ADHD Awareness Every Day: Real Struggles in Women with ADHD | Dr. Kelly Cagle

About This Episode

ADHD Awareness Month is a good time to share ADHD resources, but if you’re a woman with ADHD, you don’t need a special month to bring awareness to your own daily struggles. On this episode of The Brainy Moms Podcast, Dr. Amy is joined again by Dr. Kelly Cagle, a parenting educator, ADHD researcher, homeschooling mom of three, host of the Parenting IQ podcast, and author for an honest conversation about what ADHD can look like in women. Dr. Amy and Dr. Kelly are both ADHD moms and moms with ADHD themselves. And they share honest and vulnerable examples of their own adult ADHD struggles on this episode. And also some ways they’ve learned to live with adult ADHD in a way that builds peace instead of piling on shame. 

They dig into time blindness and why “I’ll just squeeze that in” so often backfires, plus the practical fix of tracking how long tasks actually take. They also talk about procrastination that comes from boredom and the kind that comes from perfection and fear, where even just starting feels risky. From there they get real about emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity, including why the most expensive mistakes can happen when we try to fix a problem while dysregulated. The goal isn’t to avoid big feelings. It’s to create a small pause between the big feeling and our response to make room for tools like breathing, grounding, and even prayer. 

They also cover sensory sensitivities, misophonia, and how the environment can overload attention for both adults and kids; and then wrap up with disorganization and the power of simple home systems that reduce clutter and decision fatigue. Finally, they address the myth “everyone’s a little ADHD” and explain what it gets wrong. If you want language, validation, and strategies you can use today, press play. Then subscribe, share with a fellow ADHD parent, and leave a quick review so more families can find the show.

About Dr. Kelly Cagle

Dr. Kelly is a parenting educator, ADHD researcher, host of the ParentingIQ Podcast, and a homeschooling mom of 3 boys. She empowers parents, educators, and business leaders with evidence-based strategies that strengthen connection, restore calm, and help individuals thrive. She’s with us today to talk about a few ways we can make our lives with ADHD simpler, more organized, and less stressful. Her book, Rewriting Your Child’s ADHD Story comes out in the spring of 2027. Find her at www.DrKellyCagle.com and on social media @DrKellyCagle and her podcast @ParentingIQPodcast

Get free resources from Dr. Kelly at http://www.drkellycagle.com/adhdstrategies

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NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an AI assistant that thinks it’s smarter than we are. It’s not, but it has more free time than we do, so we gave it a low-stakes job. It probably spelled a few things wrong, but we’re okay with that. We’d rather spend our time interviewing cool guests!

Welcome And Why This Matters
Dr. Amy Moore 0:00

Hi, smart moms and dads. Welcome to this episode of the Brainy Moms Podcast, brought to you today by Learning Rx Brain Training Centers. I’m Dr. Amy Moore, and I’m so excited to welcome back a returning guest, Dr. Kelly Cagle. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Kelly in case you don’t know who she is yet. Dr. Kelly is a parenting educator, an ADHD researcher, host of the Parenting IQ podcast, and a homeschooling mom of three boys. She’s also an ADHDer like me. Dr. Kelly empowers parents, educators, and business leaders with evidence-based strategies that strengthen connection, restore calm, and help people thrive. And she is joining me today as part of ADHD Awareness Month to talk about some of the struggles that we as ADHD moms and women face in ADHD adulthood day-to-day life. Please help me welcome Dr. Kelly Cagle. Welcome back, Dr. Kelly Cagle. So excited to have yet another conversation with you today.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 1:11

It is such an honor, per usual, to sit on the other side of the screen from you.

Dr. Amy Moore 1:17

Well, this was twice today. And I think we’re doing it all over again in a couple of weeks, too. You know, because we’re doing the ADHD, Audi HD, and autism summit, which you are going to be an expert speaker for. And so we’re just spending a ton of time together. Your book, my book, all the things.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 1:37

Yeah. That’s just kind of how we do it. The best way to go about life is to see people, to find people that have the same passions as as you, the same line of work, and then you link arms and you don’t think, hey, you’re my competition. No, no, no, no. We are doing really similar work. So why don’t we just come alongside one another, which is what we’ve done. And it’s so awesome. And I’m truly grateful for you.

Dr. Amy Moore 2:04

I’m grateful for you too. You know, it’s so funny when um I talk to, I have a workshop that I give um on parenting ADHD kids when you have ADHD too. And so one of my recommendations is to surround yourself with friends who have strengths that you don’t have. And, you know, I’m celiac. And so I always joke that I collect celiac friends. It sure makes going out easier. Um, but I don’t recommend collecting ADHD friends. Can you imagine a group of seven of us all in a room together? No decisions would ever get made. I mean, we would we would probably kill each other. But it’s okay. It’s okay to have one or two ADHD friends. And so um, you get one of those spots in my world.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 2:50

Yes. So yes, I’m so grateful.

Dr. Amy Moore 2:52

Thank you. So um it is ADHD awareness month and I chuckle. Like I appreciate that it’s ADHD awareness month and I have dysautonomia also. And so there’s a dysautonomia awareness month this month. And so I appreciate that we get to talk about it a little bit more during those awareness months, but I chuckle a little bit too because uh we do not need a month to make us aware of ADHD in our lives. As ADHDers ourselves, as ADHD moms, we are keenly aware of ADHD all day, every day. And so it’s just funny to me. I don’t need a month to tell me uh to be aware of my struggles. And so I thought it would be kind of fun just to share what that does look like for us. This one’s for the girls. This is for the women out there who are also ADHD warriors that don’t get to lean into their own struggles because they might be too busy orchestrating a neurodivergent home, managing a career, doing all the things. And so we just want to say we see you and we commiserate with you on some things. And we want to normalize a little bit of the struggle when you are an ADHD.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 4:15

So what do you think?

Late Diagnosis And Masking
Dr. Kelly Cagle 4:17

Well, here’s what I think it is so often that a woman gets diagnosed later in life as she’s taking in her child for his or her diagnosis. Yeah. So it’s really, it’s really common for that to be the case, you know, that the mom has just been going on about her life, or the woman that, you know, has just been going on about her life with her struggles. It shows up differently. You know, there’s the hyperactive kind, and then we have the the distractability and all these other elements to ADHD. But at the same time, so often she masks, she copes, she goes on with life. And my diagnosis came at 38 years old, myself. Although I’ve I’m a researcher, I’ve been in this in this field for a really long time. It wasn’t until I took a huge dive into hint hint, my son, that I was like, oh my gosh, I have never felt so seen. So many answers, so many different little puzzle pieces started perfectly aligning that I was like, I have so much grace for myself now. I I am not, you know, broken. And it sounds so cliche and so like not much heaviness to the words, but it’s so, so true that you feel so seen and understood and valued that your your weaknesses are okay. You’re you got tons of strengths too. And let’s figure out what those are. And like you said, partner with the ones who have the strengths and your areas of weakness, you know, and hopefully you have the that type of relationship within uh your home or your career or whatever that may be.

Dr. Amy Moore 6:03

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I was in college when I was diagnosed, and my mom was a child development specialist, and so she worked with lots of uh little boys with hyperactivity. And the more she learned about all of the characteristics of ADHD, this was back in the 80s, she kept saying, This is my daughter. This is my daughter. And then sure enough, I was off the charts. And of course, a lot of people don’t want the label, but I appreciated understanding why my brain worked the way it did and why I felt the way I felt and behaved the way I behaved. And it was, it was one of those moments where I felt like somebody finally understood what I couldn’t understand my whole childhood. So it was a relief.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 6:48

So here’s here’s a spin on this. I know it’s ADHD awareness month, and my parents are incredible parents, but dad’s been a pastor since I was a little little girl. I was 10 months old, actually, when he became a pastor. And uh, you said your mom was a child development specialist. Yes. And so, and I’ve even talked to another individual from Learning Rx, uh, the audiologist, Dr. Jedla Cut. Uh, and and she was talking about how she is an audiologist, and she overlooked even things in her signs in her child of dyslexia and all of these different things that very often gets overlooked regardless of your line of work. So my parents did not have the understanding. I often get told, of course, you homeschool your kids. You have a PhD in education, of course you can do this. And I’m like, you that that means nothing. This is my line of work. What I do with my kids can be completely different. You know, obviously, the more you know professionally, you bring it into your home. But just to also let everyone know that you don’t have to have a doctorate in this or a master’s in that to fully know your child and be able to pinpoint something. You know, like I said, dad was a pastor, and we prayed over all the things. And so we just kept going about through life. And then I moved from Brazil when I was 11 years old and I spoke no English. So my whole middle school, high school, college, lots of college years, blaming my academic struggles on well, I’m an English language learner. Oh, that’s why I have to reread the pages 15 times before I actually understand what was on the pages. So there’s a lot there, but um, I just wanted to encourage everyone, like you know your child. If there’s something different, you are more than equipped with letters behind your name in front of your name or whatever. This this is an area that God gave you that child. Lean in.

Dr. Amy Moore 8:58

Yeah. Great advice.

Time Blindness And Calendars
Dr. Amy Moore 9:01

Okay, so I want to talk about some of the most common ADHD struggles, um, particularly or even in adults and as women. And I would just like us to share examples of how that shows up in our own adult ADHD. So whether it’s in as mothers, as women, as PhD professionals, just how has it shown up? Um, so one of the most common uh ADHD struggles is time blindness, time blindness. And that is that inability to estimate time, like how long something will take. It’s the inability to judge the passing of time, it’s the difference between only seeing time as now and not now, as Dr. Hallowell would say. Um, how has that impacted you?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 9:55

Oh my goodness. So, in my work, we were actually just talking about this. So I have blocked for the longest time. I also have a podcast, and for the longest time, I would leave my calendar open and people could block me any day of the week, and individuals could schedule me at any time. So my life was very chaotic and I couldn’t plan for my days. I didn’t know because I like to send my interview questions at least two days in advance to my interviewee. And it was all chaos. And it wasn’t until I stopped, like I shut down and I said, I’m not doing anything until I actually look at my tasks and I assign time blocks for these tasks. For so I that way I know what is going on. And I cleared all my calendar off my website. Nobody can book me any longer. It’s no, yeah, I have to give it to somebody because I noticed that it kept me in this rabbit hole of I have no idea how I can plan my life. And that’s not a good place for me to be in. You know, I am very uptight. I can be explosive with, oh my gosh, I just had something. I need to hurry and I need to do all of this. And I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t being my best self in any of the areas, whether it was with coaching clients or as a mom, my homeschooling mom or wife, whatever. I wouldn’t even turn on the oven, which that’s another conversation. Cooking is a whole different dynamic we can get into. But that was really, really a big shift for me. I struggled hardcore until I said, Hey, you know what? This task actually requires at least 15 minutes before I even hopped on. I was about to get back to some emails and I was like, Helly, no, the show starts in five minutes. Don’t do it. And just giving myself permission to just say, nope, I’ll get to that after Dr. Amy and I finish our interview.

Dr. Amy Moore 11:53

I love that. And I love that you bring that up because I think one of the things that does help us with that time management and time blindness piece is to document how long common things take so that we um can establish a pattern. We have evidence of how long has this usually taken us so that when we do go to plan to do a similar task, you know, we’ve documented, okay, it’s going to take about this long. Because I’m notorious for saying, um, yeah, that’ll take me about four hours for that project. And it takes me 26 hours because I can’t accurately estimate the amount of time that something’s going to take. So I do have to document that and look back and say, okay, it takes me an average of 40 hours to create a workshop PowerPoint.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 12:43

Right.

Dr. Amy Moore 12:44

I cannot do that in six hours.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 12:46

Yeah. Yeah. You, you know, I actually you posted a reel about this on Instagram. It’s been a little bit, maybe over a month, and you said something. It just makes me cringe when people say ADHD is a superpower. And it’s like, no, no. Although you have a lot of energy that you can bring to a workshop, you also will be drained if you don’t allocate the correct amount of hours that it would take. Could you probably get it done in six hours? Maybe, but would you be absolutely rushing, maybe not as thorough, maybe not as, you know, um, I don’t know, all the things that you would bring if you did it over a span of 40 hours, which is definitely the value that you want to bring. Yeah. You know, so it’s not a superpower if it drains you in the process, if you’re not your best version, if you’re not your best self, you know. So I just wanted to point that out. I loved when you did that. I was like, no, it’s not. You’re right. It’s not a superpower. You know, it’s just like, give yourself grace and pause. It’s okay to take longer, even though you feel like a superhuman because you have a lot of energy, it doesn’t mean that you need to drain all of your energy for that task in that moment.

Dr. Amy Moore 14:05

Yeah, absolutely. And that is one of my pet peeves is when we tell kids that, hey, ADHD is a superpower, because then I think that denies the struggle, right? And then when a child fails at something, then they think, well, then I’m a terrible superhero too, right? And so um, I think that we can have superpowers despite our struggle. Um, but the ADHD itself is not a superpower.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 14:28

So yeah, no, that’s a great distinction. Yeah, it’s a great distinction. I loved it.

Procrastination And Perfection Fear
Dr. Amy Moore 14:33

Um, okay, so let’s talk about procrastination. Is that a struggle for you? And how’s that shown up?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 14:41

Okay, so procrastination definitely showed up for me more in college, during my college days. This is obviously I was a lot more immature. In fact, my husband and I got married when I was 19. So we were, we kind of did a lot of growing up together, and I was very immature. Now that I’m older, I see the distinction between maturity or ADHD, right? I’m again, now that I know better, I look back and I’m like, oh, I could have done this so much better. But I will definitely say the procrastination piece for me 100% showed up when I had to write my dissertation or any kind of writing assignment for my class or any kind of reading because I’m just so bored. And this reading is about, you know, laws and the education system. And I’m like, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing that’s exciting about this, nothing is engaging about laws. I don’t want to read about this. So I would definitely procrastinate. And then the assignment’s due tomorrow, and I’m like, oh, shoot, I gotta get to this. You know, and then it would just be not an A plus paper. But I was also the achiever, and I tried my hardest, and I would cry when I wouldn’t make A’s and all of that. So I had a lot of emotional issues in that regard because I wanted, I wanted perfection. I and, you know, I did it. But procrastination 100% showed up in that for me. Now, since in my home, I have put so many systems in place, like the one that I was just talking about with time blindness in regards to my work life that also bleeds into my home life because I do my office is inside my home. Uh I do have so many personal systems that also keep me in a too to, you know, line to to cover grounds with my home and with my work.

Dr. Amy Moore 16:44

Yeah. Well, I have not quite mastered uh the art of not procrastinating yet. Um, but how does it show up for you? I would love, yeah, I would love to hear how it shows up for you. Yeah, it shows up when um I have a fear of not doing something perfectly. So if I don’t feel like I can do it perfectly, then I will put off even trying. It’s paralyzing. I don’t know how to get started. You know, I run the scenarios. And and I used to have, you know, a huge emotion regulation piece about that. And we see that a lot with kids, obviously. Um, and now I I don’t even I don’t even lean into the emotion issue about it. I just know, well, I haven’t decided how I can do that in a perfect way yet. So I’m not going to do it at all. So for example, you know, my book launched and um I had got a case of books that I was signing and sending out as gifts. And uh they sat stacked up on my dining room table for a week. And I walked by them every time I passed by the dining room and they sat there. And my mom would ask me, Hey, you gonna sign those books? Uh, not today. And we went again and again and again because I didn’t know what I wanted to write. How do you sign them? Do you sign your whole name? Do you just sign your first name? Do you put doctor in front of it? What do you say to people? Do you say for this person or to this person? And so it was so overwhelming that I just avoided it. And so that’s how procrastination shows up that if I don’t think I can do it perfectly, then I’m just not gonna do it. And of course, then deadlines come and go.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 18:25

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I guess now that that’s why I wanted to hear your perspective. Here’s how it shows up for me in motherhood. So my kids, every at the beginning, at the change of the season, I have to clean out closets. So I also have three boys. My boys are 15, 10, and 8. So we kind of do this recycling of clothes. It’s beautiful, it’s incredible. But one, my my middle son has very different body shape than my oldest son. So when my oldest son’s clothes are now going to my middle one, very often, especially pants, won’t fit his body type. And so, anyways, I have to go through the clothes piece by piece, by piece to see what fits, what is too old, what, you know, doesn’t stretch anymore, like all these things, analyze all of that. So it’s I my kids will probably be, you know, uh with the pants very, very short, very, very tight for a couple of weeks. And I’m like, okay, Kelly, now it’s time. You’ve got to get in there because it’ll take me at least, at least eight hours, if not longer, depending on the amount of clothes I’m going through. Sometimes it’s two days. This last time it did take me two days. So I need a long time, the full energy devoted to that. So that’s another, you know, procrastination that I don’t, I don’t delay it because I don’t know. So in your case, like I don’t know the how to make this perfect. Mine is this is gonna be so time consuming that I have to like be ready to put the effort into it.

Dr. Amy Moore 20:02

Yeah. Yeah. And and sometimes we can’t accurately estimate, okay, what if I only worked on this for 15 minutes? Would it be worth it? Can I squeeze this in? Um, like, do I actually need six hours to do the whole task at once? And in my case, I usually do. It’s very hard for me to just work on something for a little bit and then move on to something else for a little bit, right? That makes me less productive. And if you talk to productivity experts, they don’t recommend that either. But when we have young children, sometimes we do have to squeeze tasks in in the time that we do have available. So okay, let’s talk about another struggle that we see in oh, I don’t know, what, two-thirds of people with ADHD

Emotional Dysregulation Under Stress
Dr. Amy Moore 20:49

or more? Um, emotion dysregulation. Does that still show up for you as an adult with ADHD?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 20:57

It does. And I have a perfect story for that. You ready for it? Okay. I’m ready. I’m ready. So, um, and it brings in an additional struggle with the emotional dysregulation, and that’s the multi-step instruction. Okay. So one day my husband and I are at the airport, and whenever I travel without my kids, there’s already another level of stress for me because someone else, whether my mother-in-law or my parents are in charge of my children, and I feel like it’s, you know, they don’t make me feel this way. This is just me. Okay. It’s like, oh my gosh, I gotta make sure that all the bases are covered, that they have everything, that the dinners are ready, that all that’s a whole different layer. So we’re at the airport, about to come home, and I’m so excited to come home, relieve my mother-in-law, and she’s gonna get to go home. And then there’s this huge winter storm that cancels all the things. And flights are just like red, red, red, cancel, cancel, cancel. And I’m like, oh my gosh, uh, we need to get home. So I Um, we end up not being able to come home. We the next morning have to be at the airport at four in the morning to see if we can get on the be placed on a different flight. So we get like two hours of sleep, and it’s already the the, you know, sleep is on top of that too. So we get to the airport, everybody’s uptight, you know. There’s there’s that look that everybody’s sharing. And whenever the the counter um individual tells us, hey, I got you a spot, it’s like 6 a.m. by now. We were in line for like an hour and a half, waiting to talk to the attendant. She’s like, okay, but the flight starts boarding in 15 minutes. And it’s not my local airport, so it’s not like I know where to go. It’s yeah, I’m I’m in LA. It’s LAX, okay, mind you. This is not just a small, tiny um airport. So I’m we’re LAX and I get a flight, but I Josh hasn’t gotten a seat yet. So he’s like, Kelly, go. At least one of us will get home. Just go. So the tension already, like, do you feel it? Like I’m got goosebumps, even replaying this in my head. So I just take off a running and I’m running. So my emotional regulation, I’m already breathing, like I’m as I’m running to see where I’m supposed to go. So I know TSA pre-check, I don’t have to worry too much. So I ask one person, and the person says, okay, so you’re gonna go here, right here, left, then up the stairs, and then over here, and then take this, and then you’re gonna be go straight and then it’s there. And I was like, wom, wom, I heard nothing because my heart’s already super elevated. At this point, I don’t know if my husband’s coming home with me. I just know hopefully I can make it before I’m not too late. I’m running. So the multi-step really comes in for me that whenever I have something that’s already stressful, man, I’m gonna focus on the next step. And I’m gonna be like, okay, where do I go now? Okay, so look for the escalator and go up. That’s all I hear. And I know my next step. I’m gonna go up the escalator and then I’ll go find another individual. And I say, okay, I’m looking for gate D10. Like, okay, now you’re gonna go take a left here and go all the way. Okay, that’s what I’m doing. So, so for me, when in that instance is one of the things that I have deeply learned about myself. I have to, especially if it’s an intense situation, and I have to do several steps to get to the outcome. By the way, I did make it home. And mind you, my husband got on the same flight as me, and we were all back together, and it was all fine. So the outcome of the story is a positive, happy one. We made it. But that, Amy, was so stressful for me. And Josh got there like two minutes behind me. I’m like, how’d you get here so fast? Well, he didn’t have to stop five times to ask five different people. Sure, maybe he runs a little faster than me, but I had to stop so much that it slows me down. But that’s how I’m able to say regulated as much as I can in an emotional dysregulated opportunity to the next level like that.

Dr. Amy Moore 25:07

Yeah, and I think that’s great advice, regardless of the scenario, right? As opposed to trying to think, oh my gosh, I have 12 things or 12 steps, or it’s going to take 12 tasks to get done or where I need to be. You break it down and say, What is the first thing I have to do? Right. And then it’s easier to bite off, right? Okay, you do that thing. Okay, now what’s the next thing? And I think that that’s a great lesson for helping kids who get overwhelmed too, because it’s so tempting to go, oh my gosh, it’s all the things. I’ll never get there. I’ll never be able to do all the things. I mean, that taxes our working memory, right? Can we possibly hold 12, a 12-part direction? No, the average person can hold seven to eight pieces of information, but the ADHD brain can’t hold that many, right? We struggle with, I don’t know, two or three. So yeah, the Dallas airport in Washington, D.C. is the exact same way. It’s up these stairs and across this balcony and up this escalator and down this elevator and under these, go through the tunnel, go up the stairs, go sideways, go long ways. I mean, like you’re really asking me to miss my flight.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 26:20

That’s what you’re doing.

Dr. Amy Moore 26:21

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and now it’s 121 degrees with 112% humidity outside, and we’re gonna make you walk on the tarmac and go up the stairs to your airplane, right? Like so. Um, those things stress me out too. And when I get overheated, it’s even worse. Yeah. So I always say that emotion dysregulation is my most debilitating symptom as an ADHD or especially that rejection-sensitive dysphoria. I don’t take criticism well at all. Um, especially when it’s from someone you love. Yeah. And I think that that’s been super hard. And so I’ll hit, you know, an ADHD-induced emotional tailspin and I’ll make really bad decisions. And it’s costly, right? Like I told you a story earlier.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 27:05

I was gonna say, I think you should, this is the perfect time for you to share a story you told me earlier today that hasn’t been recorded yet. And I think you should have not. Okay,

When Big Emotions Get Expensive
Dr. Kelly Cagle 27:16

go for it.

Dr. Amy Moore 27:16

Yeah, okay. So my mom and I were planning a five-country three-week trip to Europe, and we spent a year and a half planning it. And so last month we set off to the Denver airport uh to fly to London. So we were gonna do four days in London, hop on a 12-day cruise, and then get off the cruise in France and spend the last four days in Paris. That was so it was like an 18-day trip.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 27:39

Sounds glorious.

Dr. Amy Moore 27:41

Right? We were so excited and it was planned meticulously. Carefully chosen hotels, carefully chosen excursions, right? All the things. So we’re on our way to the Denver airport, and I get a text message that says from British Airways saying, We’re sorry, we’ve canceled your flight. Do not come to the airport. Find out that the entire air traffic control system in the United Kingdom had melted down. So they canceled thousands of flights. It impacted hundreds of thousands of people. And about three hours later, got a message saying, Oh, we’ve booked you on the next available flight arriving in London Friday night. This is Tuesday. They could not get us there in time to make the boat. Um, so we were gonna miss the boat. We were gonna miss our entire London pre-cruise vacation as well. And um, I tried to find flights on another airline, nothing could get us into London. It was a total meltdown from that air traffic control system, which then led to my total meltdown. And in this emotionally fueled frustration, right, that I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t, I’m a fixer and I couldn’t fix this. And so in that state, I just canceled everything. Canceled it all. I asked for a refund from British Air. I canceled the hotel in Paris, I caught, you know, canceled the car, you know, in France. I canceled all the things, called the cruise line, cancel it all, cancel it all. You know, my mom’s upset and my husband’s just sitting there watching my tail spin. Speaking, no uh no regulated advice into this tail spin, by the way. Woke up the next morning to a phone call from the cruise saying, why don’t you just catch the boat in Amsterdam, right at the first stop? So after thinking through it, I spent 10 hours rebooking the entire trip. Rebooked the whole thing on a different airline, different hotels, different everything for three times the cost.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 29:39

Oh gosh.

Dr. Amy Moore 29:40

Ugh. And I only say that because it’s expensive to have an ADHD emotionally field meltdown. Um, whereas if I had taken a pause, waited um a couple of hours, I may have been able to think clearly enough to have not canceled everything, but just kind of work to figure out what some alternatives were. Uh but when you book things, rebook things, right, at the last minute, it’s costly, right? So um we’re hoping that our trip insurance will cover some of those cost differences. I hope so too for you. And if it doesn’t, that’s an expensive lesson, right?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 30:22

Yeah. Anyway. And it’s not one that you want to learn. And you know, when it shows up in relationships too, when we first, when we first got married, I told you Josh, I was 19, Josh was 21. When we would argue, then my same thing, I would elevate really fast. And I learned that we are not building each other up. We’re gonna say things, we’re gonna regret, we’re gonna, it’s just not good. So to your point of pausing, even in arguments, whether it’s arguments with your child, arguments with your spouse, arguments with a coworker, don’t send that email right away. You know, you got that nasty call, you got a bit, big expensive bill. You can wait a minute, pause. That is such golden advice that you just gave us. Like, don’t act right away. Take a breather, regulate yourself first. In your book, you include breathing techniques to help your heart rate come down and help you think clearly. And those are those are just easily accessible to you at all times, you know, that we can before we jump to a attack or fix. It can be a lot cheaper and uh a lot less damaging if we just wait-basely.

Dr. Amy Moore 31:40

Especially to relationships, right? I mean, uh, your checkbook can recover a lot more easily than your relationship can recover. And so, yes, the idea is can I create just a tiny bit of space between this big emotion and the next thing I do?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 31:55

Yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore 31:56

Tiny bit of space. And when we can create a space, then that space is where we can use a tool in our toolbox to pray, to breathe, to ground ourselves uh with a sensory experience, anything, right? To lower the temperature on that big emotion so that we can kind of access the reasoning part of our brain again. Um, so yeah, that is a daily, constant daily battle, uh, for sure, for most people with ADHD, I would suspect. I mean, that it’s a debilitating aspect of it for sure. And not part of the diagnostic criteria, by the way, but that’s an argument for another day. Um I feel like I need to reach out to somebody and get that added. I know, right? I’m sure that somebody’s talking to somebody about it. Uh, that’s above my pay grade.

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Sensory Sensitivities And Overload
Dr. Amy Moore 34:05

Okay, let’s talk about sensory issues. Do you have sensory processing difficulties, sensory sensitivities? Um, and if you do, how does that show up for you?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 34:17

I wouldn’t say mine, mine is extensive, but here’s what I will say. Smells bother me tremendously. So my diffuser is always going. And it has to smell good. Now, also, candles a lot of time, a lot of times will give me headaches immediately. So I’m super particular about even what I’m allowed to, like what I’m allowed, no, what I would rather have, you know, uh comfortable things. I don’t, I should have asked you your listeners, but like as a female, as soon as I get home, first thing I do is I change my clothes because I want to be really, really comfortable. Also, if it’s a big writing day for me, if I know I’m not gonna be in front of cameras, I don’t have any recordings to do of any sort, then man, I wear very comfortable things. So I that is not distracting. What’s tightening around my neck isn’t going to add to the tension that naturally I will likely have that day based on the workload that I’m tackling that day. So mine aren’t uh debilitating at all. You know, like I know some in some cases there are a lot of kids that the itchy tag, they have to change. They just can’t do it. They can’t wear that or the sock, the little side on the sock can’t be touching. I have those things, but I can push through. I do believe that Nike came out with their dry fit stuff at the perfect time for my life because when my son hit seven or eight years old, it was like, ah, now that’s all he wears. And so I I know that’s the case for a whole bunch of families, you know, that have teenagers now that their wardrobe is full of Nike dry fit, you know, material stuff. Because it was, they they were onto something. Most of their things have no tags. They super comfortable material, stretchy, super light, super breathable. So I, you know, there are ways that we can maneuver those things. But I I’m I think yours is a little more intense than mine. That’s just my experience with it.

Dr. Amy Moore 36:24

Yeah, I have I have a lot of sensory issues. Uh sounds, different sounds, really um, oh, clicking of the pen. Oh, I’m about to punch somebody. Like, stop clicking that. I’ll tell you what is the hardest for me is when someone is sniffling below your nose, yeah, is what I want to say. So that sniffling drives me crazy. Jeff clears his ears inside his head. I think we talk about it in the book, but he’s a fighter pilot. He’s a retired fighter pilot. And so he has this specific, you know, technique that he would use to clear his ears. Well, he does it sitting on the couch in the living room, and I can hear it from my chair in the living room, and it dysregulates me. It’s called mesophonia, and you know, it it’s this um really charged emotional response to sound. And so that’s yeah, so and textures and fabrics and textures of foods, and so I just as an adult have learned um, well, I’m gonna avoid those things that uh are uncomfortable and only seek those things that are. And then if I have to be put in a situation where there’s something that does overwhelm my senses, then I just do some breathing exercises and and work through it.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 37:40

And you know, think about a child, because that’s kind of I I work primarily with parents with helping understand their child in a classroom when you already have whatever other noise is going on, and then you have the kid that’s sniffling their nose, and then you have the other one that’s clinging clicking the pen, another one who’s like, you know, uh pounding the foot on the ground, and it’s already this very heavy cognitive load for the in the child having to take a test or having to process the information that the teachers share. I mean, there is so the lights could be super bright, hurting their eyes. There could be, you know, there’s so many elements to true engaged learning that the distractability of the child could be tied to when it comes to the senses alone. Yeah. You know, not even just what’s going on inside his or her head. It’s truly what’s going on in the environment, you know?

Dr. Amy Moore 38:39

Absolutely. And I think the awareness of that, speaking of the word awareness, the awareness of that can really help us, I think, in managing our own uh ADHD struggles, but also our spouses or our child’s too. I mean, because it it does impact our ability to think and learn effectively as well. It’s not just uncomfortable.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 38:59

Right. Right. Well, and I and I’ll I’ll throw this in there real quick. I know we’re talking about girls and and women and and digesting ADHD, but I do have 10 strategies to to that parents can apply in the home to help their child. If you guys want to check that out, it’s at drkellykagel.com slash ADHD strategies. And it’s free. You just put in your email and you’ll get that because those simple things can really go a long way to help our child learn about themselves, regulate themselves, um, and how we can create structures and rhythms that benefit them. And then we’re all benefiting.

Dr. Amy Moore 39:35

Love it. What a gift. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, sure. Yeah, listeners, press pause, go get your free gift from Dr. Kelly, and then come back uh for the rest of our conversation. How’s that sound? Um, okay, so one last one uh before we dispel a few myths.

Disorganization And Home Systems
Dr. Amy Moore 39:53

Um, disorganization. So, disorganization. Do you struggle with it? I know you do some coaching around this, but is it still a personal struggle for you? And if it is, how does that show up?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 40:06

So I think that would be a tendency that I would have. But because I fight really hard, this is where you know how earlier I brought up systems. This is where I know my tendencies. And then I was like, no, I I don’t want to be like this. So it’s what I actually help my son with a lot. Right now, he’s 15, he also has ADHD. Um, and so out of the place of I want to model these things that are super beneficial for me to help with my organization, because I work from home, my husband runs a large organization, I homeschool the kids, I have a podcast, I’m an author. Like we wear so many different hats. And that’s just me. If I didn’t categorize and clear out, this is actually what you and I talked about previously on the Brady Moms uh episode was about this idea of organizing and bringing structure because there’s a lot of noise, there’s a lot of clutter, there’s a lot of stuff in our lives that if we don’t do our due diligence with or without ADHD, this is just like the reality of life. But then you throw in a more chaotic brain to that. That’s actually I call it popcorn brain. And it’s idea, idea, idea, idea, idea, idea. Can I tell you how often I rearrange my podcast studio in my house? I think I’m on set 12, you know, and it’s just like Kelly, they all work the same. I don’t know why. And I sometimes go back to the same one, then I’ll move it again. It’s just like you’re wasting your time. But I’m very, I love clean environments, I love declutter environments. And so I know that prioritizing the things that will help me stay on task with the, you know, like to stay organized, if you know what I mean. Um, so with my clothes, I take them off. If it’s clean, I hang it. If it’s dirty, my system is I’ll just put it straight in the hamper. And then I have a laundry system, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, because otherwise I will do laundry every day. And then there’s clothes every day to put up, and then the kids don’t want to put the clothes away, and then it’s a clutter in my living room. You know, so that’s what I was talking about with the systems that are really beneficial that help our entire uh household. But I haven’t always been this way. And it’s through learned experiences and getting married really young and having to have a household from a young age that my husband and I just decided, hey, we don’t want to have a lot of clutter. We’re in agreement with that. We take donations all the time to our donation centers, our local donation centers here. Um, and then I’ve also, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Joshua Becker, he’s a big minimalist. And in fact, I’ve had him on my show and I’ve met him in person. He’s a New York Times bestseller author. And he talks about minimalism. And so again, the the decluttering really gave it another step of, hey, yeah, there’s a lot of mess, but you can even just get rid of stuff that then there’s less to organize. That’s just my personal take.

Dr. Amy Moore 43:08

Yeah. Well, I I’m impressed that you have been able to say, okay, I recognize that this is a challenge. Therefore, I’m gonna create a system that um works in my favor, right? Addressing this challenge. And then it it actually helps my entire household. Because in so disorganization is a huge part of my struggle and a huge point of contention between me and my husband because he’s so neat. That our that the way we function is that the common areas of our house are neat and organized and clean. Our bedroom for the most part is neat and organized and clean, but my office can be any way it needs to be. And so what happens is. Is I just throw everything in here.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 44:02

Yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore 44:02

Like, okay, well, this can’t be out there. This can’t bother anybody else. So I’m gonna just throw it in here. And so I have Doom Piles from 2014. Um, in my we haven’t lived in this house since that long, but it feels like Doom Piles since 2014. And I have this background for my podcast, and I can go 45 degrees. Um, and I have a beautifully curated set of bookshelves for my podcast, and the rest is looks like we threw a stick of dynamite into a woman’s closet and it exploded everywhere.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 44:40

So that’s one of the things that this regulates me. You know, that so it’s like it’s just so interesting how dynamic ADHD can be because we’re both women. We both had three sons, mind you. We’re both married, we’re both professionals, we’re both researchers. There’s so many elements that’s, you know, commonalities between you and I. And yet, one area of struggle for me, this is why it’s so cool to find people that are opposite from you and in link arms, you know, because um I don’t struggle with this, but you have other areas that are that I struggle with. And so it’s like, hey, share your tips with me and I’ll share my tips with you. So it’s just a beautiful world if you just open up and you’re like, man, listen, what are your tips to organizing? And then I can just be like, hey, what are your tips to really elevating your children as you talk to them? Because I don’t want to be passive aggressive, you know, and and that’s actually my my industry. My field is with parenting, but doesn’t mean I’m perfect, doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. It’s just what I’m super curious about. And I will continue to, you know, reach out to professionals like you to pour into my life in all of these areas so we can both grow. Yeah, I love that.

Dr. Amy Moore 45:58

Okay, so we need to wrap up because for some reason you’re capable of doing five interviews in one day. I, however, run out of neurotransmitters after three. I do have another one that kicks off in 12 minutes. Yes. So uh let’s just wrap up by dispelling this one myth really quickly. Um,

Why Not Everyone Has ADHD
Dr. Amy Moore 46:18

I hear everywhere people saying, well, everyone’s a little ADHD, aren’t they? What do you say to that in 30 seconds?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 46:25

Okay. First of all, there’s a whole chapter in my book specifically about that. I hear it all as soon as somebody hears that I that I’m an ADHD researcher, they’re like, oh, everybody has a little HD. And I’m like, you know, like it literally makes me gag in my mouth. But the reality is, yes, a lot of people are overstimulated. Yes, a lot of people are too glued to screens. Yes, a lot of people are overcommitted. But the all of those things have symptoms of ADHD. But to any person who doesn’t have good boundaries, who doesn’t have systems, personal systems, who doesn’t commit to the right things, who says too many yeses, who is you name it, yeah, you’re gonna struggle. Very different from a person who has a different brain that already has these ingrained struggles from birth, you know? Sure. Um, so no, not everybody has a little ADHD.

Dr. Amy Moore 47:26

Right. You could be pre-metopausal, menopausal, postmenopausal, and have hormonal issues. You could have thyroid issues, your nutrition could be poor, your sleep could be poor. All of that can contribute to what looks like ADHD, brain fog, or inattention, but it is not the same as having a neurodevelopmental disorder for sure. Thank you so much for helping me clarify that because that’s one of those myths that just drives me nuts.

Free Resources And Farewell
Dr. Amy Moore 47:51

Um, Dr. Kelly, how can our listeners find you, find more from you? I know you’re gonna be back shortly, but uh between now and then, how can they find you?

Dr. Kelly Cagle 48:00

So I am at drkellycagle.com. Again, I have that freebie that you guys can grab, drkellycagle.com slash adhrategies. That’s my house. That’s where I hang out and them for most of my time. Uh, you can find me anywhere on Instagram in particular and Facebook at dr. Kelly Kagel. But again, my website is what houses all of my resources, all of the information, and the freebie that I would love for you to grab so we can stay connected.

Dr. Amy Moore 48:28

Awesome. Dr. Kelly, thank you so much for being with me again today. And I can’t wait to spend more time with you here in a few weeks. Thank you, Dr.

Dr. Kelly Cagle 48:36

Amy.