Office hours are this Saturday from 1 to 2pm Eastern Time, and open to paid subscribers. Sign up/link to join is here.
I’m giving away one copy of Nowhere Girl by Carla Ciccone (book we discuss in this podcast, on late-in-life ADHD diagnosis after sobriety), paid subscribers can respond to this email by changing the subject line to “Nowhere Girl”. (I pick at random within the first few hours. If you don’t get a response from me, it’s been claimed. I give things away regularly—next time if not this time!)
This is the third part of the series After Quit Like a Woman: Exploring how neurodivergence, hormones, and cPTSD reshape recovery I talked about here. The second part is a podcast episode called Relapse Isn’t What You Think, and the 3rd part was an essay about moderating alcohol. Next up is an essay post, 7 Things I’ve Done In My Recovery Since QLAW That Saved Me.
This was originally recorded for the co-regulation podcast. You can listen to this in your favorite podcast player.
We got sober. Then we got our ADHD diagnosis. This is what happened next.
Holly interviews Carla Ciccone about her book “Nowhere Girl” and their experiences with late-diagnosed ADHD. They discuss the profound impact of growing up undiagnosed—facing 20,000 more corrections than neurotypical children, developing deep shame, and being misunderstood as lazy or difficult. Both got diagnosed in their late 30s/early 40s after years of sobriety, revealing how substance use had masked underlying neurodivergence. The conversation explores the grief of late diagnosis, the challenge of managing ADHD without medication, and the difficulty of getting others to understand an invisible disability. They share how diagnosis led to divesting from others’ opinions, setting stronger boundaries, and learning self-compassion after lifetimes of self-blame. Both emphasize that while ADHD brings gifts, the “superpower” narrative dismisses real struggles with executive function, sensory processing, and emotional regulation.
TOPICS COVERED
Late ADHD diagnosis in women; misdiagnosis and delayed recognition; 20,000 additional corrections in childhood; shame and perfectionism from being “the weird one”; sobriety before diagnosis; substance use as self-medication; emotional dysregulation; sensory processing issues; stimulant medication experiences and side effects; gut issues and ADHD; hormones and perimenopause impact; rejection of “ADHD as superpower” narrative; grief over lifelong misunderstanding; loneliness after diagnosis; difficulty explaining invisible disability; people-pleasing and fawning; infantilization and authority figures; IFS therapy; setting boundaries; divesting from others’ opinions; self-compassion practices; nervous system regulation; accepting patterns without self-blame.
ABOUT CARLA
Carla Ciccone is author of Nowhere Girl, a memoir about late-diagnosed ADHD. Diagnosed at 39 during the pandemic, she had been sober for three years and was parenting a toddler. Her book examines how women with ADHD were overlooked by research focused on boys, leading to childhoods filled with shame and self-blame, and how that impacts them as adults. Carla is a Toronto-based writer. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Bon Appétit, The Cut, Chatelaine, and more. You can find more about her here.
TRANSCRIPT
Holly (00:02.222)
Hi, Carla. How are you? I’m good. Yeah, I’m really good. I am so excited to have this conversation. It’s the first conversation that I’ve had about my ADHD with anybody, that for public consumption. I’ve talked about it a little bit, but when I was diagnosed, it was 2022. And I wrote pretty immediately after my newsletter, I can’t.
Carla Ciccone (00:03.515)
Hi. Good, how are you? Yeah? Nice to see you.
Carla Ciccone (00:16.699)
Wow, I’m honored.
Holly (00:30.112)
Like, I just can’t with this diagnosis. I’ve been figuring out shit about myself for so, like, just like every time a thing comes up, I’m just like, that’s another thing. Now, let’s go fix that. Let’s go correct for that. And I just was like, fuck this. I’m not doing it. And so I have been like low key like researching it, but I just haven’t. I’ve I’ve read, sorry, haven’t talked about it, but I read your book, No Work Girl.
Carla Ciccone (00:38.041)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (00:46.426)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (00:52.047)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:00.078)
And I think I’ve read so many books on ADHD now. I think it was the first one that matched my anger. And it’s a sad book.
Carla Ciccone (01:08.015)
Okay, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:11.959)
I know. I know someone wrote about it the other day and was like, this book should have come with a trigger warning.
Holly (01:17.998)
It’s so sad. I was so by the end of it, I just I was but I felt so seen. I just had never. It’s tragic. I was watching like life and Beth. I don’t it’s a show about Amy Schumer and it kind of is loosely based off of her realizing that her husband is autistic and
Carla Ciccone (01:21.669)
But it’s kind of funny too, right?
Carla Ciccone (01:30.415)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:38.232)
Okay, yeah.
Holly (01:39.074)
But she was fucked when she was growing up. Like the whole story, her story is so sad. But it’s so reflective of mine. She just doesn’t get certain things. Like in this one scene, everyone is flashing their bras and she flashes her real boobs because she gets it wrong, which is so me. And everyone shames her, which is so me. And I just was like so affected by the thing because it’s just so reflective of my experience.
Carla Ciccone (01:47.525)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:54.18)
Mh.
Holly (02:06.986)
I’ve had a sad experience because of my ADHD and there’s, think that you just captured it. You didn’t really sugar coat it like, it’s my superpower, you know? like, you’re just like, this was so brutal.
Carla Ciccone (02:09.253)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (02:17.307)
No. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (02:23.203)
Yeah. Well, and I think, like, there’s this pressure to sort of, that I have certainly felt my whole life to sort of just, like, present the, version of yourself and represent the best version of your story. Like, I never even considered that I had a bad childhood or a sad childhood or even a hard childhood. And so, like, it was very eye-opening for me to write this and be like, maybe...
Maybe it was hard. Maybe it was...
Holly (02:53.826)
Maybe it was hard. mean, you were like sent to live by yourself at age, how old were eight? Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (02:57.579)
Yeah, when I was six, yeah, I had to go live in a hospital for asthmatic children. Like severely asthmatic.
Holly (03:03.726)
You in a hospital ward and they didn’t let you go outside for how long
Carla Ciccone (03:12.731)
It was actually like a program where they were like, there’s actually a study. I found it. I found the study. Because they were like studying us. So we had like our little school class and then we do our little workout. But yeah, we slept in like beds across from each other. And it was like a stra- yes. Yeah. Yeah. My only superpower is now ADHD, so.
Holly (03:19.054)
Yeah
Holly (03:23.136)
It’s insane!
Holly (03:31.342)
It’s like Stranger Things, it’s like Eleven.
Holly (03:37.378)
They were.
It’s so I’m not laughing at it. I’m just like, it’s just that like when you’re talking about that, it’s just like, yeah, like, it’s always been what you really portray is like, you’ve always been different in these different ways that you were never really given the space to interrogate, you know, and because your condition isn’t really
Carla Ciccone (03:54.969)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (04:00.461)
Yes, yeah, it’s just like move on and fit in and
Holly (04:05.43)
identified until you’re 40. And so it’s just like this mystery condition of like, that just seems like you’re fucked up and the weird one. So okay.
Carla Ciccone (04:06.629)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, you’re just the weird one. Which comes with a lot of shame, which you’re just like trying to hide your whole life kind of, right? Like trying to like blend in, yeah.
Holly (04:21.646)
Yeah, you’re trying to hide your mask. You’re masking. So okay, so you wrote this book, No More Girls. And can you just talk, you know, kind of succinctly, because we have a lot to talk about just about what it’s about, and why you wrote it. Like, why? Well, yeah, just start there.
Carla Ciccone (04:32.571)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (04:36.901)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Okay, so I got diagnosed at 39 and it was during the pandemic and I had a toddler at home and I was, I thought what I had was severe anxiety. Like I couldn’t sleep. I was just like, everything was was a huge deal. I couldn’t, I couldn’t manage my life. And then I went to therapy and found out that I have ADHD.
And I wasn’t very accepting of the diagnosis at first because my association with ADHD was the stereotype of like, I don’t want to have this. This is like a little white boy disease, or disorder, sorry. And so I was kind of embarrassed. God, could that be me? But then I started researching it because I was curious and...
Holly (05:15.246)
Fake.
Holly (05:24.168)
Interesting.
Holly (05:29.518)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (05:37.625)
because the only articles I was really finding by women in a similar situation were like the very like type A really successful, had no idea something was wrong in my life until I got this diagnosis and whoa. And for me, I’m like, no, I always knew something was wrong in my life. Like my life has been very up and down. I’ve had this like shame and self-blame that’s just like horrendous for my entire life. So.
Holly (05:56.332)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (06:07.884)
when I started researching it and realizing like we all these women that are getting diagnosed now don’t like they just forgot about us they just didn’t consider us they didn’t research us and we grew up thinking something was wrong with ourselves and here we are so that kind of made me really mad and I think that anger sort of fueled the book yes yeah
Holly (06:20.814)
and
Holly (06:25.614)
Yeah.
Holly (06:31.15)
Yeah, and you were already sober when you got your diagnosis. And you’d been sober for how long?
Carla Ciccone (06:37.454)
I’d been sober for three years at the time. Three and a half.
Holly (06:42.754)
And do you think it’s kind of a miracle that you were able to get sober before you had your diagnosis, now that you know what you know?
Carla Ciccone (06:49.004)
It was a miracle, but it was because I was pregnant. Like was because of my daughter. Like I really don’t think I would have, I don’t know. Like I don’t know if I would have come to any of these conclusions or had this outcome if I wasn’t for her because I mean, yeah, I got sober for her. then because I had this idea in my head of the kind of parent I wanted to be, and I didn’t want to be a drunk parent. Like I’ve seen my parents.
Holly (06:52.673)
Okay.
Holly (07:03.831)
then.
Carla Ciccone (07:18.82)
drunk when I was little and it was terrifying. And so that in mind, I think, has been sort of enough to keep me sober. I don’t even like the idea of now you can get beer, the zero. And I’ve had a couple and I’m like, wow, it tastes just like beer. But then I’m like, wait, it tastes just like beer.
Holly (07:22.029)
Yeah.
Holly (07:33.741)
Yeah.
Holly (07:40.691)
Yeah, just like it.
Carla Ciccone (07:43.599)
Like a little, I like the like shitty o-duels or whatever from where it’s like, it doesn’t really taste like beer. you know. Like this is kind of kind of strange. So yeah. So yeah, sobriety is very much connected to parenting for me. And I know that like I wouldn’t be able to do it if I wasn’t sober. Like I’m barely, I’m barely doing it now. So.
Holly (07:47.712)
Yeah, yeah, because it doesn’t taste like beer.
Holly (08:10.262)
I know, right? But you also, I’m wondering if it was like harder for you, like I had this experience of, my God, how did I do this? I really did, of like not, cause I didn’t fix a lot of the underlying stuff that I was using substances for. was, you know, I think that I was stimming or managing, you talk about this clenched feeling in your body.
Carla Ciccone (08:19.907)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (08:25.858)
Yeah. Yes.
Carla Ciccone (08:31.822)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (08:36.131)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (08:36.558)
or this like discomfort, this like actual physiological discomfort. And I just remember like going maybe six years into sobriety and getting my teeth fixed and I used gas. And it was the first time I realized I am in pain most of the time. I have this like clenched feeling in my body. And so I think...
Carla Ciccone (08:41.316)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (08:53.635)
Yeah.
Holly (08:57.35)
I find it a miracle to a degree when I hear about people who got sober first without addressing at all or managing their neurodivergence, you know?
Carla Ciccone (09:06.406)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think it just... Excuse me. I think it just turned into a different kind of masking for me, which I was so familiar and so used to masking that it’s just my life at this point. So I’m just like, now I’m a mom.
Holly (09:23.019)
Sure.
Carla Ciccone (09:29.026)
And I’ll just like beat myself up mentally for like different things now. And that’s how we get stuff done. That’s how we manage it, right? Like we just like, so it just, yeah, the fear and the anxiety. So that’s kind of what it turned into.
Holly (09:38.136)
fear. Shame. Yeah. So and you call it nowhere girls. Can you just talk about that? Because I thought that that was extremely appropriate.
Carla Ciccone (09:46.126)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (09:50.297)
Yeah, well, I think first of all, there’s this sort of feeling of belonging nowhere when you have, when you’re like an unidentified neurodivergent kid growing up and you feel like you don’t fit in and you feel like you don’t.
Holly (10:05.142)
Why is that?
Carla Ciccone (10:07.938)
I think because I don’t, I mean, there’s a lot of different reasons, but like groups are hard. Groups have always been hard for me. Like I think it’s a sensory thing. don’t, you know, like I’m hyper aware of everything going on. So it’s hard to relax, right? Like it’s hard to just, you know, and that’s why I turned to drinking and to smoking weed. Cause I’m like, okay.
Holly (10:18.168)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (10:27.746)
me.
Holly (10:33.133)
sir.
Carla Ciccone (10:34.606)
This at least helps me get on their level or get on like, you know, like able to sort of just like talk without filtering everything I’m saying through this like constant, you know, chatter in my head. So.
Holly (10:46.092)
Yes. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (10:51.534)
Yeah.
Holly (10:53.838)
It’s lot. It’s a lot. There’s a lot that’s in there. So very simply for readers, can you just talk really quickly, what is ADHD? I’m sure you’ve written a book on it. I’m sure you have an elevator pitch ready. What’s your canned response when you explain to people what ADHD is?
Carla Ciccone (10:55.459)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (11:09.732)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (11:15.906)
It’s a brain difference. Like, that’s the simplest answer. It’s a brain difference. So our brains take in information differently and put information differently. And because we have sort of a different system and a more highly sensitive system, we’re affected differently by just regular life. everything from
Holly (11:37.102)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (11:44.613)
bright lights, loud noises, to like, you know, being in a classroom when you’re young and there’s like multiple people around you and you’re trying to focus on the teacher, but there’s like so many distractions and just like, it’s just kind of like a constant, but in the book, I think I describe it as like, there’s a lack of filtering. Like most people have automatic filtering where they’re like, this isn’t important, so my brain is not gonna get derailed by that. I’m just gonna focus on this, but.
when you have ADHD or autism, you don’t have that ability. So it kind of, get overwhelmed by things. And then I think a big part of ADHD, especially when you’re late diagnosed is emotional dysregulation. So that sensory stuff, I think can also turn into and like contribute to you just getting so overwhelmed.
Holly (12:22.893)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (12:44.352)
that you shut down or you blow up. So, and that’s one thing that I think like after I got sober, I was very blindsided by the emotional dysregulation. Like I didn’t realize how much I had been managing it with alcohol and also with smoking weed, which like I’ve smoked weed since I was like 12. So, and I know it’s like some people like are California sober or whatever. It doesn’t, I don’t know. It doesn’t really work for me.
Holly (12:47.17)
Yeah.
Holly (12:53.24)
Yeah.
Holly (13:01.784)
Yeah.
Holly (13:06.253)
Yeah.
Holly (13:10.104)
Yeah.
It doesn’t work for you. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (13:13.882)
I mean I still try sometimes. I love the smell of it. I love the smell of wheat.
Holly (13:20.27)
It’s like, well, I mean, it also just does for I think it does for like, I’ve read a lot about weed since I started using it. And I think I started using it around the time that I was diagnosed, actually within a few months of the time that I was diagnosed. And it’s just terrible for people with ADHD.
Carla Ciccone (13:28.814)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (13:32.58)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (13:37.654)
Yeah, it is. Well, because of paranoia. Like, we’re already paranoid people.
Holly (13:42.254)
Totally. Well, I find it just like it’s also like it creates more divergence. It actually is like really like helpful to people that are like have convergent brains because it helps them kind of break. But for me, it’s just like increases the possibilities. I already have issues with self initiation. It causes deficits and self initiation. Like it is like everything I’m working against like works against.
Carla Ciccone (13:47.117)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (13:51.886)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (13:57.306)
Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I know. I can do nothing. Like, I used to have this boyfriend who could, like, smoke weed and then study and, like, work on papers. I’m like, no, I, like, need to lie down. Like, I’m not. Yeah.
Holly (14:12.288)
Yeah, totally. Just like zone out and fall asleep. Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so you, you know, for 80, like ADHD, like executive function deficits, it’s something it’s not a disease. It’s not something you catch. It’s not something you develop. It’s genetic. It is something that is just your brain is actually different. And like you just said, you have issues filtering, you have issues with executive function with time management with
Carla Ciccone (14:22.498)
Mm-hmm.
No.
Carla Ciccone (14:31.694)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (14:38.009)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (14:40.41)
all kind, like basically you have issues with the things that make you make the living in this world easier, right? You have like everything that makes, that’s right, that’s right. right. And so when you, can you just talk like a little bit about, okay, so your whole story of like how you came to it. So you were sober for three years.
Carla Ciccone (14:48.567)
Yeah. Like being a functional adult. Yeah. Yeah. Fun.
Carla Ciccone (15:04.569)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Holly (15:05.718)
It’s the middle of the pandemic, which is also a big deal because there’s a lot of women that were previously undiagnosed again because they didn’t diagnose for us. Like a really wonderful example of how egregious this was, was my mom was a reading specialist and she did her dissertation on ADHD and dyslexia. And she had kids coming to our home that she tutored and worked with that had these issues. And I was under her, it would just never.
Carla Ciccone (15:20.281)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (15:35.168)
I was having all these classic signs of both types, and it was not even considered that I had ADHD, not even. And so you have been, you’ve lived your whole life. You are three years sober. It’s the middle of pandemic. You’re working with your therapist, and your therapist suggests that you may have ADHD. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Carla Ciccone (15:35.384)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (15:40.153)
Yeah.
Yeah, amazing.
Carla Ciccone (15:52.035)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (15:57.721)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (16:01.377)
Yeah, I...
Holly (16:04.652)
Like were you at all cured? Like did you have a hunch before that or was that like a complete surprise?
Carla Ciccone (16:08.653)
Well, you know, it was like at the time there was like there were memes, you know, I was starting to relate to memes. I think that’s like the first sign for me. Just like, you know, like the conversation style of someone with ADHD. And it’s just like this loop to loop of like, you know, it’s not it’s not straightforward. I was like, my God, I do that. But I don’t have ADHD. Yes, interrupt.
Holly (16:15.886)
Things are really good.
Holly (16:32.258)
finish people’s sentences, interrupt, keep going under like 20 million different tangents and somehow bring it back to the original point. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (16:41.919)
Yeah, yeah. So my therapist thought I could either have ADHD or complex PTSD. And she wasn’t sure because the symptoms of both are similar. So that’s kind of the problem you run into when the older you get, when you’re undiagnosed, because you start getting these comorbidities and these misdiagnoses because what your ADHD looks like a lot of different things as you get older.
Holly (16:51.36)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (16:55.128)
Good night.
Holly (17:10.584)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (17:11.637)
the longer you leave it and also the chance of you developing other things increases. So I
Holly (17:16.726)
Right. Why is that? Why does the developing other things increase because of untreated ADHD?
Carla Ciccone (17:21.849)
because
I think it’s because it’s kind of like a snowball, right? Like it just keeps building. you’re like, hold on, I’m just trying to find the right words. Just a second. Okay.
Holly (17:30.807)
Right.
Holly (17:37.656)
Don’t worry, we’ll edit it out while you think. And you don’t have to answer this, we could just like skip.
Carla Ciccone (17:42.08)
No, no, no, I want to answer it. I’m just trying to think like I was literally just reading something about this, but like basically the longer you don’t get treated with ADHD, it’s that sort of sense of shame, that persistent shame and low self-esteem combined with impulsivity. So you’re you have this shame and you’re not making decisions from your like best self. You’re you’re making decisions like
Holly (17:58.574)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holly (18:07.043)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (18:09.441)
very impulsively almost like in my case, it was almost like I wanted to see myself fail some of the things I’ve done. like I just didn’t care about, I didn’t place high value on my life or myself. And so when that is your mindset, I think it’s very easy to fall into substance abuse and to like develop things like I’ve got post concussion.
Holly (18:16.256)
Hmm.
Holly (18:24.886)
them them
Carla Ciccone (18:39.351)
disorder at one point and like then fell into a depression and then just had this like crippling anxiety and like Because I was so trained at masking I go to my doctor and just be like, I’m fine. I just need that low dose antidepressant. I’m fine. I’m fine My life is like literally in flames, but I’m
Holly (19:01.944)
But this is really interesting because it does. It mimics all these things like CPTSD, neurodivergence, addiction, hormone imbalances, hormonal imbalances. These things all affect your nervous, like nervous system regulation is involved. Dopamine, executive function.
Carla Ciccone (19:06.091)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (19:13.719)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (19:20.631)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holly (19:23.598)
Like, there’s so much that’s actually happening between those things. It’s really hard to pull apart. And it’s so interesting because when I was asking for people to give me questions for you and for this episode, I mean, I had one person talking about processed food. I had another person that was talking about they were diagnosed at age 13 with ADD. But then,
Carla Ciccone (19:29.314)
It is, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (19:39.8)
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
Holly (19:45.644)
when they were, you and they were immediately put on meds. And this is, I believe this is someone that’s female. And then they were put on meds. And then, you know, now in their 40s,
for them it’s like, my God, so much of this is hormonal, you know? And like, I don’t even know if ADD was a thing or if, and so there’s just this like, and I understand all of that because it’s just like, how do you start cutting this up into what is what and what came first and which thing do you actually work on?
Carla Ciccone (20:00.111)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (20:04.108)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (20:08.131)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (20:11.811)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (20:15.159)
Well, I think like the whole like perimenopause thing, that’s really important because the perimenopause comes with brain fog and it comes with like nervous system changes and it comes with like all sorts of symptoms that like no one explains to you and you don’t know if you’re going crazy. So, but that’s where I think a proper assessment for ADHD is crucial because ADHD is lifelong, right?
Holly (20:41.611)
you
Carla Ciccone (20:44.747)
you had it when you were a child, even if you were undiagnosed. So if you need somebody to be able to go back with you and like uncover the patterns of your life. And I think that’s kind of the one issue right now with like, I think in the US anyway, there’s these like very quick diagnoses, like 15 minute sessions is just not long enough to sort of figure out what’s actually going on. Because as you said, like once you’re
Holly (20:48.451)
Yeah.
Holly (21:06.104)
Yeah.
Holly (21:11.319)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (21:13.081)
a woman in her late 30s, early 40s and beyond, like you’re complex. You’re medically complex at that point, right? Like you need more than 15 minutes, so.
Holly (21:17.837)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And what is a proper diagnosis? How does somebody get that? Because that was one of the questions that one of the listeners had is like, how?
Carla Ciccone (21:29.279)
It’s that’s a really hard question to answer because like it’s different. The way I did it was my therapist was part of this coalition that paired their patients with psychiatrists. So I could pay my therapist rate, but go see a psychiatrist and get the assessment. And so that’s what I did. And it was like two hours long. I’m in Canada. So like we you could go through the
Holly (21:49.953)
Mm
Holly (21:53.901)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (21:58.298)
public healthcare system, but you would be looking at like a two to three year wait to see a psychiatrist. And that’s why people go to private clinics where you’re paying up to $3,000 for the assessment.
Holly (22:03.436)
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly (22:10.786)
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s really important to say, because I know you’re a fan of Devon Price. Devon Price talks about time and again, this is a privilege to be able to actually have a proper diagnosis. Not everyone has it. And I think it’s really important to say that if you are not able to do that, that you know yourself. And there are enough tools. And it counts as a diagnosis if you self-identify. you do it because it is not open to everyone, like Carla just said.
Carla Ciccone (22:15.906)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (22:19.545)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (22:29.943)
Yes, it’s okay to self-identify. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (22:36.535)
It’s not, and that’s one of my huge problems with this whole area is that it’s so exclusive. And even once you get the diagnosis, to be able to change your life in ways that are actually helpful to you, you need money, you need access, and you need to know how to navigate systems that are difficult, right? So it is an exclusive diagnosis, and I don’t like that about it, especially in adulthood.
Holly (22:51.118)
You do. mean, because there’s just...
now.
Holly (23:02.318)
Yeah. Yeah. So you have all the things. You have the history of addiction. You have the CPTSD, relational trauma. I read your book. definitely have those things. You have ADHD. are square in the hormone fluctuation, the peak hormone fluctuation. And I guess like,
Carla Ciccone (23:06.477)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (23:12.489)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yay.
Carla Ciccone (23:23.854)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (23:32.674)
You know, this is, there’s so much, like so many different things that I want to talk about and want to ask about. But I guess for me, like just the straight, okay, you got your diagnosis and then what? And then I’m gonna talk about, I got my diagnosis and then what? Because I think that this is a big black box for a lot of people is like, you get your diagnosis and then what the fuck are you supposed to do? Especially if, I mean, for me too, it’s just like,
Carla Ciccone (23:41.197)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (23:44.857)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (23:52.929)
It is, yeah.
Holly (24:01.058)
I’m sure this is probably true for you. Life was already hard before that. It was already impossible for me to be doing what I was doing. And then on top of it, you have this insane diagnosis that actually affects every facet of your existence. And you’ve got to what, like, start figuring it out and taming it, whatever. just, I put down. No, no.
Carla Ciccone (24:05.013)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (24:17.869)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (24:22.967)
Yeah, it doesn’t make things easier just automatically. No, it makes them more complicated at first for sure, I think.
Holly (24:30.702)
So what was your process? This was when? So this is four years ago, right? It’s like 2021 or is it 2020? OK, so you get your diagnosis. What do you do?
Carla Ciccone (24:36.417)
Yeah, 2021.
Carla Ciccone (24:42.413)
The first thing I did was I got put on Vyvanse. I got put on like a very high dose of Vyvanse. And so it’s a stimulant medication, yeah. And so immediately I sort of became more productive. And for about a year, I thought that that meant that I was like winning at life. you know, like I was...
Holly (24:49.186)
which is stimulant.
Holly (24:58.936)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (25:04.96)
Because you can do stuff.
Carla Ciccone (25:07.563)
I could do stuff, could plan, I could plan for dinners, I could plan my kid’s life, I could plan my life, I was like just operating at a higher level. But then I started getting a lot of side effects from the stimulants. My hair started thinning, I started getting heart palpitations that kept me up at night like really bad. And I lost a bunch of weight that was in like a healthy or good way.
Holly (25:36.47)
And did it make you feel like you were, in my experience, stimulants made me feel like I had to manage the come down the same way I had to manage the come down from like alcohol and that was just awful. Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (25:42.17)
Oh my god, yes, yes. Yeah, around like two o’clock, two, three o’clock every day, I would just be like done and like, because I would forget to eat and drink too. So it was like, I found that it wasn’t like, yes, it made me more productive, but I think it robbed my body. Like I think it just jacked up my cortisol and just like left me completely depleted. So I stopped taking them. Yeah, I took them for a year.
Holly (26:04.386)
Yeah, a year after taking them. And were you skill building? Also, did you start reading all the books on it once you were diagnosed? What was the first book you read?
Carla Ciccone (26:12.876)
Yes.
I think it was ADHD 2.0. Have you heard that one? I was like, it’s a good one. Mm-hmm, I think so. I think so. Yeah, it’s like two doctors wrote it. I think he’s one of them. And so that, I started putting some pieces together because they talk about it in childhood. One thing that stood out for me, I remember, was like the connection between ADHD and like balance and coordination in childhood.
Holly (26:18.304)
OK. Isn’t that like, isn’t that NetHalawa? OK, cool. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Holly (26:43.518)
Mm-hmm. Are you equipped? Yeah. I think you said if there’s a door, like I’ve always told people if there is like a door and it’s like 20 feet wide, I will run into one side of the threshold. Did you write? Yes. Did you write that?
Carla Ciccone (26:43.637)
and how like that is such a simple little, such a klutz. Like, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (26:56.651)
Yeah, yeah, I’ll find a way. Yeah. I know don’t think I did, but no, but I it’s true. It’s the truth for me. Like I have all these random injuries from childhood just like spinning into a TV set or just like falling off speakers at a club or, you know, just.
Holly (27:14.732)
Totally I I broke my toe in LA in my cafeteria at my church from the wind the roll down window. I like kept on getting goose eggs and concussions from running into like my head into doorways. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (27:17.689)
you
Carla Ciccone (27:22.073)
Carla Ciccone (27:27.624)
Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, like, if you think about it, it’s such a simple thing. Like, if only we had some balance boards, you know, like, it have different, Holly.
Holly (27:36.13)
Thank
Mmm.
Carla Ciccone (27:42.979)
So yeah, that was the first book. And then I started doing my own research because I was like, this book is like, it’s good, but it’s general and it seems geared towards boys and men because that’s where the research is, you know? So I started doing my own research and I found Stephen Hinshaw, who is a professor at the University of...
Holly (27:56.0)
men.
Carla Ciccone (28:12.92)
California, Berkeley. And he’s the first one to study girls with ADHD in the 90s. So he’s like, did like a summer camp with girls and he’s followed them since then. So because of that research, kind of, yeah, the longitudinal studies, we kind of have like a look at like what it looks like from like adolescence or I think even childhood up till, till now, which is great. But I mean, sad really, yeah.
Holly (28:26.548)
Okay.
Holly (28:40.952)
So you started talking to him. what was different about his research? What did that illuminate for you?
Carla Ciccone (28:48.48)
Well, you know, girls, like basically everything I was dealing with, he validated because this is what he sees every day and what he’s seen in his cohort that he studied since the mid 90s. Yeah.
Holly (29:04.749)
And did you have this experience in that first year or so of what was it like for you? Was all of sudden, how did you re-examine your life? Was it a huge aha for you across? Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (29:10.466)
Hmm.
Carla Ciccone (29:16.216)
For me it was, and I did this thing that I always do when I get excited about something is that like, I tried to share it with other people and tried to share it with like family members and old friends and I think that’s a mistake. I mean, not that I think it’s a mistake, but for me it kind of was because they weren’t, they didn’t care. It wasn’t a thing for them. It wasn’t something they were ready to talk about or wanted to hear about. So.
Holly (29:37.474)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (29:44.331)
It was that was kind of devastating for me because, you know, I I can be very like. Optimistic and hopeful, and it kind of like made me crash down to reality that like, this is something I’m going through by myself and I have to make it OK that it’s just for me. Like this is just for my understanding of myself, because I think I had always had this pressure.
Holly (30:01.325)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (30:11.542)
I put this pressure on myself to share everything with the group and to try to like, you know, when you have ADHD, exactly, like let me over explain myself to you so you’re not mad at me anymore. So you know where I’m coming from, right? Like if, if only I just tell you what this experience is like for me, maybe you’ll understand and maybe you won’t hate me. Exactly, yeah.
Holly (30:14.806)
Yeah. Which is part of ADHD, right? Which is over-thinnering.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Holly (30:30.124)
Yeah. And maybe I won’t hate me. Yeah. So nobody was interested in it. It’s so interesting.
Carla Ciccone (30:37.578)
Yeah, I mean maybe it may be different now, but like yeah, this was a few years ago. Nobody, but I think it was.
Holly (30:45.612)
And do you think that’s also because people are just like, so what, everyone has ADHD?
Carla Ciccone (30:50.4)
Yeah, I think it was a little bit, I mean, to be fair, this is during the pandemic. People are at their worst mentally, you know, like a year and a half into the pandemic or whatever, two years.
Holly (30:57.997)
Yeah.
Holly (31:01.358)
But also still, if you were like, hey, guys, I just found out I’ve had a tumor inside of me my whole entire life that has impaired the way that I’ve done every single thing. So they probably were interested in it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (31:06.476)
Yeah. Actually, that happened to me too.
Carla Ciccone (31:13.258)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think, I mean, for my family, I think it was more like, everybody has it. We all have that. And there was this like, not wanting to sort of go into it any further, maybe for fear or whatever. And then I think some old friends that, know, like old friendships that were sort of just like, just hanging on.
and I tried to sort of be like, hey, I just found this thing out about myself. Like it’s explained so much of like why I’m a... They’re just like, okay. And I’m like, God, okay. I guess, yeah. So I mean, of course there are people that were very supportive too, but of course with my brain, I just focus on the ones that like didn’t care, right? I’m like, why didn’t they care? So yeah.
Holly (31:46.894)
I’m a shitty friend to you.
Holly (32:00.408)
Yeah.
Holly (32:04.342)
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so interesting because I had the opposite experience. I always knew I had ADHD. Like there was I don’t know when that dawning happened. Like I don’t know when I knew it. But you know how people say like, I’m being so that’s my OCD when they don’t have OCD. And I would say, that’s my ADHD. Like I knew it, especially when I was running a company. We’d be in I’m the
Carla Ciccone (32:11.69)
Really? Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (32:22.728)
yeah, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (32:27.156)
Yes. Yeah.
Holly (32:30.776)
fucking CEO of the company, we’re in a large meeting room. And I’m just like, in or I’m the clown. I’m interrupting. I’m just like, I can’t help my you know, on all of the different fronts, the way that I know that I am starting things not finishing things. Like my I like I got in trouble when I was in the first grade for just like throwing labels out the window. I was consistently doing things that made absolutely no fucking sense. That just to like see what would happen and
Carla Ciccone (32:35.948)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (32:40.482)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (32:45.752)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (32:58.39)
Yeah.
Holly (33:00.534)
I knew it and to a degree I knew it. And when I was diagnosed or before I was diagnosed, I was out to dinner with my friend Najma and she was talking about her diagnosis and I was diminishing her diagnosis and saying, everyone has it and it’s not a big deal and I’m not gonna, why do I need to go get tested for something I know? And she was very like, no.
Carla Ciccone (33:13.688)
No.
Carla Ciccone (33:19.928)
Because it’s normal for you. Yeah.
Holly (33:27.126)
You are wrong. This is a serious issue. If you think you have it, you need to be diagnosed for it. It will change your life. And she sent me a couple of like, how do ADHD YouTubes. And when I watched them, it was just like, I don’t know. It was a train. Like, it was like a train wreck in slow motion. It was just this like, my god, I have this thing. And this weird sense of like, I’ve always known I’ve had this thing, or I’ve known at least for a while.
Carla Ciccone (33:30.241)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (33:39.2)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (33:47.222)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (33:55.648)
Yeah.
Holly (33:55.939)
But I haven’t known that I have this thing. so I didn’t tell any I mean, I was just like I told my editor and my agent but I kept on I think when I told my editor and my agent, I wrote them a letter and I was like, just so you know, this isn’t gonna affect anything. You know, I’m like I was reassuring them that my diagnosis was going to be minimized. I wasn’t going to put them out by it. I wasn’t going to use it as an excuse.
Carla Ciccone (33:58.828)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (34:05.301)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (34:18.815)
Yeah.
Holly (34:23.79)
you know, whatever it was. And I really, that’s how I treated it, which was just like probably the same way I’ve treated it my whole life, which was like, I’m just gonna make it work so it doesn’t bother anybody.
Carla Ciccone (34:34.718)
Yeah, it won’t be an inconvenience for you. Yeah.
Holly (34:37.272)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (34:40.204)
And did you come, how did you come around?
Holly (34:47.096)
Well, my sister got diagnosed around the same time. And she took it really seriously. It explained everything for her. She hadn’t gone through sobriety. I think that that was a big piece of this. She hadn’t gotten sober. I’d already gotten sober. I think because of sobriety, and this is something I’m really curious about for you, but sobriety caused me to make so many. In ADHD, they say it’s like skills or pills or whatever. You do skill building, and there are pills.
Carla Ciccone (34:49.909)
Okay.
Carla Ciccone (34:56.386)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (35:12.461)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holly (35:16.194)
And I had been building skills, like probably prior to getting sober. I had created all these workarounds and compensations. And then when I got sober, even more. And so I think that when I started hearing my sister talk about it, and she was like always talking about it and sending me books, and I think it was her, how seriously she took it and how her life was changed because of it and how
Carla Ciccone (35:21.144)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (35:41.334)
Yeah.
Holly (35:44.943)
Because her daughter has it. And I think her kids have it, right? And I think your kid has it too. we can strike that. We don’t have to talk about your children. No, but my sister had taken it seriously. when she was taking it seriously, I listened to one book because she was taking it seriously. But I was really, really resistant to it. But I listened to Tamara Rosier’s book, Your Brain’s Not Broken. Did you ever listen to that?
Carla Ciccone (35:46.52)
Okay.
Carla Ciccone (35:51.906)
I think so. She’s not officially diagnosed, but yeah. No, it’s okay.
Carla Ciccone (36:08.94)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (36:13.144)
Mm-mm.
Holly (36:14.688)
I, it was like just, it’s a love letter to ADHD, you know? And it was like listening to things I had never understood about myself. And that was when I had the click of, my, I just felt broken. You know what I mean? I had done, but when I got my diagnosis, I was many years sober by that point. I had written a book helping many people get healthier. I had founded a company that helped many people get healthier. And then all my structures fell away and I was,
Carla Ciccone (36:19.232)
Okay.
Carla Ciccone (36:29.825)
Yeah.
Holly (36:44.342)
just floundering and going through the, you’re always going to be this fucked up. You’re always going to be this person that returns here, that’s so dysregulated, that’s so whatever. And I think that for me it was just like, I’m not just a fucked up person, I’m not just a fuck up. That was really the first thing was like, my God, I’m not just a fuck up.
Carla Ciccone (36:45.933)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (36:51.19)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (36:55.202)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (37:06.04)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (37:09.472)
Yeah, I feel like there have been times, a lot of times in my life where I’ve returned to rock bottom because it feels comfortable. And I think that like, that is something that sobriety didn’t fix in me. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest clues of my ADHD, of just sort of like burning your life down because you know, you’re overwhelmed or you’re dysregulated or you know, like you said, structures are falling away.
Holly (37:37.77)
And yeah.
Carla Ciccone (37:39.404)
So why not just like go for the bottom? Like not that it’s not always a choice or you’re not always conscious of it, but I think when you’re used to things going wrong, you get comfortable with it. You get comfortable with chaos and scrambling.
Holly (37:47.032)
Yeah.
Holly (37:55.599)
it also becomes your lint. like, you just think that’s who you are. I burn things down. When I was getting fired from my company, on the worst day of my fucking life, the journal entry I wrote was, I don’t know why I keep on running out of burning buildings. And I, my friend was like, first of all, you should always run out of burning building. But like, like the blame, the blame of like, I did this.
Carla Ciccone (37:59.125)
I think it’s your normal. Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (38:11.096)
Mmm.
Carla Ciccone (38:16.254)
Yeah, it’s smart to do so.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Holly (38:23.646)
I could not look at the circumstances or the situation squarely. I really looked at you’ve done this and you’ve done it again. And so I understand that. I really understand that. Why is like...
Carla Ciccone (38:30.146)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holly (38:42.646)
Why is that still the case for you, guess? Is the bottom still the case for you? Like that that’s where you are most at your best or at your what not your best, but your most.
Carla Ciccone (38:49.354)
No.
Carla Ciccone (38:53.534)
No, I mean, I think that I have and a lot of people with ADHD have this thing where we’re scrappy and we want to prove you wrong. So if you don’t believe in me, I’m going to prove you wrong. And that kind because we lack motivation, right? We lack the ability to have consistent motivation. So we have to get it from somewhere. And so I think that like I don’t I don’t burn my life down anymore, but I do still struggle to find that
Holly (39:05.325)
Yeah.
Holly (39:12.472)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (39:23.072)
that sense of motivation sometimes and I don’t always know if I have like the healthiest replacements for what I used to do. You know.
Holly (39:33.292)
Mm-hmm. Explain a little bit more. What did you use to, you mean, you don’t have the healthiest replacements for burning down?
Carla Ciccone (39:41.557)
well just for like deal, yeah like because before I mean I don’t because I’m sober now and because I try to live a healthier life I still feel the sense of things the pressure to sort of like motivate myself by I guess I guess that’s what this book was about sort of it was about like I’m gonna take everything that I used to
you know, burn my life down with and put it into like this book and be mad about it. Like, because I think that’s one thing I never at the base of it was anger, you know, like not getting to express anger, anger turning into sadness instead or turning into self-destruction. And I think a lot of women deal with this and we then we develop, you know, autoimmune disorders because we’re just like holding everything in all the time.
Holly (40:39.448)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (40:39.544)
And so I think trying to find healthy outlets for that and just allowing myself to be grumpy too, you know, like, I don’t know. I was trained from a young age to be like pleasant and happy and like smile time and you know, and it gets exhausting. And I feel like that happens to women. I’m not sure if it’s just ADHD, but I think it just happens to women that once you start hitting perimenopause, you’re just like,
Done. Done with pretending.
Holly (41:11.47)
I mean, that’s what I was gonna say. It’s just so funny because as you’re saying this, I’m like thinking about what’s really changed for me in the last few years. When I was diagnosed, it was the summer of 2022. This is when I started using Podigan, which I thought at first was like the worst thing that I could be doing. It was just, it felt like throwing my life away. It was a big deal. And like, I had moved from New York to California.
Carla Ciccone (41:17.004)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (41:25.293)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (41:29.218)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (41:32.939)
Yeah.
Holly (41:37.167)
I got in a huge fight with my sister. I got the diagnosis. I think I was at a real big bottom point when I got my diagnosis. It was probably one of the biggest bottoms I’ve ever been. And what I
Carla Ciccone (41:46.134)
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly (41:52.719)
From that moment, really, honestly, and I don’t know if it has to do with ADHD or if it has to do with the hormones or if it has to do with losing everything and it’s probably some combination of all those things, I just stopped taking shit in the way I always had. There was a real correction around then. was a scapegoat in my family. I was definitely the black sheep and the one that everyone pinned everything on and...
Carla Ciccone (42:02.295)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (42:10.166)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holly (42:17.752)
There was just maybe it’s like I’d been sober for 10 years at that point. I’ve been in therapy for 10 years, all of this. And I just was like, I’m not going to take the blame for this anymore. Right. And it really started to, I think that one of the things as you’re talking and thinking about is that it’s been what has been the most tremendous thing for me is
Carla Ciccone (42:27.403)
Yeah, you’re doing the work. Yeah.
Holly (42:44.524)
Really divesting. I don’t know if this feels true for you, but like I did one of my like ADHD coaches had me do an Enneagram test. And I’d always have you done that as an ADHD thing. And I was like.
Carla Ciccone (42:52.909)
yeah. I think so. I think I’m a four or a seven. I can’t remember. Okay. Yeah.
Holly (42:59.886)
You were a 407. Or you were I don’t I was a so I’ve always been a three wing four and then I tested and I was tested as a two which is a people pleaser. And when I started so I took meds to I started taking meds in 2022. I took Ritalin and it didn’t work at first.
Carla Ciccone (43:07.361)
Okay.
Carla Ciccone (43:12.324)
Carla Ciccone (43:18.582)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (43:20.494)
But what I noticed was I would work from cafes and I would always be so indexed on other people. would look, I would run my idea of myself through how other people engaged with me. And I wasn’t doing that. That’s how I was able to focus on my work was because I wasn’t tuned into everyone. I existed through other people’s recognition of me or other people’s like whatever. And all of a sudden I just stopped.
Carla Ciccone (43:30.003)
Yes. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (43:35.799)
out.
Carla Ciccone (43:41.579)
Yeah.
Holly (43:49.623)
I existed on my own. I wasn’t tied in. And that has been probably the biggest thing for me, which is divesting from this other people, what other people think. And so it’s just that, right?
Carla Ciccone (43:51.543)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (43:55.595)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (43:59.094)
Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I have a similar, I’ve had a similar experience and I still struggle with it sometimes because I mean, it’s not like you’d one day to say like, I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. I’m over it. I’m not like when you were when you’re brought up and trained to sort of like react a certain way and be responsible for other people’s feelings. It’s
Holly (44:17.742)
Thank
Carla Ciccone (44:27.669)
it’s kind of a lifelong process to sort of get out of that habit, right? Like it doesn’t, for me anyway, like it doesn’t, it didn’t happen overnight and it’s something that I actively try to work on, right? So.
Holly (44:31.704)
Yeah.
Holly (44:39.982)
Yeah, mine didn’t either. Mine started with this fight I got in with my sister where she was sowing the wrong and I was not. And my therapist was like, this isn’t you. She literally was like, it’s not you. And I’d never had a witness say, oh, Holly, this isn’t you doing something. And I think I.
Carla Ciccone (44:48.896)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (44:54.337)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (45:03.069)
Yes. You’re so used to taking the blame for everything. Yeah.
Holly (45:06.664)
so used to like really outsourcing whether I was bad or good to other people. And when she said that, I really trusted her because we’ve been working together for a while, I wrote down on a post-it note, it’s not you. And that was like this first little end to like, maybe everything isn’t my fault, you know? And again, like this comes from this internalized ableism that you have had your whole entire life because you have an invisible disability no one recognized or recognizes.
Carla Ciccone (45:11.169)
Mm-hmm
Carla Ciccone (45:19.286)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (45:24.598)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (45:33.653)
Yeah. And you got in trouble for it, right?
Holly (45:36.174)
you’re getting in trouble for. You said, you write in your book that the average kid that has ADHD will have 20,000 more corrections by the time they are 10. 20,000 more corrections.
Carla Ciccone (45:43.593)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Isn’t that heartbreaking?
Holly (45:51.705)
Well, it’s also like fucking illuminating. just, my boyfriend stands behind me sometimes when I’m in the kitchen cooking and he’ll be like, you’re chopping that wrong. And I will fucking freak out now because I’m just like, no, I’m not. I’m not doing something wrong. I had, know, for me, it wasn’t necessarily my parents. So they were like hyper-vigilant. My sister was hyper-vigilant of me. Like I...
Carla Ciccone (45:54.827)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (46:05.687)
You’re like,
Yeah.
Holly (46:19.022)
was always observed. And so I had this, I was always doing something wrong, you know, like you have the candy store story. Actually, can you talk about the candy store story because fuck, what’s the candy store story?
Carla Ciccone (46:20.863)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (46:25.911)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Carla Ciccone (46:33.407)
Okay, so I’m four years old and I get to go with my cousin and her godfather to the candy store. And this is like a real candy store, like beautiful. They only sell candy. So I’m so excited. It’s the best day of my life. And I’m trying, and my cousin is five years older than me. So, and she’s kind of like your sister was where I’m like, I’m always my best self around her. I try to emulate her. I try to act like.
Holly (46:48.172)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (47:02.967)
perfect because she’s perfect, right? In my mind. And so we get there and the godfather is like, okay, you can pick anything you want. And I’m like, my God, this is like the best day of my life. I run around, I grab, I find a bag. I’m just like stuffing it full of just every, everything. And then I’m like looking around for my cousin and she’s standing at the front and I go.
Holly (47:06.424)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (47:32.172)
with my bag of candy and she’s like standing with like one, I think airheads or something, like one. She has selected one candy. And I was like, he said we could get anything we wanted. And she was like, my God, like, what are you doing? And he thought, like I was a criminal. Like I had just like, you know, yeah, like I can’t believe you did that, but like, of course you did that, you know? And he was like,
Holly (47:49.378)
like looking at you like you’re like the most disgusting, horrible person.
Carla Ciccone (48:01.865)
He laughed like he didn’t care he bought me the candy but then we got back to my cousin’s house and she told on me to her mom and started saying she said that she hated me because you know I don’t know because of what I did and yeah it was crushing and and I think like her you know not and I I don’t we’re good friends now like I don’t present her for this or anything
Holly (48:13.528)
what you did.
Holly (48:27.054)
But it’s this quintessential thing.
Carla Ciccone (48:28.119)
But I think we were both raised in this like, you know, we were supposed to be good girls, we were supposed to be this way, and she’s five years older than me, and her job is to teach me how to be like her, how to be good, and I’m failing and I’m annoying to be around, and just like, you know, like, it was a bad, it was sad, like the way that we tried, or even she, I think, tried so hard just to be.
accepted by your family members and to not be corrected. Because I think it hurts so much to be over-corrected as a kid that that’s where the perfectionism comes in, right? That’s where you learn to be one step ahead of people so that you don’t have to, yeah, so you don’t have to deal with how bad it feels when they tell you you’re bad or you’re wrong. Yeah.
Holly (49:05.965)
Yeah.
Holly (49:13.228)
Yeah, because they don’t point it out. Yeah.
Holly (49:19.916)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing, I don’t know how many times I have had that whole staring at you, like you’re an alien, and you just did this really weird, horrible thing. When I read that, it was just so familiar because that was my whole childhood, of just doing what I thought either everyone else was doing or was supposed to be doing. then,
Carla Ciccone (49:30.475)
Mm-hmm
Carla Ciccone (49:38.784)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (49:44.16)
Yeah.
Holly (49:45.109)
not getting the memo that that’s not what you do and getting like a different type of discipline for it. discipline, yes, a shaming discipline and a discipline that makes you feel like you’re not like everyone else, that there’s something like fundamentally flawed about you. And I, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (49:52.213)
Yeah, it’s shame.
Carla Ciccone (50:00.458)
Yeah.
Yeah, and that plants the seeds like from a young age that that kind of plants the seeds to have low self-esteem and to have a real lack of confidence and to always be second guessing yourself, right? Like, yeah.
Holly (50:14.796)
And to not trust yourself, to not rely on your actual sense of self-efficacy or self-trust or all these things that, again, then you start tying this into addiction. These are things that are quintessential to being healthy, to actually having a healthy recovery is having a healthy self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-trust, the ability to determine for yourself who you are, what you are. think that it is
Carla Ciccone (50:21.483)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (50:28.629)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (50:34.229)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (50:41.323)
Yeah, to advocate for yourself.
Holly (50:43.53)
advocate for yourself and all these things that are extremely limited to people that have a history of what ours is, you know, of having this history. And I think I’m not sure if I read it in your book, but I know this is true for me. It’s just like this this deficit of self esteem does not really go away, you know, because it still persists in your current life. Like, so I in my life, I, you know, I went from not wanting to research it at all.
Carla Ciccone (50:50.998)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (51:01.757)
No. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (51:11.351)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (51:13.71)
And I don’t know what flipped the switch, but when I got with my boyfriend about a year and a half ago, I decided I’m gonna explain to him what ADHD is so he really understands what ADHD is and how it shows up for me. And so I, you know, every time I’m late or I don’t read a text message, like he’ll send me text messages. I don’t scroll up to see the last message he sent me. So he’ll send me four and I only read the last one and I miss details or
Carla Ciccone (51:26.977)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (51:43.343)
I go to the wrong place or I go late to the wrong place or I forget that we had plans or I forget what I, whatever it is or stuff that like is consistently happening and I’ll say, oh, this is my ADHD. Let me explain to this, like to you how this works. But like what I have found since having like knowing what it is, is it just feels like it’s this internalized depression, right? Like there’s this sense of like,
Carla Ciccone (51:47.134)
yeah.
Carla Ciccone (51:58.36)
Yeah.
Holly (52:12.95)
Every time I say that, I feel like I’m making it up. It’s an invisible disability that most people don’t think is real. I think you mentioned that you don’t even say for someone you know that has odd-DHD, you leave out the ADHD part and you only talk about the autism and you talk about the symptomology of the ADHD because.
Carla Ciccone (52:16.428)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (52:33.685)
Yeah, and that’s actually what some of the experts I spoke with like recommended, even now. Especially if you’re advocating for a kid in school. She said, talk about the symptoms, do not give it the label because every single person is gonna have a different idea of what that means. And they could potentially treat your child differently because of it.
Holly (52:56.716)
Yeah, yeah. And I have had the same, like I have had experiences where it’s just like, what I have found to be the most frustrating on this side of it is like knowing the definition, knowing the impact, and it’s still being invisible and me still thinking like over apologizing for how it shows up, for the mistakes that I make, for the things that I.
Carla Ciccone (53:08.534)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (53:20.194)
you know, like the appointments I forget to show up to, or the texts I forget to respond to, or the birthdays that I miss. And I even have had like friends that are disability justice advocates who made a point of calling me unreliable or pointing out the things that I did that were socially unacceptable. That again, doesn’t like, it doesn’t matter. It’s not ADHD. It’s a choice.
Carla Ciccone (53:23.179)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (53:34.135)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (53:45.909)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (53:49.291)
Yeah, yeah.
Holly (53:49.783)
It’s willful behavior. It’s you being irresponsible. It’s you being a bad friend. It’s you being a bad listener. It’s you whatever. And so I found actually to some degree there’s like this lift in self-esteem because of what I know about it how I can kind of divest from other people’s opinions or whatever. But at the same time, I’m like, I have this thing and people don’t think it’s a real thing. And even if I know that I have it, they’re still mad at me.
Carla Ciccone (53:56.331)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (54:05.462)
Yeah. Yes.
Carla Ciccone (54:13.398)
and they don’t get it.
Holly (54:17.582)
for the way that this thing shows up.
Carla Ciccone (54:19.932)
No, you’re absolutely right. And honestly, that’s been
That’s been one of the reasons why I feel like I’ve almost gotten lonelier since my ADHD diagnosis and the more I learn about it and the more I learn how to be a better advocate for myself because there’s no way you’re going to teach people all that you know if they don’t want to learn. if they don’t want, if people are, people who have misunderstood you throughout your whole life, like family members or whoever, are probably gonna continue to do that.
Holly (54:41.738)
and.
Carla Ciccone (54:54.696)
And I think that for me that was really sad sort of about when I got diagnosed and started learning more about it. Like this is something that I am gonna do on my own because other people, even if they did learn all about it, like you said, like I don’t know if they would forgive me or understand that how I am behaving is because of ADHD. Yeah, they blame you for it.
Holly (55:20.206)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it’s hard. can, like, I think people can understand it, but then again, it’s still you just not returning a call, or it’s still you, you know, not finishing what you said you were gonna finish when you said you were gonna finish, or whatever it is, you know? It’s still is like, seems like carelessness. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (55:30.069)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (55:35.293)
Yeah.
An excuse, yeah, or laziness. And that’s like what my family called me my whole life was lazy. So it was like, oh, you know, she doesn’t put her laundry away because she’s lazy or she doesn’t. like, still, my mom used to like come over to my house and put my laundry away for me because it would like drive her crazy.
Holly (56:00.515)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (56:00.67)
And don’t let her do that anymore. But I still, when I look at my laundry, that’s what I hear in my head. It’s like, you’re so lazy. Why can’t you just put this away? Even though I know, you know? So like, I have a bit of empathy for people because we’ve all been messed up with like this perfectionist script that we have in our heads and how we’re supposed to be appearing as women in our lives, right? Like, I think that...
Holly (56:06.446)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (56:30.556)
It runs really deep. It doesn’t just go away.
Holly (56:38.07)
Yeah, I agree. think that when you, that aspect of I feel like I’ve gotten lonelier since the diagnosis. For me, what I think has really changed is I just don’t hang out with people that make me feel bad anymore. I don’t. Like I really immediately, as soon as somebody kind of meanders into that territory of where I can see them,
Carla Ciccone (56:54.836)
Yeah.
Holly (57:04.95)
either making snap judgments about me or kind of boxing me into a category or who are upset about, know, like, again, like just response times or my need for, I have a lot of need for like recuperation time. have sensory processing issues.
Carla Ciccone (57:07.402)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (57:20.202)
Mm-hmm, me too. Yeah.
Holly (57:23.85)
I go to the city for the day. I have to come home and sleep for a day. I go and stay with my family for a week. I have to come home and sleep for a week. And all of these things. And I really have just gotten to the point of I’ve really, really thinned out who I let close to me because I can’t do it. I’m hard enough on myself. And I need people to remind me, you don’t have to ever explain yourself to me. Because I don’t ask anyone to explain themselves to me.
Carla Ciccone (57:27.72)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (57:38.88)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (57:44.68)
Exactly, yeah.
Carla Ciccone (57:50.4)
Yeah.
That’s right, yeah. Yeah.
Holly (57:53.219)
You know? Yeah. So it’s gotten, I mean, like to kind of like this feels like, you know, sad. This is sad. And it is. But I also think like what on the other side of this, like, you know, in paramenopause, in my 40s, you know, in a healthy relationship with healthy friendships and a very, very small number of healthy relationships is like,
Carla Ciccone (58:08.982)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (58:20.846)
you know, from this diagnosis and from my history is this, I don’t give a fuck. I’m not doing that anymore. What you’re talking about, your anger that you’re expressing is like an anger. I’m not without, I’m quick to anger. So anger has always been there, but not at everyone. Not in these specific things when I’m just taking the, like the blame. Yeah. So I’m not doing that. I’m just.
Carla Ciccone (58:26.56)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (58:36.63)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (58:43.548)
You turn it inward on yourself. Yeah.
Holly (58:48.276)
I really hit this threshold that I think is, don’t think many people get the experience, which is I don’t give a fuck if you think this about me. It’s just not gonna, I’m not gonna talk to you anymore. I’m gonna distance myself from you. And it feels sad and angry and also just so healthy.
Carla Ciccone (58:53.334)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (58:57.258)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (59:06.558)
Yeah, it’s self protective. You’re you’re allowed to protect yourself, right? Like, I feel like that that was sort of lost on me for most of my life. And I’m I’m in the same place as you now. I’m like, if this is not in if this is not healthy for me, if this is not healthy for my daughter or my family, then I’m not doing it. And that’s OK. Like, I’m I’m the adult and I can make decisions where like I was always second guessing myself before and feeling like looking to other people to make sure
I was making the right decision or like, you know, and then you get confused. Like when you look to other people before yourself, it’s just a recipe for like chaos, right? Like there’s no way you’re gonna know how you really feel about something.
Holly (59:38.414)
Yeah.
Holly (59:49.517)
Yeah.
Holly (59:53.859)
That’s right. That’s right. And it’s a process, too, of just building up that self-trust of learning to trust yourself, of learning that it’s OK to trust yourself. Which again comes back to this beautiful aspect of most of us are deeply, deeply sensitive and empathic. And because of what we have had, we are hypervigilant. And we can feel the mood in the room. And we can sense things. And we actually have a highly, highly developed internal guidance system. That’s right.
Carla Ciccone (59:58.865)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:06.186)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:12.917)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:18.494)
Yes. Yeah.
Holly (01:00:20.514)
My internal guidance system is never wrong. It’s always right. And it’s that, OK, if I am sensitizing myself, if I’m just continuously moving back to this place, I’m going to be able to use myself as a really, really accurate bellwether and make decisions based on that. But again, it’s probably taken me 13 years of work to be able to do that.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:23.71)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:38.016)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:00:46.41)
Yeah.
Holly (01:00:49.013)
roughly, you know?
Carla Ciccone (01:00:49.928)
Yeah, yeah, it’s a big job. Well, and that’s why it’s so complicated when like, when people say like, I have ADHD, what do I do now? It’s like, there’s so many things you need to do. And also, I always just say like, be nice to yourself, find a way to like, for me, it was like about, because I had a little kid at the time, it was about like learning to look at myself the way was looking at her and being like,
Holly (01:00:53.774)
you
Carla Ciccone (01:01:19.828)
If you think of yourself as a little kid, would you be saying that to yourself? Or what would you want for her? And I know that maybe is a weird way to live your life, but it’s what worked for me was just thinking of yourself at your most vulnerable and saying, you’re an adult now. You get to give this kid a good life. You get to do that. So that was one thing that worked. That’s IFS.
Holly (01:01:20.046)
Yeah.
Holly (01:01:24.588)
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly (01:01:33.634)
Yeah.
Holly (01:01:44.492)
Yeah, yeah.
I know, I was going to say. what have you done? Can you just talk through what do you think have been, if you don’t mind even maybe over a timeline, what were the big milestones of things that you tried and did and what’s worked?
Carla Ciccone (01:01:49.15)
Yeah
Carla Ciccone (01:01:58.325)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:02:04.158)
well at first I did, it was just like talk therapy and that was huge because I had never spoken about my childhood before. I’d never spoken about anything with a therapist really. so that was huge for me just being able to like tell my own story and having someone be like, that’s really hard. Like it was the first time I realized I’d been through some shit, you know, like I, I
Not that it, I think I had spent so much time pretending I was fine and being like, I just wanted to fit in. I don’t want to have this weird childhood that like, you know, made me weirder than I already was. So I think now, now I’m okay with it. So that was the first thing. And then I tried EMDR, which is, can’t, what does it stand for? Rapid Eye Movement.
Holly (01:02:51.182)
Mm.
Holly (01:02:56.966)
Eye movement, eye movement, desensitization, rapid. I have no fucking clue.
Carla Ciccone (01:03:03.926)
Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it’s about moving your eyes really fast while going through some some traumatic stuff or traumatic memories and trying to like desensitize them or whatever and So that that was helpful, but I didn’t love it. I didn’t want to like I Didn’t I did it a few times but and it helped but then I moved on to IFS Which I really liked the internal family systems, which is where you kind of get guided into
Holly (01:03:14.669)
Yes.
Holly (01:03:29.357)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:03:32.797)
memories and get to sort of visit yourself in those memories and develop a relationship with yourself and with them that as as sort of an empowered adult and It really helps you to sort of Stop, I mean not Stop seeing yourself as a victim of something and for me anyways, I stopped seeing myself as like a victim of my childhood
Holly (01:03:38.476)
then.
Carla Ciccone (01:04:00.956)
And I’m now more like, I got myself through that, and now I am here for myself. Which I know sounds maybe weird,
Holly (01:04:08.515)
Yeah.
No, I understand it completely. I mean, I think that we’re like different versions of ourselves and we can get to go back and be like, thank you to that version for making me, helping me.
Carla Ciccone (01:04:17.293)
Yeah. Yes, yeah, because every everything you’ve gone through, every little version you’ve had has been there to protect you in some way, right? And some some things just take hold more than others and are harder to let go of. So yeah, I have this was really helpful.
Holly (01:04:31.948)
And today, do you think it’s managed for you?
Carla Ciccone (01:04:36.618)
Like everything.
Holly (01:04:38.382)
No, but would you say like, I feel like I manage my ADHD well passively.
Carla Ciccone (01:04:44.264)
I, you know what, I think I do. I don’t take medication anymore. I have a six year old. I have a life that is very simple. Like I go to bed really early and I try to get a good sleep every night. Cause if I don’t get a good sleep, I’m not at my best. I drink bone broth in the morning and have a smoothie and you know, like I don’t love.
Holly (01:04:49.677)
Yeah.
Holly (01:05:10.562)
Why do you drink bone broth in the morning?
Carla Ciccone (01:05:12.982)
for my stomach. So a lot of people with ADHD have gut issues and
Holly (01:05:19.246)
Really? Like what?
Carla Ciccone (01:05:23.028)
like IBS, I have colitis. Yeah, you should drink, you should try some bone breath. Well, I mean, it’s not just an ADHD thing, it’s just we have a higher chance of having gut problems, yes. Yeah, they actually did a study where they like on babies and babies that grew up to have ADHD had like different gut flora or whatever.
Holly (01:05:26.38)
I always want to throw up in the morning.
That’s crazy. That’s an ADHD thing?
Holly (01:05:50.894)
Do you think that’s because our emotions are in our guts and like we’ve been? Okay.
Carla Ciccone (01:05:54.901)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So for me, that’s why I’m like, I have to have my bone broth and my smoothie and like a little breakfast before I have my coffee because I still drink, I drink coffee. Or else, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel good. Yeah.
Holly (01:06:09.582)
Or else. Or else.
Carla Ciccone (01:06:17.878)
Sorry, what was it? did you ask me?
Holly (01:06:20.75)
The question is like, what are the things that you think that help you manage the best? what are like so I fs waking up in the morning having, you know, like making sure that you’re eating something stable bone broth for your stomach smoothies.
Carla Ciccone (01:06:29.184)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, just like, and that’s why I do the smoothie in the morning because like I put like lots of healthy stuff in it because I don’t always, I forget to eat and then I don’t, when you forget to eat and you’re starving, you don’t always go to the healthiest thing that you can eat, right? Exactly.
Holly (01:06:40.162)
You forget to eat. Yeah.
Holly (01:06:46.222)
I know. And it’s like zero to 90, right? Like you’re like, I’m not hungry. I’m not hungry. And then all this and you’re like, oh my god, it’s 3 PM. haven’t eaten anything. And then you go and eat like three meals. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:06:52.946)
Yeah. Yeah. You’re like, I need a burger. And so like, I try to not be hard on myself for that. Like, I often forget to plan dinner and then we have to order dinner and then like, yeah, we end up eating A &W or something. And like, that’s why I’m like, front load the day, which like, get all the healthy stuff in the morning when I’m like, aware of it and can like do it. And then it’s kind of downhill slides some days. But we try, we try.
Holly (01:07:11.042)
You
Holly (01:07:22.574)
Well, and I love that you just said, and I not hard on myself when I do the thing that I’m probably gonna do.
Carla Ciccone (01:07:22.656)
Try to eat vegetables.
Yes. Yeah, because I’m like, I know that this is my pattern. I’m like, as much as I try to have a well managed life, it doesn’t always pan out that way.
Holly (01:07:35.63)
And I love that you say pattern because if like honestly again, if you were like dealing with some other visible disability, it wouldn’t be your pattern, right? okay.
Carla Ciccone (01:07:42.012)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and the thing with ADHD is that sometimes I can do it. Sometimes I can plan the dinners and like I can like, and then I’m like, great. And then some days I can’t. And I think for me, it’s very connected to my cycle and to the hormones. And so like after ovulation, it’s just kind of like, it’s a free fall. And no.
Holly (01:07:52.312)
Totally.
Holly (01:08:05.036)
And are you on HRT or no? OK.
Carla Ciccone (01:08:07.73)
I am going for testing for my hormones. I have to go get a bunch of blood work done because I haven’t done that yet, but I’m not yet, but maybe one day.
Holly (01:08:13.518)
Yeah.
Holly (01:08:19.756)
And then any other things that you do that you found to be really helpful for you, like any books or any programs or coaching or no.
Carla Ciccone (01:08:29.575)
No, but I wish I had some. I’m actually starting a DBT group. So have you heard about DBT dialectical behavioral therapy?
Holly (01:08:38.156)
I have, but not in terms of ADHD, just in terms of addiction. You’re starting to, you’re gonna be a participant or you’re creating one that you’re gonna lead.
Carla Ciccone (01:08:41.77)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:08:45.329)
No, I’m going to be a participant because I haven’t learned about it. It’s a whole like thing that I haven’t done. And they teach you sort of how to manage big your big emotions and reframe them and avoid like react being super reactive. And it’s I think it was developed for people with personality disorders, but it’s very it’s been proven very helpful for people with ADHD. So I’m going to be starting that this month.
Holly (01:08:58.126)
you
Holly (01:09:01.644)
Yeah, yeah.
Holly (01:09:13.366)
amazing. And how does your emotional dysregulation show? Do you still have like meltdowns? And I have meltdowns. Like I hit like a wall and I’ll just be like, it’s gonna break. And then like, I’ll have a tantrum or yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:09:19.989)
I... yeah. Yeah. I think I get irritable. Like that’s my clue where I’m just like, don’t have the patience to deal with life. Yeah. And I don’t necessarily have meltdowns, but yeah, I go to the bathroom to cry by myself sometimes.
Holly (01:09:36.958)
And yeah.
Holly (01:09:45.839)
And this like, you go through this like, I’m bad at life still, like this persistent like, fuck, it’s harder for me, or not I’m bad at life, but like, it’s harder for me, I go through things where I’m just like, I’m exhausted by this, I can’t do this, you know?
Carla Ciccone (01:10:04.157)
Yeah, I absolutely do. I feel like I, where I struggle with it still are places where like I could have all the self-compassion in the world. But when you have to interact with other people that don’t have that same level of compassion for you, I think that’s where it gets tricky. like, you know, navigating my daughter in the school system and like dealing with.
principal or her teacher or her like you know those are the things that now I’m finding make me more reactive and I feel like it’s because I’m I’m working on this now but I feel like in the past it’s been because I’m like reacting like I am a child do you know what I mean like I am scared of the big the big people and they’re not fair and they’re talking to me and like I don’t know how to
Holly (01:10:40.108)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:11:00.629)
handle them, so I’m just going to shut down or get overwhelmed. But I had a therapist tell me like, no, like you are the mom. You can handle it. They’re just other parents, like they’re other adults. But like you get into, yes, and then you get into that, the it’s even just like the school, like, you’re like, my god, like this was a nightmare for me. I hated school. And I was so terrified every day of everyone around me.
Holly (01:11:05.157)
you
Holly (01:11:11.694)
But you’re so used to deferring, I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Holly (01:11:20.206)
Yeah.
Holly (01:11:25.389)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:11:29.915)
So like, of course, this is not going to be just like a breeze to waltz in there and be like, you know, say what I have to say to the teachers or whatever.
Holly (01:11:39.407)
But there’s an infantilizing aspect of it that I’ve had to really, I love that you say you’re working with it. It’s something that I’ve been working with a lot. I was just on the phone earlier today. I worked with an accounting firm that really messed up. And.
Carla Ciccone (01:11:52.169)
Mm-hmm. no.
Holly (01:11:54.351)
I will just defer if somebody’s more sure of themselves than I am. You know what I mean? And I’m just like, I’m not doing that anymore. The reason I will defer is because I’m deeply aware of how I am. I’m deeply aware of how you are. And I will defer because I can’t, I’m not going to posture or be, you know. But I’ve just recently been.
Carla Ciccone (01:11:58.678)
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:12:06.623)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Holly (01:12:17.154)
You’re dealing with, reminding myself, you’re dealing with the person that has not done the work you have done most of the time. You are mostly dealing with people that do not have the awareness that you have, that have not like actually had to go through what you’ve gone through. They may be acting like the adult in this situation because of whatever delusion or whatever like the power of balances, but you’re the adult. You’re the adult and you’re likely to not act like the adult because of
Carla Ciccone (01:12:23.4)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:12:27.881)
Yes. Exactly.
Carla Ciccone (01:12:37.429)
Yeah, yeah.
Holly (01:12:45.932)
you know, X, Y, or Z. And so I love that you bring that up because I’ve had to really, really remind myself you have many different things that you deal with that are infantilizing. You’re a fauner, you know? You have relational trauma. You are somebody that’s neurodivergent. You’re a woman, you know? And you have a history of addiction, right? All of these things, any one of these things puts you on the back foot in the eyes of society. All of them combined.
Carla Ciccone (01:12:56.509)
Yes. Yes.
Carla Ciccone (01:13:03.924)
Yeah.
Holly (01:13:15.082)
mean that you’re likely to not be asserting for yourself and deferring to other people. I’ve really, that’s been a big shift for me, which is holding my own and trusting myself. it, man, when you start doing that, it’s pretty wild.
Carla Ciccone (01:13:19.146)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:13:23.209)
Yeah. Yes.
Carla Ciccone (01:13:29.949)
Yeah, it is. It’s... I know, I had a therapist be like, just stay on message. Just keep repeating yourself. Because I was telling her, like, I get overwhelmed and then I start blithering on and like, you know what I mean? Like, yes. Yeah.
Holly (01:13:43.053)
Well, and that too. You can just stop talking too. I was doing that today with this guy, and he’s like, tell me one more time. I was like, if you keep on talking, I’d gotten him to the point where he was going to give me the refund for good reason. And then he’s like, well, tell me one more time. And I was like, no. I’m not. I’m going to stop. I’m from there. Yeah. mean, in my case, I think like.
Carla Ciccone (01:13:57.278)
Yeah, I’ve said all I want to say.
Holly (01:14:06.606)
Just to answer the same question, because I think it’s really helpful for people that are going through this to hear, because I don’t think we have a lot of these stories. I have done so much in the last few years. My diagnosis was 2022. I ignored it at first. I got a Ritalin prescription. I used it three times, and it just made me feel Ritalin. I used it three times, like three days. And I was like, no, not this. Because I felt.
Carla Ciccone (01:14:13.781)
You
Carla Ciccone (01:14:19.573)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:14:25.141)
three times.
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Holly (01:14:34.642)
more modified by it than her. felt more harmed by it. And I was just in such a bad place at the time. And I think that like, I got my diagnosis when I had no structures. was, I’d left my community. I’d left my, you know, town I had. It was after the pandemic. I’d left my job. I was, you know, living in a new place. I had like lost all these structures. I was really, really in, you know, a bad place. And so
Carla Ciccone (01:14:36.679)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:14:52.894)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:03.743)
Yeah.
Holly (01:15:04.616)
I started, my first was as always to read about it and understand it. I bought audio books, I put it on in the car, I listened to them. But I really didn’t do anything with ADHD stuff because as I wrote recently in my newsletter, I just couldn’t. Like I felt like I’m at the end of my rope of being able to do life. How? Yeah, how? And now I’m supposed to learn this.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:09.557)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:20.446)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:27.697)
another thing to deal with, right? Yeah.
Holly (01:15:33.135)
and compensate and maybe get on meds and like, oh, fuck that, no. So I really put it off and I think that it was probably just this slow creep of like, I know it’s here, I know it’s a thing. But for me, you know, I really just thought I was fucked up. I just thought I was a fucked up person that just would keep on breaking every few years. And I had done so much work, had got, I mean, really, really done so much work. And then I was like, wow.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:36.189)
Yeah, I know.
Carla Ciccone (01:15:51.145)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Holly (01:16:03.114)
And for me, the first thing I think was just like the first skill that came from it was like using ADHD is a thing that explains a lot of my history. It explains my eating disorder, my addictions, my dysmorphia. I mean, like so much of it. If this is the first thing, so much of it going all the way back to my very, very early childhood. Like I would have tantrums. My parents would hold me down and brush my teeth.
Carla Ciccone (01:16:13.397)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:16:17.109)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:16:27.818)
Yeah.
Holly (01:16:33.132)
like sit on me and do all kinds of things to like keep me from being out of control. So I, you know, like I think the key is like the, like the knowledge piece, but for me, was just like one, all of the stuff I had done when I was getting sober, like I read this book called your, your brain at work. And, and it was just about executive function. So that was when I got sober and I was like too like,
Carla Ciccone (01:16:39.55)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:16:54.163)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:17:01.902)
strengthen my recovery, I actually learned about executive function and increasing it and working with it. And so I had a lot of skill, but for me, it just has been like this ongoing things that things that helped the most are things you talked about. IFS was a really, really big deal for me. Somatic experiencing, and then also nervous system regulation. I don’t know if you’ve done anything like specifically to work with.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:07.111)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:19.477)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:25.493)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:17:30.722)
Like for me, if I’m getting my regular meditation practice in, if I using, I use like a vagal nerve stimulator, if I’m like putting my feet in the grass and exercising a few minutes, like if I’m doing things, if my nervous system feels regulated, then I know that I’m going to be able to manage my life so much better. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:35.22)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:44.723)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:17:55.05)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I go on a little mental health walk every day and I sometimes resent it and sometimes I don’t wanna go, but I never regret it. Yeah.
Holly (01:18:00.419)
Bye.
Holly (01:18:05.93)
Because it helps and like even recently like my the psychiatrist I work with is Ned Halliwell and like he mentioned I’d never heard of this I was like really in an up phase a couple months ago and he was like if You’re up. You can’t make yourself meditate You actually have to lean into the energy that you have and so I also now like when I’m overstimulated I Over stimulate myself more like I’ll go and like turn on loud music
Carla Ciccone (01:18:17.269)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:18:25.812)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:18:33.044)
Okay.
Holly (01:18:35.528)
or like I’ll meet the intensity of it and then it dissipates.
Carla Ciccone (01:18:37.725)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea, actually, because like trying to meditate when you’re not relaxed.
Holly (01:18:46.39)
for 13 years I’ve been making my you know what I mean? And then I’m just like, you suck. You can’t meditate. Why are you still resisting? Yeah, because your body is literally like jacked up. And you can’t just like meet it with like, tell your like, fucking brain right now to sit down and become and know your whole body is like firing, you need to actually like burn it out.
Carla Ciccone (01:18:48.901)
Yes. Just like sitting in this discomfort. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:19:04.785)
Yeah. I mean, you could think of it as moving meditation, right? Like, it doesn’t just have to look one way. Yeah.
Holly (01:19:10.286)
walking meditation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but there’s like, I mean, there’s probably, I could go on and on. After my initial resistance to it, I just like, I kind of got the hang of like, okay, I get it. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s going to show up in these different ways. And just like you, I think, you know, not having to explain it to everyone and really having it just makes sense to me.
Carla Ciccone (01:19:24.329)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:19:36.865)
I stop the big, the not responding to text things, or the missing calls, or the missing birthdays, or the dropping the ball. I am a chronic over-apologizer. And I’ll just constantly be making up for it. And I think more and more and more of just letting it be. Really, really not trying to always explain myself, which is, you know.
Carla Ciccone (01:19:40.169)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:19:44.095)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:19:55.946)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:20:00.424)
yeah yeah like it’s okay other people aren’t explaining themselves so just remember that you know like
Holly (01:20:06.286)
Yeah, yeah. Is there anything that you want to share with anyone that’s listening to this? It’s like just at the beginning of their journey.
Carla Ciccone (01:20:17.929)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:20:22.681)
well, I think with ADHD people, can sometimes like, when we get on to a path, like we want to learn everything, we want to do everything. If we want to, you know, figure out our life with ADHD, we want to do it right away. And so I feel like just take a step, you know, like you don’t have to learn everything and do everything right away. And for me, the biggest thing has always been
Holly (01:20:42.552)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:20:52.073)
just try to refuse to be mean to yourself, like whatever you do. Like, cause you’re going to learn more about ADHD and you’re going to seek out knowledge and you’re going to try different things. But I’m sure that that’s like for most of us, it’s like this shame and this like shame based self correction that we’ve trained in our brains is very hard to get out of. And I think just putting some in
some attention on it and helps. It’s not a cure, but noticing when you do that and trying to make a different choice. And like I said, for me, what was helpful was imagining myself as a kid and being like, you wouldn’t talk to her that way. So yeah, just being nice to yourself.
Holly (01:21:43.65)
And you say something at the end of your book that I think like it’s really stuck with me, which is like, we’ve just been contorting ourselves our whole life. It has been hard and we deserve gentleness, you know?
Carla Ciccone (01:21:51.121)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and tiring. Yeah, yeah, no, we do. Like, you deserve to just, like, be cozy and be nice to yourself. And, like, I think it can be hard if you’re in a family or a friend group or a situation where other people aren’t treating you with that same gentleness. It can be hard to find that. But it is life-changing. And...
Holly (01:22:13.324)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:22:19.632)
I think once you do, that helps reinforce your boundaries around not letting other people treat you unkindly too, right?
Holly (01:22:29.494)
Yeah, I mean, it’s so, I think that the boundary aspect of this is also really good. I did an episode, I did two episodes with Meg Josephson who talks about fawning. Yeah, and I think just that like.
Carla Ciccone (01:22:42.846)
yeah, I listened. Those were great.
Holly (01:22:47.756)
this sense of really, really no one else is going to do it. No one else. I have had to take everything. No one has come up to me and said, hey, you’ve got this thing. I’m going to help you with it. I know you don’t get a fucking welcome kit or any shit. just get the awareness of how fucked up shit has been for you. But I.
Carla Ciccone (01:22:53.49)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:22:57.415)
Exactly.
Carla Ciccone (01:23:02.66)
No. Yeah, you don’t get a guidebook when you get ADHD. It’s like there’s, yeah, no.
Holly (01:23:14.912)
I really do feel that, like there is this sense of like, I, I, no, I just lost my train of thought. Anyway, no, it’s okay. I, I think that the, for me, I would say that the, this conversation has been more.
Carla Ciccone (01:23:21.98)
I’m sorry.
Holly (01:23:36.655)
more focused on the sad and the hard. And I think that’s because I need to talk about the sad and the hard. It was why I was so drawn to your book because I felt like someone’s not cheering this. You know what I mean? Someone’s like, like really, really talking about the grief that comes from being misunderstood your whole life in a really specific way that hurts. And I think that I
Carla Ciccone (01:23:48.124)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (01:23:56.169)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:23:59.764)
Yeah.
Holly (01:24:05.814)
have also found because of this farm, it’s been a big invitation for me to divest from what other people think and to really finally start living my, like, there has been a big shift for me in how I live my life and who I live it for. And that has been the biggest change since my diagnosis is how less I am outsourcing myself. And I think that that, you know,
Carla Ciccone (01:24:15.316)
Mm-hmm.
Carla Ciccone (01:24:22.238)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:24:35.66)
We may do it way more than most people, but everyone does that to a degree. And I think that this has been an incredible training ground for that. And it’s also just been an incredible training ground for leaning into gifts that are massive gifts that come from this. Again, I don’t want to bright side it and be like, it’s a superpower. It is, of course it is. There’s things that come with it that make us extraordinary. But I have started to like,
Carla Ciccone (01:24:39.145)
Yes.
Carla Ciccone (01:24:53.684)
you
Carla Ciccone (01:25:01.332)
Mm-hmm.
Holly (01:25:04.622)
actually lean into what is so beautiful about it. The way my brain works, the way it bounces from idea to idea, the way it wants to finish other people’s sentences, the way it wants to say something now, the way it wants to explain everything to everyone all the time, you know, that like don’t want to hear it. Like the way that I can sit in my bed for 14 hours, you know, and finish a single book if I’m really into it. There’s just, there’s, there’s gifts that come with it and
Carla Ciccone (01:25:13.204)
Nyeh.
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:25:19.763)
Yeah.
Carla Ciccone (01:25:25.044)
Mm-hmm.
yet.
Holly (01:25:31.606)
there’s been a profound shift. my quality of life has improved. Would you say yours has?
Carla Ciccone (01:25:35.41)
Mm-hmm. Yes. yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Holly (01:25:38.52)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, Carla. I really appreciate it. Nowhere Girls or not. Is it girls? Nowhere Girl.
Carla Ciccone (01:25:42.964)
Thank you, Holly.
Carla Ciccone (01:25:47.59)
It’s girl, it was gonna be girls, but then it was girl. Yeah.
Holly (01:25:50.082)
Was it? OK. Nowhere Girl. Nowhere Girl is just one of the best books I’ve read on ADHD and like late in life diagnosis, especially from somebody that was in the sobriety. Not in the sobriety, but somebody that had gotten sober and has a history of whatever, substance use issues. Like it just was.
Carla Ciccone (01:25:59.592)
Thank you
Holly (01:26:13.762)
like the book I needed to read that validated so much of my experiences and I thank you for writing it. It could not have been easy.
Carla Ciccone (01:26:20.02)
No, it was terrible.
I developed colitis while I wrote the book.
Holly (01:26:29.617)
Of course you did! Of course you did! I won’t laugh when I wrote my first book, so yeah, it makes sense.
Carla Ciccone (01:26:37.268)
Yeah, memoirs are not easy. They’re not for the faint of heart. Yeah, Mm-mm. But thank you for having me. Okay.
Holly (01:26:42.174)
No, no, no, they’re not for the week. Fuck, no. No. Well, anyway, thank you, Carla, so much. Don’t hang up.
