ADHD, Progesterone and Hormones: Life-Changing Information Every Woman Needs to Know with Dr Jolene Brighten

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Kate Moryoussef (0:31)

Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast. I'm Kate Moryoussef, and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids, and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with ADHD.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey. Here's today's episode.

I'm here today with a true expert. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Jolene Brighten onto the podcast, she has written a brand new book all about ADHD and hormones. I'm so excited to just dive into the conversation. But before we start, let me introduce you. Because Dr. Jolene Brighten is an internationally recognized expert in hormones, women's health and ADHD across the female lifespan. She's a board certified naturopathic endocrinologist, nutrition scientist, certified menopause specialist and sex counselor. She is widely known for translating complex hormonal science into clear, clinically relevant care for patients and the doctors who treat them. So important. She's the bestselling author of Beyond the Pill and Is This Normal. Dr. Brighten is the host of The Dr. Brighten Show, and that's the top rated women's health podcast, which I highly recommend. Like I said, she has got a brand new book coming out very soon called ADHD and Women. So I'm absolutely delighted to welcome you to the podcast. Maybe we can just start a little bit with your experience. You've got like a clash of lived experience and professional interest. I followed you on Instagram. You indeed bring down this very clinical, complex terminologies and conversations and make it very easy to understand and process, which is so helpful because so many women have felt disempowered, and I actually think you are empowering them with knowledge so they can advocate for themselves. But maybe you can tell me a little bit about your neurodivergent journey to start with.

Jolene Brighten (3:00)

Well, we were talking and just so everybody knows, I asked you if we were the same person because we had such a similar journey. I was first diagnosed with ADHD.

I think that's something and a lot of women will relate to that. Doctors, they're very hesitant. I think for the last 20 plus years, well, I'd say generations before us, to diagnose us with ADHD because we look so different. It was my son who was diagnosed and I was working with a psychologist as a parent coach because I didn't get a manual to like how to raise a neurodivergent child and I definitely know my parents didn't do a great job. So I really wanted to do something different. I started arguing with her, not because I thought she was wrong, but because I was like, no, these things have to be normal because I've done them my whole life.

She's like, I'm sorry to tell you, Jolene, it's not normal. Like we should have our own session. So ADHD was really, I think an obvious one and they were like, you know, and I think every doctor was like, yeah, ADHD. Like every doctor I've encountered has been like, yeah, ADHD. That makes sense.

Then later came next the endometriosis diagnosis. So after 29 years of menstruating, lo and behold, we find my endometriosis. It was at that point that I remember reaching out to my good friend, Dr. Ana Sierra. And I was like, okay, so if people don't know who she is and you have endometriosis, you should follow her because her expertise in training is in neuro-pelviology. She is what a brain surgeon is, but for the pelvis, there's as many connections in the pelvis as there are in the brain. And so this like you, this is a person to know. And I was like, have you seen this connection between neurodivergence and endometriosis? She's like, no.

I go and I dig into the research, and lo and behold, there it is. And then I get the diagnosis of autism because the ADHD didn't totally fit. And things that came up in my evaluation were like, yeah, there's just like this, you know, I would describe I'm just socially awkward. Nobody thinks I'm socially awkward. You don't know what's happening inside. I am very socially awkward. And if I'm too tired, like I have learned I can't even go out and socialize if I'm too tired because I can't mask. And I say something weird. And it's very embarrassing. And then like every other woman that's neurodivergent, I go home. I replay everything at night. And I think of all the ways I've been the worst person in the world and I can't fall asleep. So that's been my journey. It's been very odd because to be 40 and to realize that so much of what you thought was just who you are is actually this diagnosis. And that you thought you were alone and maybe the only person who experienced this. And yet now you found this community. And I think that's one of the benefits of diagnosis is understanding, one, forgiving your past self, being gentle with that inner child, recognizing you needed support and accommodations, not more judgment, not more shame, but you also find other people who get your struggles, who understand these things and don't judge. You don't say things like, why don't you just try harder? And I will say that for myself, because I'm an entrepreneur and you know, the quiet part we don't often say out loud is being ADHD, ADHD, autistic is that most of us really can't be employed, we're unemployable. But being an entrepreneur, people look at me and they praise me because I have a maid, I have an executive assistant, I run a company with all these employees and what they don't see is that I've had to purchase accommodations and that's what all of these things are. From the entrepreneurial perspective, people are like, you're so successful and you've outsourced things that aren't in your highest good and isn't your strength and what people don't realize is that so many of us are doing that because we wouldn't be able to operate in our day-to-day life. I would probably never put my clothes away if I didn't have somebody. Sometimes it's just my maid who I love and she got praised in my gratitude section of my book because literally, she just sometimes is my body double. I'm like, Marisol, can you just please stand with me so I can actually hang these things up because I can't do that. But nobody sees these things, right?