The Creative ADHD Brain: Strengths, burnout and balance with Estelle Rose

And you mentioned that you had some struggles when you were younger in terms of belonging.

When you discovered that you were ADHD, how were things different?

Yeah, so I think the late diagnosis, the main shift for me was around acceptance of But I think it was more acceptance as in between myself and I rather than between me and the world.

It was the fact that some behaviours that I might have internalised as failures in the past or been really harsh on myself for not doing certain things.

Or again, yes, that question of like, why am I the odd one out? I felt whole about that and I felt that I could be a lot more forgiving with myself.

But I'm not sure it necessarily changed a lot in terms of feeling like the odd one out.

Maybe it's helped me in that sense.

probably helped me embrace it and so be more like yeah that's just you know tough deal with it type stuff so within reason I'm still a very you know uh I still fawn quite a lot I think but yeah

and can you explain for those who haven't come across this yet yeah sure um

It's not an easy one, but let me try.

So people will be familiar with flight and fright, right? Freeze, freeze, fright and fright.

And fawn is another one in that category, in the reactions that you can have when something happens.

So you can either freeze or you can prepare to fight or you can fawn.

And fawn is...

I suppose it's being agreeable and you're trying to make things smoother.

And we tend to have a huge tendency of that in ADHD.

Now, again, ADHD is only one label and we don't live in a vacuum.

So there's also certain experiences, traumas that will reinforce those tendencies.

But yeah, there's a huge people-pleasing tendency in women with ADHD.

Yeah.

A term that is a bit more familiar than fawning, but that's, yeah.