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 episode number 156.

I am medicated. I am caffeinated, and I am ready to roll.

Welcome, welcome to the podcast today. Thank you so much for listening.

For pressing play on this episode, I don't take it lightly. I don't take it lightly. I know you've only got so much time, so much attention, and I'm grateful to you for listening.

And I think you're going to love this episode. We're getting back to the basics. We are going away back to the basics.

Here's why. Have you ever told someone that you have ADHD or somebody has told them like somebody finds out you have ADHD, and then they say something like, oh, okay, what is that?

And then you literally have no words to say next. Like you have no idea what to say.

Yeah, that happens to me recently. And I really wanted to think it through and give you a framework for what to say when somebody kind of wants an explanation of what ADHD is.

So we're talking about it. What is it exactly? How do we explain it to people without like kind of losing track and getting lost in the weeds and not really communicating, you know, exactly what we want to.

So most people think of ADHD as being a deficit of attention. So when you were diagnosed by your doctor practitioner or, you know, clinician, I'm wondering what they told you about ADHD.

So they kind of break the news to you like, yep, this is ADHD. I'm curious what they told you about it. If you're like me and you were diagnosed and treated for ADHD years before you even researched it or read a book on it.

It's likely that you, you know, observed yourself struggling to pay attention for long periods of time and maybe struggled to follow through on your plan, but probably didn't understand the full scope of what it means to have ADHD.

I think that we need to be given like a brochure at the time of diagnosis that like explains everything very clearly, very succinctly and then kind of gives you like a two sentence blurb on like how to talk about it because I think so many of us are just struggling to know how to talk about it.

So just take a second with me here, you know, if you don't mind and answer this question out loud, like go ahead and just answer out loud like a weirdo wherever you are, whatever you're doing, maybe you're on a run, maybe in your car, maybe you're doing dishes, but here's my question.

What does it mean to have ADHD? Like when you tell someone you have ADHD and they're like, oh, okay, what is that or what does that mean? What do you usually say?

Silence intended. I'm really curious. I wish that we were having a face-to-face conversation because I really do want to know what your answer is.

My plan is that by the end of this episode, you'll have a deeper understanding and a more robust explanation for ADHD and what it means to be ADHD.

Now, I really don't think there's any one perfect answer to the question, what is ADHD or what does it mean to have ADHD?

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