Episode 11 - Nicki (When ADHD and Menopause meet)

Join me as Nicki discusses menopause and an adult diagnosis of ADHD.

You can find Nicki's music here: https://www.acousticnicki.com/

Find out more about me: www.pauseandalign.com

Erin is the creator and host of Menopause Chats. She is also a somatic and intuitive coach who helps women in the in-between live with more magic and intention through her signature approach The 5 Cs of Becoming Her. More information at: www.pauseandalign.com

The stories shared in Menopause Chats are not intended as medical advice, but for information and entertainment. Please seek a medical professional for specific advice regarding your menopause journey. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi everyone, welcome to Menopause Chats. I am Aaron Daruska. Today I have a very dear friend that I uh have stayed in touch with over many, many years. Uh Nikki, who is joining us. Uh we met in college. Actually, I don't know if you remember this. We met my senior year of high school because I came to tour the university and you were at the table for the radio station, and then you go on air, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yes, I remember that. I'm pretty sure I yeah, I do remember that. We may even have pictures of it somewhere when you come to the tables. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

So anyway, so so thank you for for for being a part of this. So tell me now that we're women of a certain age. Yes. Where are you? Uh where are you in your your journey here?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So um, well, I'm 52. I started um uh pretty much menopause, really. I want to say I started having perimenopausal symptoms, probably around 40 or so. Um by 45, I was done. So I had a very early, very early menopause. So I've been in and out. Done in and out. Now, ever since then, I have had a lot of um the typical low estrogen issues. Um, and I've had a lot of um like the hot flashes and all that. I went through that earlier, and every once in a while one will hit me, but that was maybe about a five-year period. It was like off and on. Um, but my all of my issues now are um, I mean, I'm I'm doing pretty well. I think a lot of me doing pretty well is not so much that I have all of my uh low estrogen issues under control, so much as I am just general, generally accepting of myself a good bit more than I think I was before, and I just don't care. Yeah, I don't know if that's part of it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Like it is, right? That lady did that I don't care club and it blew up, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I have been watching her since her very first one. Yeah, and she's right, she's absolutely right, and she's you know, good for her. Yeah, because she's adorable and and it's true, and all these everybody else is posting the same thing, and it it's true though. It's I mean, of course we care, but we don't want to care. We don't care if we expected to care, we care in a different way. Yeah, we care, we care in the way that the people that are closest to us are still gonna be taken care of as they need to, but anything extraneous just is irrelevant.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I feel like it's like I care about not what people think of me, I care about being a nice person and not being a jerk. But like if you don't like me because you think I'm weird, because I do breaky or something, whatever, okay. I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

That's it, that's a you issue, that's not a me issue. Yeah, your opinion of me is none of my business. Right. I love that I love that quote so much. It's like, yeah, what you think of me is none of my business. Yep. It's yeah, so I think I feel so I feel a lot better, even though like our bodies are sap have sabotaged us. You know, there's so many annoying issues and everything that go on, but um, but I feel like my attitude about it is much more comfortable and positive than it was. I like myself a lot more now, overweight and uncomfortable and with all these other issues than I did when I was in my 20s and in pretty good shape and nothing really to complain about, but I still complained about everything. So it's like I had if only that girl had this mindset, but it doesn't work that way. It doesn't you have to live through, you have to live through it in order to realize how how silly we were.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

I know. I think of the same thing. I was like, wow, like I what wasted energy I had.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

We kind of talked about this a little bit beforehand, right? Like, I don't have the energy to waste on that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

That is true, that's absolutely true. And I have to look at things even with conversations. I was I had a conversation with my mom, and we started talking about something, someone somewhere, and we were trying to, she was trying to suggest the exact moment, and we both agreed that it's not important. Like, let's not waste, you know, we got the point, you know, it was like when once you start trying to figure out the exact or exact like we're good. Let's move on. We can move on. Yeah, yeah, it's all it's all good. Yeah, we don't need to react.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

We also talked a little bit beforehand, too, about like one, your own personal experience with ADHD, but also like more women our age are now getting diagnosed with ADHD. Yes. Love to hear your perspective there.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

So, well, thank you. I'm happy to give my perspective on this. Um, I find it fascinating that a lot of the like the dialogue is that why all of a sudden are all these people, so everybody has ADHD ADHD now. And it's not that everybody suddenly has it. We've all, we, those of us that have been diagnosed with it have always had it. And as we're we learn more about what it is now, we know we've always had it. And a lot of us, I think, mourn the fact that we weren't diagnosed sooner and we weren't um medicated, if that's the route people have taken sooner, to be able to go in a lot of cases a completely different path. I would not be where I am doing what I am today had I been medicated as a child or as not so much as a child, but as a young adult, you know, at all these different phases. Um, for better or for worse. I have no regrets, but you even when you say you have no regrets, you still can't help but wonder how how different would things be had this been, you know, had I not it more than anything, it's given me the ability to give myself some grace and realize that this is just the way my brain works, that I have all of these, all of these things that have made me me. So I I can appreciate them, but it's uh it's frustrating. It's pretty hard. I think a lot of us also during lockdown, I think I know that's whenever I really started really pursuing a diagnosis because that's when all the TikTok therapists started showing up and telling you, you know, that if you do this and do this, then you may do this. Uh, talking about so many women being the uh inattentive version of ADHD. Um, so that ours is really more internalized. So, for example, when we were in school, the young boys, all the little boys were bouncing off the walls, they put them on Ritalin because they were a problem. They were distracting. So that's how they were mostly categorized, where the little girls were more internalized. We were the dreamers, we were maybe lazy, um, we weren't paying attention, we just weren't, it was hard for us to focus. And a lot of us were creative types, so a lot of us were writers, or in my case, I was a writer, but mostly music. And everything really was pushed in that direction. And as I got older and still did more with music and had other jobs that didn't quite work out and eventually fell into music as my full-time profession, it is really fascinating that people would say, even my family, like, oh, well, yeah, Nikki's late, but she's she's a musician. Oh, it's just Nikki, you know, she's heading the clouds. Oh, it's just, oh, that's it's that's just, you know. But it wasn't wasn't like even though it was, oh, it's just Nikki and they're smiling, it's still negative and it still hurts you that this part of you that can't be on time and sees five minutes and tries to shove 30 minutes worth of prep into those five minutes and then agonizes over being late all the time is, you know, that it is a negative for everybody. So being diagnosed really ultimately was uh a blessing for me. Um being medicated is definitely a blessing for me. The first day that I um that I took a stimulant, all the bees in my brain and the constant dialogue and everything happening in my head went completely silent. And it was a complete shock to me that I was able to just focus linearly on things. Um, I've heard it described a whole bunch of different ways, but uh most people, from what I understand, look at a list um, I guess kind of like horizontally, and that you can say, okay, this is the first thing on the list, second thing on the list, and you can process it. Where people with um with ADHD or other types of issues like this see that entire list as vertical and everything is equally as important and everything is barraging you at the same time. So when you stare at it like that, it just makes it impossible to even start because you don't know. Even if it says number one, it doesn't matter. Number one and number six are like equal in your brain. So it's the first time I took medication when and was actually able to do things linear linearly, it was just, I don't know, it was like a miracle. Yeah, it really was. And then and then once again came the idea of wow, I could have been processing things this way for 40 years, 40 plus years instead of just the last four, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And and we talked about too, it's like people are still successful despite, right? Like, because I think absolutely I've seen that sometimes in the workplace when people get diagnosed, you know, there there's pushbackers like, well, that person has a PhD. There's no way they have ADHD. It's like, no, that doesn't just because they have a PhD doesn't mean that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

No, it's um because mostly because and and it's it's even I don't want to say it's more impressive because it's not a contest, but people that look at people with PhDs or with you know a high degree of success and they're diagnosed with ADHD, what that means is that they've had to like overcome all of these obstacles in their brain to processing and actually getting things done. So they've done more work along with masking and pretending like they're just like everybody else, so that you don't see how you know how anxious they are about everything. Um, I a lot of people were shocked when I said that I was because of me with music, that I I mean, I'm a songwriter, I play uh acoustic, acoustic guitar and piano, but I work as a full-time acoustic entertainer at the Jersey Shore and in Philadelphia, and I was in Pittsburgh and everything. And I play over 200 shows a year, and I know thousands of songs, lyrics, and chords, and I I take great pride in what I'm capable of doing, but that's my hyper focus. So music is the thing that I can channel all that, all of this into. Um I forget to make every doctor's appointment I'm supposed to go to. If I don't have things, you know, thank God for phones with calendars, or I wouldn't remember anything. And that's not exaggerating. Like I just I will sit down and close, look at something for five minutes, and four hours have passed, and I've no idea where it went. So it's um it's it's misunderstood. It's definitely becoming a lot more understood and more accepted. And I mean, I kind of thank the younger generations uh and their welcoming of mental health discussions because I mean, we didn't talk about mental health issues. If somebody was taking Prozac back in the day, you looked at them funny, you were like, Oh, why are you taking that? Yeah, my dog has taken that for most of her life, and she's fine, you know. But I mean, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Like, it's just the idea that we are finally accepting our differences and I used to joke because when I lived, I lived in California for quite a while and uh was you know, but I uh had joked that like, oh, in it's almost the opposite, like where we grew up, like having therapies like oh, what's wrong with you? Why are you in therapy? Right, exactly. It's maybe still be that might be that way a little bit. But in California, it was almost the opposite. It was like, oh, you don't purpose, what's wrong with you? Right. So exactly just like where you where you grew up and the kind of upbringing, you know, but growing up in a more blue-collar area where it's sort of like you you tough it out, you know, it's yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And that's a Gen X thing as well, you know. You just you tough it out. Yeah, you tough it out, you get through it. And I um I'm very thankful for, like you said, you know, TikTok therapists in the beginning, and then you know, being able to really finally talk to people and and get it spoken. Um it's really hard for people to get um a diagnosis and get medicated though later in life. I was fortunate with the uh the psychiatrist that I was able to find in South Jersey that I talked to about it and it was fine. But I hear a lot of people say they'll just go to their primary doctors and they'll just poo-poo a lot. And the fact that um medicine for the most part doesn't study women in general. So they pretty much ignore a lot of the stuff that we do. So I mean that's hopefully starting to change. But the thing with a lot of people say, well, oh, oh, I do that all the time, or I'm oh, I'm ADHD too, and they throw it around a lot. The difference is that everybody has unfocused moments. Everybody has times where they are more attentive than others or where they exhibit the same symptoms. The difference is that people with ADHD, it's it's obviously a lot more often, and it actually makes a negative impact on your life. Like the thing, these issues have hurt you in some way. And that's the difference. And that's what you have to prove whenever you're being diagnosed that you actually have had problems because of this. Um, and that's where I think a lot of people get stuck. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

And I think if you're not taught if people aren't talking about it, and this is how you are, then you just assume it's normal, right? You don't know.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

So and I liken it to the dumbest thing in the world, which was I had TMJ, because growing up, nobody told me I trink our teacher all the time. And so I literally like cause jaw pain. I've learned since to like through biofeedback and stuff to relax it, but like again, it's just something you don't tell people. Like, like I said, the dumbest example.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

No, it's well, it's the same as um it's the same as reading books, reading books and listening to books. Yeah, you know, right like oh, I don't know how to say this word, right? Because I you'll hear people say confidently a word and confidently pronounce mispronounce it because they've never heard it, they've only read it. And it's yeah, exact same thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

It's I how how do you see like the brain fog? Because like I definitely notice brain fog for myself because you were talking about the speaking list or whatever, having to write things down. I will like literally tell a client, like, wait, you just asked me to do something, I need to actually put it on my list right now while it's still here, because if I don't, and I was never like that before, so I I know I I noticed this shift for myself. I mean, I have a tool to to keep me on track, so it's fine. But yeah, I'm just curious how you how those two interact, how those two experiences, if you experience it and how they interact.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I don't know the difference of it because my I I would say uh the the perimenopausal brain fog probably exacerbated some of my focus issues. Um, but mine were pretty bad to begin with. So I don't know that I really differentiated between the two. It's either a coincidence that it all happened at the same time, along with lockdown, honestly. You know what I mean? And the fact that we were sitting, unfortunately, eating and drinking our faces off for a good bit of that time.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

And I I enjoyed some wine drinking.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

I'm staring and it's staring at our phones and yeah, doing a lot of a lot of nothing.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious, uh it's completely off topic, but like because you make your living as a musician and going out playing, like that wasn't around. So, like right, how like how did you cope with with that?

SPEAKER_01 16:27

So I I'm weird in a lot of ways. So before before COVID, I want to say it was probably 2015, I started doing a lot of live streaming of my gigs. I used almost exclusively the Periscope app. Periscope was owned by Twitter at the time, and then eventually, you know, but it was it's similar to Facebook Live, but it was its own app. And I started using it to live stream while I was performing. So I would be performing, and it was mostly gigs in restaurants where people weren't paying attention. If I had a full audience, I wasn't talking to my phone in front of me. But a lot of them were more like wallflower kind of kind of things. So I would have my phone set up and I built a community and everything with that. So I was very comfortable live streaming for years before um before lockdown happened. So when lockdown happened, I had a whole slew of gigs that were supposed to happen and didn't. And my hyperfocus allowed me to translate all of those live gigs that were being canceled into live streaming shows. And I set up my basement with my, I had my ring light that I'm using right now. It's you know, it's giving me a nice little glow and everything. Um, but it's uh I set up a backdrop and I guess this is my communications degree working too with like my radio video production that I never used ever, but I used it during lockdown. Um, and I had signs for all the venues that I was supposed to be playing at. So I would live stream when I was supposed to be gigging, and I would do it in conjunction with the venue. So I would tell them, hey, I'm gonna live stream during this time. So if you want, I said if you want to share it with all your people, and we can encourage people to watch. And I can encourage people to go to you and pick up wine, even though you're closed, you're still selling the wine and all that. So it worked with a lot of those venues. So I still would live stream at least two or three times a week. Um, and a lot of people, not lost in the very beginning, people would Venmo. That's when we all learned how to use Venmo, um, would Venmo me tips with song requests, and and they got pretty elaborate. I have some really elaborate live streams that I did, um, some of them for like hours and hours on end. And it was just, it would just become a really fun uh conversation as well as the show because I was able to see the dialogue. So if you were watching on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or anything else, all the uh the community chat would pop up on the screen so everybody could uh could communicate with each other and they would have like full-on discussions and someone would tell jokes and while I'm singing and you know, and say it's it was it was it was pretty cool. Like I managed to make it work.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

So yeah, I was just wondering because like I have a uh like an office job, so it's like for me, working from home is no really no was no different than working in the office, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Um, and I have not gone back and I enjoy working from home immensely. So I yeah, I just wonder, yeah, I was just wondering, like, oh my how you know how how did that work? You know. Yeah. So um what do you like? Is there anything you wish you had known prior to going through this experience? Like I wish someone would have told me this.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Well, I would say I feel like I was warned about a lot. Um I I was well, uh you can be warned about hot flashes, but until it actually happens, you know, that might be similar to like childbirth, where people say a lot of women that go through childbirth say there's a reason that nobody tells you what it's really like, because nobody would have children if they knew what it was really like who would actually have them, which I don't know, but I've heard that said on multiple occasions. Um, but yeah, hot flashes were fun.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah. Didn't you tell me a story once about like someone you were live streaming in your gay?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yes, yes, yes. My girlfriend Donna. Oh, so so what would happen is I would feel really pretty on my live streaming, you know, like we look at ourselves on there, you know, and you're like, oh, I look good, you know, different stuff. And I would have a hot flash, and it would be like my face was just melting. And while you're live streaming, and I'm sure everybody sees this on Facebook Live, you know, you can tap on the little hearts and you can give people money if you want to, or you can comment. And my girlfriend would just comment like a little ha ha because she could see it, like she knew I was hot flashing like easily, and it would be like the worst possible time. So I'm singing, and my whole body is like feels like it's just going to completely implode at any point, you know. But you could you could physically see me just melt everything. Like, yeah, this is happening, I'm still singing.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Um is there anything you feel that's helped you the most like during the transition?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Um I I am on the combi patch, so that's like the estrogen and progesterone patch. Um, I've only on that since January or so. So it's fairly new. Um, I've read a lot of people, you know, saying don't do this, don't do that. Um, I've tried a couple different like supplements that I saw online, like Instagram ads for things that are gonna help you, and none of them did anything at all, really. Um I do feel give that person money. Yeah, yeah. I can't believe I gave it. all those people I mean I I I'm a sucker for for ads for sure and I'm looking around the house because I haven't been here for a while and I ordered those magnetic lashes I was hoping to have magnetic lashes on but I don't see them so they either didn't arrive or they're hidden they're hidden somewhere but I was I just jumped on the weighted vest bandwagon. Oh yeah so I saw people I was walking on the boardwalk the just Tuesday and the girl um my girlfriend I was walking with she's mentioned the weighted vest thing I had no idea it was a thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Oh yeah it's like a thing and I was like all right I'm I'm in now. So what what is the point though? Is it just like well it's supposed to help with I mean because you know as we age we lose bone density and stuff. So the adding the extra weight when you're doing low impact stuff no don't run with it on you know yeah but like you know doing low it's supposed to help like you know with your bone density and stuff a legend really so it's just pretty much like ankle weights yeah yeah and just scrapping anything on you. Yeah yeah yeah so yeah I jumped on that bandwagon I was like I am officially you know I think I put it on instead of my husband I was like I'm officially a middle aged lady like it's uh it's me like this is it so let me know when you're order that right now right he's like let me know when you're 50 and I was like uh I am 50 and he's like oh yeah that's right yep I was like oh no I am so yes I jumped on that bandwagon so so we'll see have I worn it not necessarily but uh but I own one hey that's a that's a start start right yeah you can't unless you have one that's the pro that's another ADHD problem is that I order things and then I forget that I have them and I'll go through a Doom box one of my boxes that you know has a craft that I bought that I never you know I researched and did all this but what happens is you know you you you get all the dopamine from planning and buying it and getting all excited and in your head you've already done the craft so you don't actually have to physically do it.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

But then that box just goes somewhere else yeah so I have lots of little surprises that I'm like very nice very nice is there anything else you want to share that we haven't talked about um as far as I don't know I don't know I mean I I feel like I feel like women just need to stick with each other you know and be I feel like we need to talk about it like we mentioned the we do not care woman and how awesome that is but what's the best part is it is about it is that it's making people talk it's making people open up about this just like your podcast you know we're opening up and talking to women so talk to the women in your lives because that's the only way we are really gonna learn about ourselves too because doctors don't necessarily speak to us the right way um men aren't going to understand you know even if they try it's not it's a different it's just different we're all going through different things so I feel like we just need to support each other and kind of learn to be good listeners to each other because I yeah because I don't there we're not bombarded with the right answers so we have to like discover them with each other. Yeah yeah and I think uh well it's a good thing we have communications degrees exactly exactly that I use to sing in bars right but if so I'll give you an opportunity where can people find you musically okay everything for me is acoustic Nikki so acoustic N I C K I'll put it in and um that's my website my link tree my everything for me is acoustic Nikki uh and I play all over the Philly area and South Jersey and uh the Jersey shore everything south of Atlantic City for the most part sometimes I get back to Pittsburgh and we'll play a random show at a brewery but um but yeah I'm pretty I'm pretty happy with what I do it's it's it's it's fun yeah it's a challenge like I said I've always known you as a musician so yeah singing in the quad with my guitar trying to pick up boys trying to be the mysterious girl with the guitar you know but you actually could do it so that's well just a thing yeah I did marry a sound guy so how that worked.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Yeah so well thank you so much for for being a part of this I appreciate it um and thank you all for watching if anybody is interested in being on please message me um otherwise I uh hope you all have a wonderful day.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Thanks for having me Erin