friend and colleague's wife, which was the day after he passed away, which was very sudden, not a bone in my body wanted to do this. I was so anxious about sitting with her and saying the wrong thing and kind of, again, brain moving faster than your mouth. I'm going to say something stupid or I'm going to offend her or I'm going to say something that sounds trite. And I just kept saying to myself as I walked over to her house, do not say how are you? Don't ask her that because there is no answer to that. The answer is obvious, you know that, so don't say that. So I just had this little mantra in my brain. Don't ask her how she is. Don't ask her how she is. And I walked over there and I didn't ask her how she was, but I had to really tell myself that consciously because how are you? That's the obvious question, isn't it? But it's such a stupid question. And I remember my mum getting angry about people asking her how she was, how am. I've just lost my effing husband. How do you think I am? So I guess I carried that with me and I didn't ask her that and I just sat with her. And I'm so grateful that I did her few courses in psychotherapy a few years ago because that taught me the power of active listening. So what I did do was just sit with her in her grief and held her hand and held her and told her that she was not alone and that he loved her and that she was loved. And I felt incapable of saying anything beyond that, really. And the following day at the funeral, what really struck me was that. So muslim funerals tend to be segregated. So us women were sat in one room and we gathered 2 hours before the funeral to pray. So the muslim women in the room prayed. Others just sat and thought and remembered him. And it was just such a beautiful thing. And there was something so beautiful in there. There was no ceremony, there were no words. People who wanted to pray could pray. But you described it earlier as being like elephants. It was almost like us women were sat around holding his beautiful young widow in our thoughts. But kind of physically she was surrounded by her daughter, she was surrounded by friends and we were largely sat in silence. But there was something so powerful about that and about. She wasn't alone at home getting ready for this ceremony. She was with the women that she loved, her friends, her family, the extended community. And there was something about that. I'll remember that forever. Your comparison to elephants, about that idea of elephants surrounding their kind of really gathering round in a crisis. And there was something about that as well that I'll take with me. There was actually something really touching about that. And it's so different to the way we do funerals.

Speaker B: I'm sorry to interrupt you. No, I just think that's just so beautiful. I'm just imagining. Because it's presence, isn't it? It's the physical presence. Because if you think about it, words can be so intrusive and not the right word, especially.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And I'm a writer. I think words have great power. But I also think there are times in life when words are just entirely inadequate for the experience that you're in or that you're trying to comfort somebody else in. And we don't do it enough. I don't think we embrace the power of just silently sitting with somebody in their pain and not feeling like you have to say something or like you have to comfort something. Because there are no words. There are no words. And that struck me as well, in terms of grief and ADHD, is that we so often say the wrong thing because our brains work faster than our mouth muscles do. Right. So just accepting that sometimes there is nothing you can say and you shouldn't say anything, and that's absolutely fine. And actually, we could probably all do a bit more of that. A bit more of that as well. Yeah.

Speaker B: And just knowing that, being aware of the implications of our words. But also, there's like, something, isn't there, about just being there and still attempting over and over again to support. You'll get it right in the end, but turning away and just, like, pretending it's not happening rather than say the wrong thing is also. I mean, it's a very terrific, tricky path to navigate, for sure. When you went over there and just were with her, that's sometimes the best thing that we can do.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think you can hold people without physically holding them. You can hold them just by giving them space and time. And some people just want to. She wanted to talk about him, and actually she was recounting anecdotes about him that were actually quite funny. And again, it's okay to laugh. Obviously devastated at his passing, but there were some elements of his personality that were just inherently amusing. And she was sharing some things that had happened with them over the last few days before he died. And I was laughing because he was funny. He made me laugh, too, and it's why I valued him so much. He was actually one of my fellow local councilors, so we'd spent hundreds of hours together on the campaign trail, and one of the things I loved the most about him was because he had this kind of irreverent humor. So he would always break up a kind of tense situation with a kind of light remark, and he'd always bring the sweets. And I love that about him because you need that in an election campaign, which can get really fraught. And I love that about him. And I love being able to share that kind of with his. I don't even want to use the word widow because it seems so, like, sudden with his wife. She'll always be his beloved wife. But, yeah, it's not easy. It's not easy to be the person grieving, but to be the people trying to support the people in their grief also comes with its own challenges for us, I think.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Especially because we hate to see the pain in others and we just want to alleviate it, but you can't. You've just got to be with it. And I think that's what we should be taught about. I think that pain is normal. It's a normal response when we lose somebody.

Speaker A: We shouldn't shun people because they're in pain. Exactly.

Speaker B: The suffering comes when we feel kind of dismissed or unsupported.

Speaker A: Yeah. Or unvalidated. I don't feel heared or I don't feel kind of listened to or accepted and, yeah, definitely. Something else that occurred to me about the kind of aftermath of losing somebody when you have ADHD, is that so often what happens is that your routine and structure just go out of the window. Right. So you stop doing the things that hold you together. So for me, in this case, I just want to emphasize that it's a friend that I lost. It wasn't a partner, it wasn't a blood relative. So I don't want to over kind of state kind of my pain or my grief, and I really want to acknowledge that my friend has a beautiful family who are just going through the worst possible experience right now. But I'm sharing this because I think it's really important to talk about this, and I think it's such a big part of life for all of us. But I think also for neurodiverse people, we need to understand more about why grief might have that kind of different impact on us. So something that happened for me is that I didn't run that weekend, I didn't meditate for a few days. I was just in this state, wandering around just in this complete days, and everything that I normally do kind of went out the window. And what happened as a result is my stress levels and my anxiety levels three days later were just completely off the charts. I ended up not running for a week. That has a really negative impact on me. Not so much the running, but the just exercise and being outside. All of that went by the wayside. I stopped meditating. I wasn't eating very well or not eating properly. And all of these are things that are absolutely natural in grief happens. It's to be expected. But I think for us, when routines and structure go out the window and when you have ADHD, that is terrible news for us. We both hate routines and structure, but conversely, we need them more than the general population. I think I call my daily routines the scaffolding that allows me to be and to get through the amount of stuff I need to do in a day. I almost feel like I couldn't manage without them. But then when something big seismic happens and all of that falls by the wayside, there's no wonder that the result of that is that your mental health takes a very sudden nosedive because you're stepping away from all the things that matter. Do you have any experience of that?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I just think that's such a good point because it's the first to go, isn't it, almost, that structure, and actually it can be pushed away because you don't feel like doing it, you can't do it, and then inadvertently everything falls apart. So, yeah, that's really so important to remember. How did you make yourself get back into it?

Speaker A: So it had been exactly a week and I just thought he wouldn't want you to be feeling this way. He was such a lovely, lovely man that just had such a smiley, cheery disposition that I just thought he wouldn't want you to be feeling this way. And I put my trainers on and the first run I did was really hard because there's almost this point of this kind of, well, what's the point? Everyone dies in the end. And this really kind of nihilistic. What's the point of exercising? What's the point of any of it? Almost like I switched right into teenage mode for that week, I think. And the difficulty is he lived really nearby. So I would walk past his house every day. So there's this constant reminder of that he's not here. He was here yesterday and now he's not here anymore. So when I got back to it, even though that first one back was really hard afterwards, I just thought, why have you not done this for a week, you idiot? You know, it works, as in again, we've talked about lots. It doesn't make me euphoric, but it does really help my mental health. When I exercise for at least an hour a day, it just helps me. So getting back to it was hard, but I needed to do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, you needed to do it.

Speaker A: Actually.

Speaker B: Now, the more that we're exploring this, I think this is really important. And actually, you're right, there's nothing written. There's not much written about this subject for ADHD women. And it's perhaps obviously turning away from death. Because we never want to talk about anybody dying.

Speaker A: No, because it's painful for us. Anything difficult again feels more intense or more magnified. But I think we have to. So much of us spend our lives masking, don't we, in order to fit in, especially in a corporate setting or whatever it is or at the school gate. So much of us kind of spend our lives masking. And then I think what happens when a big loss happens to you, particularly unexpectedly, is suddenly your ability to mask is just taken away. It's untenable. You cannot because of the intensity of what you're going through. And what I wish for more than anything is that there's more research done into not just ADHD, but neurodivergence and grief will stop. It would be amazing if somebody somewhere could do a really kind of detailed study on this because it's such a big part of life. It's as much a part of life as birth. And I think it would be great to have some more kind of scientific research into how we experience it and what we can do to help mitigate the worst of that as well. But just talking about it, and that's why I'm really glad. And I know we'll wrap up soon because it's been a pretty heavy episode, but I think the fact that we can talk about it today as to ADHD women and for listeners out there who are going through this or who have ever been through this or fortunately might have to go through this in the future, just knowing that you're not alone and everything feeling too big and overwhelming, and it doesn't mean you're broken or weird or strange. And there absolutely should be no shame around it. Like, if I have one mission in life now, it's to remove or help other women step away from any feelings of shame that they might have around their brain. Because we were born with these brains, and they are beautiful brains, and they are beautifully unique, every single one of us. And I just want to just really remove some of those stigmas and some of that shame around behavior that we just can't help. It's who we are, and it's okay. These societal constructs, we didn't get a say in what's acceptable and appropriate and what isn't. We didn't get to decide. So many of these things are kind of beyond our control. And it's absolutely okay to stray outside of those made up lines anyway, whatever you need to do to deal with your grief. And even if that is, and I know from some of my friends that that might be just hyper focusing on stuff that needs to be done and not feeling the grief for years. And that's fine, too. This idea that we go through this linear seven stages, and we were talking about the fact that that's been completely kind of discredited in the sense that the stages are correct, but it's not linear. I think it's a spiky process. You'll have kind of dips and troughs, and you can have long periods of time when you feel rage. Rage so much, not just sadness. It's complex and it's deep and it throws up a lot of challenges, as.

Speaker B: We'Ve outlined in this episode, allowing it.

Speaker A: Allowing it in and wanting people to know that they're not alone. That's how I'd like to kind of leave this episode.

Speaker B: Yeah. Very well said. Very well said, sarah. I absolutely concur with all of that. We're not broken. We're not alone. We're just here we are to be.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Oh, it was lovely talking to you.

Speaker A: Well, you too, darling. Katie, thank you. I know that was a big subject, but it's one we need to talk about more, I think. More and more.

Speaker B: Absolutely. All right, well, I'll speak to you next time.

Speaker A: Lots of love. Lots of love. Bye. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker B: I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you would like more of this kind of stuff, join us at we love pupil school.

Speaker A: For people that want to create lasting.

Speaker B: Relationship, great communication, and build a life that means that they can be fully themselves.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening.