Sari Solden
Appearances
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
These women had no way of knowing that anybody else was experiencing this. Can you imagine? I know people can't imagine that now. So there was no Google, there was no internet, there was nothing.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
As she walked into the room, she saw... Hundreds of people bumping into each other, interrupting, laughing, you know, just having a great time. Not because other people had problems like that. Other people could keep up with them and talk like this. And they had a great time. And it was like the women were biting like they're flies. phone numbers on there.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
We didn't have cell phones on, you know, right on their arms and numbers or spilling their contents or their purrs. So like not hiding anywhere. It was like amazing. So that was the first time where I saw how much of the time without knowing it, we're hiding or keep or passing for normal.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
It was like really fun. And everybody was discovering themselves, all the people, they were discovering themselves and finding people like them. But even us professionals were meeting people who we've never met before, those kind of people. It was a different, whole different vibe.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So we had to do it fast, maybe six months. I had no idea how I was going to organize thousands of ideas. I literally had to cut and paste all my ideas of different subjects into paper bags. And then my husband helped me put them into categories and help me. I don't know how this happened. And then I would rewrite it, and then he would edit it.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So a lot of this book on women is all about that internal experience, that emotional experience, what's wrong with me, and that... the impact on people's identity as mothers, friends, wives, you know. And that's what this book is about, the emotional legacy, really.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
CHAD was academic white males and medical people talking to parents and teachers about the way it was, okay? There were a lot of old guards there.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And I had quoted him. I had liked him. He was in my book. But for some reason, I guess he got permission. He said, if I'm going to be the keynote speaker, I'm going to say what I want to say. I felt like he was saying I was a child abuser. It was like so, it was shameful. So even though I was talking about shame to other people.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
There's a few snobs, you know, the gatekeepers were very used to being gatekeepers. So then the one other guy said, oh, if you're going to play with the big boys, you got to learn how to blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know, like very condescending and you can't get your feelings hurt. And, you know, there's nonsense and there's science, there's non-science and there's nonsense.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
But I think you're actually just non-science. And, you know, but they were, the men there were all like really arrogant. Let's put it that way. Yeah, I mean...
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I had no idea I was being brave. Let's just put it that way. I had no idea I was a pioneer. I had no, I just saw what I saw because I didn't come from that world that they came from. I wasn't in that field at all. And so this just happened to me. And so I had no idea that I was going against, you know, and this happened in every field where women weren't allowed to define their own experiences.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So I really took a couple of days to recover. And then I gave this huge speech there and I, was able to then frame it. This is what happens when women say what they see and know what they know. And anyway, it was a triumph for me in the end.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Then it just like took off and women started talking to each other and started defining for themselves what it was like for them not being defined by all these other gatekeepers.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And it was translated into a lot of languages. And it was funny because they were translated based on cultural norms. So like in Japan, it was like women who can't tidy up. We used to laugh like in France, it would be like women who can't accessorize. But that was nice. In Germany, it was like the chaos princess, you know, women living between misery and talent or something. It was beautiful.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I didn't know anything to do with those things, but yeah. That's when women said, I felt like you followed me around this book. And they were astounded, and it was healing because they realized if it was in that book that it must be real.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
So even though I see tremendous progress, obviously, because I have millions of people who are diagnosed and, you know... I know that no one's taught about it. So that's the problem. And so nobody is looking for it.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
When I went there, everything sort of fell apart. I was messy, you know, and it caused a big problem. A lot of shame developed.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I worked at mental hospitals. I worked in the inner city, you know, with farm labor camps. I did a lot of things in those days. And then... I got married, then moved to California, and then I got unmarried.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
You'd have to move every hour, and I'd have to, like, stuff these clocks into a, drawer because I couldn't concentrate with the ticking. I put the fan on and closed the windows to block out that sound. And I was like hiding in shame from the administrative staff because I couldn't read my handwriting. And I wasn't talking at all in all these group settings. Nobody knew who I was.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I mean, so like for the 30 years, I like spoke everywhere constantly and I became a really great keynote speaker. And this is a famous speech I did.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Part of the test was showing me nonsense looking creatures and you had to remember their names. So nonsense names. And I got like a 16th percentile. I couldn't remember the first time I've ever had a test score that was terrible. And they showed me like that means like I had a terrible short term memory, but I've been compensating with context.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And when there's no context, I didn't know how to do this. So I said, OK, that's interesting.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I remember listening to it, and pretty soon after that, their book came out. And that was the first big book that talked about the fact that Adults continue to have difficulties even though they lost the hyperactivity.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I knew I had massive problems with organization, so I mean, this all made sense to me. I wasn't looking at it through the ADHD lens. All the books, though, about learning disabilities did talk a lot about disorganization, but they didn't attribute it to this.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I moved to the farm and we had sheep. And here's one of my sheep. You'll see what he looks like. So this is about shame. So we moved out to the country because I thought, oh, if I live out there, it doesn't matter. Nobody will worry about what my house looks like or anything like that.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I remember taking that book with me to a family wedding in Modesto, California, and that book really opened my eyes to that.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Where they really test all of your, like, verbal abilities, all your memory abilities. It's a very in-depth test. And your IQ, and they're looking for problems, you know. So for me, I had a big split between my performance, like visual, spatial. I can't do that at all. I have like a 99th percentile in one of my subtests, like for instance, of verbal abilities.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
and a 9% in, like, putting things together in a thing, you know? So I can't unload the dishwasher. I tell my husband, look, here's my test results. I'm not making it up.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I'm seeing, okay, the women and men, even though they're telling me the same problems, having completely different reactions. So the men, they do not have the shame about the disorganization. And the women were hiding and pretending and ashamed and not being able to, you know, achieve or get out there or there is such secrecy. That was the thing I saw.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And it was really focused on their cultural expectations, what women have. internalized from the culture about what they should be able to do domestically, especially, you know, taking care of all the things, all the children's stuff, all the responsibilities. So they internalize these expectations deeply, even today still, and they idealize them and
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
And then on the way home from work every day, I would pass in these beautiful pastoral scenes and there's all these beautiful sheep and I got home and then I looked at my sheep and I kept getting depressed and I realized my sheep were messy. And then I felt bad every time I realized what I had was sheep shame. So I realized, so it didn't matter like what the context was.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Then they toxically compared themselves to other people and their self-narrative and the shame and the distortion. It was so much more for women. Women all the time say, how do other women do it? All they say is, how do they do it? They fantasize about some kind of organizational nirvana. When I get to that level, then I'll be happy and everything will be okay.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Often there's self-medicating with Diet Coke or caffeine, or sometimes you have like OCD-looking compensation for the ADHD. And, you know, and they're very, like, I get like that before people like you come over.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I used to have a woman who would see a psychiatrist early on. A guy told her, well, take this pill, and when your house is clean, you're cured. I mean, it was bad on so many levels. That's what they used to tell women, like, okay, so the goal would be to clean your house, and this pill is going to cure you of who you are. These are real-life stories.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
Executive functioning has to do with coordinating, prioritizing, synthesizing all the things it takes to run a household, to take care of your kids, to pack their lunches, to remember all the appointments, all the millions of things that women as mothers have to do, or even women as friends, remembering everybody's important occasions, buying presents.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
There's a lot of information overload or embarrassment about not being able to entertain the way maybe their mothers did or easily or everything's a great stressor and a great, they have a lot of overwhelm and stress. So all those executive function tasks make them feel uncomfortable. bad that they can't keep up with or make themselves understood or make themselves seen by other people.
Climbing the Walls
She wrote the book on women, shame, and ADHD | 2
I had internalized that no matter what it was going to be, I was going to be embarrassed by it or feel shamed about it. I had sheep shame.