Dr. Sasha Hamdani: Why Disciplined Women Fall Apart (It's Not Anxiety, It's ADHD)

I was diagnosed with ADHD at seven and spent the next twenty years on medication before taking myself off everything in 2021. For most of that time I thought ADHD just meant I couldn't focus. Nobody ever told me the part actually running my life was emotional regulation.

Dr. Sasha Hamdani is a psychiatrist and ADHD specialist who has ADHD herself. She explains why ADHD is a regulation disorder rather than an attention disorder, why the diagnostic criteria were built by studying hyperactive little boys and how that leaves women misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression, and what is happening in your amygdala when one small criticism floods you for hours. We get into rejection sensitivity, procrastination, perfectionism, sleep, caffeine and ADHD medication, and I share for the first time that my six-year-old son was just diagnosed.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Trailer/Intro

1:00 - Welcome to the Empower Podcast

1:45 - Diagnosed with ADHD at seven, Ritalin and an eating disorder

2:50 - What we miss when we call ADHD an attention problem

3:40 - Dr. Sasha Hamdani on ADHD as a regulation disorder

4:15 - Her own ADHD diagnosis and the "vitamin" her parents gave her

5:30 - Finding out at seventeen that it was ADHD medication

7:00 - Why ADHD medication alone doesn't treat ADHD

8:20 - Relearning how to sleep, eat and function with an ADHD brain