Welcome to the I Have ADHD podcast, where it's all about education, encouragement, and coaching for adults with ADHD.

I'm your host, Kristen Carter, and I have ADHD.

Let's chat about the frustrations, humor, and challenges of adulting relationships, working, and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder.

I'll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential, and move from point A to point B.

Hey, what's up? This is Kristen Carter, and you're listening to the I Have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, I am caffeinated, I am regulated, and I am ready to roll.

What's up? How are you? How's it going? Welcome to the podcast. I'm really glad you're here. If this is your first time listening, or maybe it's your first time in a long time, I just want to extend a very warm welcome to you.

Maybe you have ADHD or someone you love has ADHD, or perhaps you're just curious about it.

And my friend, I just want you to know that you are welcome in this space. As you're listening, make sure to hit that follow or subscribe or add to the library button so that you can hang out with me every single week.

I like to remind listeners that if you do have ADHD, you're probably going to forget that this podcast exists as soon as you start going about your business today, because ADHDers are notoriously out of sight, out of mind, kind of people.

So hitting that follow button will allow you to get these episodes magically in your feed every week and bam, you just remember to listen. It's amazing. I am recording this on the 4th of July.

I'm so sad. It's so sad. But that's okay. June was wild. And even though I worked hard to keep up, I worked hard to get ahead. It just wasn't enough. And y'all sometimes our best efforts are just not enough, and that's the truth.

And it's just okay. It doesn't mean that we're a bad person or that something went terribly wrong. It just means we're not robots. We're human. And as a human life comes at you fast. And so even with all of my prep and trying to get ahead, I can plan, I can work ahead, but life just eventually happens.

And if you're a kid, skip sick, vacations are more tiring than they are reviving sometimes work as hard and stressful and sometimes life just happens. So my question to you is how supportive of yourself are you when life gets busy and hard and overwhelming?

And life happens. How do you treat yourself? So I've decided in an effort to be supportive of myself and yet still continue with my job and my purpose in life. I've decided for the first time ever to re release a podcast episode for your listening enjoyment.

Now, even if you've already heard this podcast, it's 100% amazing and it bears repeating. Remember, as someone with ADHD, you're working memory sucks. Sorry. I know that was very direct and assertive, but it is just the truth. And this is how we roll up in here.

So if you've listened to this episode, maybe two years ago when it came out or caught it recently because you just found this podcast, I want you to know that it's an important one full of research on ADHD and sleep. And it has helpful tips to improve your sleep hygiene. So I truly believe that it will be a valuable resource to you, even if you're hearing it for the second time.

Now, I do want to let you know that this episode was recorded prior to my realization that my own hyper vigilance and trauma history played a massive role in my inability to sleep. So that is one caveat that I want to add in before we get to the meat of the episode.

If you struggle to sleep and if you have delayed sleep face syndrome, I would invite you to consider an addition to all of the other things that I mentioned as this podcast goes on, I would invite you to consider whether or not it's possible that you're stuck in constant hyper vigilance of fight flight freeze fawn.

Now, I'm going to over share here for a second as I do from time to time, but I've been sleeping beautifully for the last six months, just like really well things have improved so much, but recently had some stuff happen in my extended family and it stirred up some hyper vigilance patterns for me this week.

And I have really struggled to sleep and I was reminded of how I used to lay in bed at night for hours and hours and not be able to settle down even as a small child. So yes, delayed sleep face syndrome is a legit thing and eight each years struggle more than most with sleep.

And sometimes it's because we're stuck in a constant state of hyper vigilance. So I just wanted to throw that out here as we begin to listen to this episode. It is full of ADHD research.

You will find all of that research linked in the show notes and if you suspect that in addition to what you're hearing in this podcast, you also might be struggling with some trauma responses with some hyper vigilance with some fight flight freeze fawn some inability to settle your nervous system down just as I was if you feel like maybe that is additionally a contributing factor to your poor sleep hygiene.

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