Episode 597: Dr. Sasha Hamdani: ADHD, Rejection & Being Too Sensitive: Why You Feel Everything So Deeply

Sasha Hamdani (0:01)

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.

Jen Cohen (0:07)

Thanks, Tony. I'll take it from here. I'm Jennifer Cohen, your host, and I'm here to help you build the confidence, discipline, and resilience to create a bigger, bolder, and more successful life. Every week, I sit down with leading experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, and high performers to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that lead to real results. This is Habits and Hustle.

Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. One topic that's getting a lot of attention right now is ADHD, especially among adults who have spent their lives struggling with things they never realize were symptoms. But there's another side of ADHD that rarely gets discussed, and it has to do with how we handle emotions, criticism, and rejection. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Sasha Hamdani to break down the connection between ADHD and emotional sensitivity. Sasha is a board-certified psychiatrist, ADHD expert, and a New York Times bestselling author of the book, Too Sensitive, Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply. She also has ADHD herself, so she brings both a clinical and personal perspective to the conversation. In this episode, she challenges some common assumptions about ADHD, explains why rejection can feel so overwhelming, and shares practical strategies for managing symptoms and emotional responses. So let's dive in.

All right, you guys, we have a very special guest for you today. We have Dr. Sasha Hamdani. She is a psychiatrist. She's a real doctor.

Sasha Hamdani (2:01)

Yeah.

Jen Cohen (2:02)

I say that because sometimes it is play one on TV or play one on Instagram.

There are chiropractors and they're not, to me, I'm sorry, chiropractors, but that's not a real doctor. So this is a real doctor, and she has a new book called Too Sensitive. It's not that new. It's like a couple of months old. Yeah. But it's still crushing. Still new. It's still in the New York Times Best Sellers List, number three.

Sasha Hamdani (2:26)

No, it fell off the list, but it was at some point.

Jen Cohen (2:29)

Okay, it was at number three. I'm sorry.

Sasha Hamdani (2:31)

I know.

Jen Cohen (2:32)

But this book is, okay, so listen to this, called Too Sensitive, Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply. I've been following her on Instagram. She has amazing content all about ADHD, emotional resilience, emotional regulation. I'm a big fan. Thank you. You're welcome. And she's so cool. And now she's here today on Habits and Hustle.

And we've been like blabbering about God knows what before the podcast. About everything. Yes, exactly. And well, thank you for being here. You're so welcome. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I have to ask you, because you are, like I said, a real doctor. And I say that sometimes when I have real doctors on for that reason, I'm not joking.

Like, how did you become a content creator if you have, like you have a practice and you still practice, don't you? Yeah.

Sasha Hamdani (3:18)

Yeah.

Jen Cohen (3:19)

How did this whole thing happen for you?

Sasha Hamdani (3:21)

Like by accident.

Straight up by accident. I, in 2020, I had my son. And this was like two days before pandemic. And so it like I had him and then the entire world was different. Everything wanted to shut down. And so like, I couldn't leave the house. I had this newborn. I was so bored. I mean, with peace and love. Like he's amazing and he was amazing. But like that first three months, like they give nothing. It's just like taking care of a potato. So it just like, it was so, you know, it just like, so I was like, all right, I can't watch any more TV.

I wasn't in a spot where I could like, I didn't have the focus to like catch up on my reading. And so I was like, all right, well, you know, everybody was getting really into the TikTok specifically.

And my patients, when I started seeing patients again, they would like hold up their phone to the telehealth camera. And they're like, I saw this video and it says, it was talking about ADHD. And I think I have it because the, and the video was bad. It was like, if you sneeze multiple times in a row, you have ADHD. And I was like, I do sneeze multiple times in a row, but this is wrong. And so I started originally creating content just to like, correct misinformation, which, and, you know, at that point in time, like early or like mid 2020, there just wasn't a lot, it wasn't as saturated as what it is right now, right? So there weren't a lot of doctors. There wasn't a lot of, well, from what I saw at the time, there wasn't a lot of medical information. So it grew pretty quickly. I think if I were to start now doing that, I probably wouldn't have had that kind of growth that I did.