Hyperfocus is a great podcast to listen to next. It investigates some of the most pressing issues in the ADHD world. To get a transcript of this show and more resources, visit the episode page at Understood.org. Follow Hyperfocus wherever you get your podcasts, or click here to listen. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give
Chapter 1: What is the background of the podcast 'Climbing the Walls'?
Hey, it's Danielle. When I was reporting and writing Climbing the Walls, there was a lot happening. ADHD was constantly in the news, for better or worse. I was navigating my own diagnosis, and I was digging into the long, complicated history of ADHD in women. With so much to unpack, I joined another podcast called Hyperfocus with Rae Jacobson.
It's a show that dives into the most fascinating parts of ADHD—mental health and learning—and In the episode you're about to hear, I talk about how climbing the walls came to be, what surprised me most during the reporting process, and more. If you enjoy it, be sure to follow Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson wherever you get your podcasts, or just click the link in the show notes.
During the pandemic, ADHD diagnosis rates in women nearly doubled. For people like me who follow this kind of thing, it was a huge deal, and one where we couldn't really pinpoint why it was happening. There were a bunch of different reasons, but none seemed all-encompassing. There was a fair amount of news coverage at the time, but most of it was pretty surface level.
Chapter 2: How did COVID-19 affect ADHD diagnosis rates in women?
Someone needed to go deep, and eventually, someone very cool raised their hand for the challenge. Danielle Elliott is a health and science journalist based in New York.
And since last year, she's been working with some of my colleagues at understood.org on a new investigative podcast that digs into the reasons behind this rise in ADHD diagnosis and uncovers what going undiagnosed for so long has cost women. It's called Climbing the Walls, and it's a limited series told across six episodes. The first is out now.
Now that Danielle has done all this reporting and immersed herself in the ADHD world, I wanted to talk to her about what led her to make the series and what it was like to be living the story you're trying to tell. This week on Hyperfocus, Danielle Elliott shares her journey from a big question to a new podcast.
Chapter 3: What insights did Danielle gain from her reporting?
I had started working on a book proposal about ADHD, but it was interesting because the response from a lot of editors was, we've already had so many proposals about ADHD in women, but the process of publishing a book takes a year to two years. So it's going to be behind the news cycle.
Yeah, I feel like this is like, tell me if you agree with this. This to me is like the ADHD thing in life, both in like your personal life and also as like, as a, sort of like the disorder itself, is like it's never the right moment. Like you're always a little behind or a little ahead in everything all the time.
In everything always. Like it was almost like when I got diagnosed, I was like, oh, that's – like that makes sense.
Oh, I see.
I think I feel like three years behind still in a lot of things. Oh, my gosh.
And like, I mean – In both little and very big ways.
In little and very, very big ways. Yeah. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: Why is ADHD often misunderstood in cultural discussions?
It's kind of like story of your life if you have ADHD. But I'm interested in that in part because like when you hear about like ADHD as a cultural moment, right? Like it is for sure happening. And I've like kind of watched this come and go over years like in different ways. Like women in ADHD feels like the now thing to me.
But, you know, ADHD, people talking about it, people freaking out about it, people, you know, denouncing it or – wanting to do more for it or whatever it is. Like it's, it's a pretty easy thing to like slot into the discourse. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And as somebody who has it, and I'd be interested to hear how you feel about this. Like, it's not a moment for us. It's our whole lives.
Like, it's like, okay, maybe people either like didn't care before and then cared a lot and then they stopped caring or whatever it is. But like, you're like still there being yourself. So what's that been like, like studying it from this sort of like cultural moment perspective, but also like, Living with it.
Well, it's been interesting because I think that what seemed different to me about the moment with women was like when I first started hearing ADHD, I was on the rise. It's like, yeah, we go through this every five years. Like I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, right? Like I have seen the news cycle cover ADHD, but this one just felt different because of the sheer amount.
Like it just seemed like truly every woman in my age range was saying it. And so I wanted to understand if there was something different happening in now, like if there are other elements of our culture that were contributing to this, or is it exclusively ADHD? And I think reporting on it was a really interesting process because there were moments where I started to doubt the rates of diagnosis.
And then there were moments where I thought, oh, we haven't even slightly begun to diagnose the true number of people who have this. And then Others where you're like, oh, if we continue to live the way we live in 2024, 2025, 100% of the population will have ADHD 100 years from now. Which is not a scientifically backed statement at all. That is completely just me saying things. Yeah.
Well, this is something that I'm interested in that like comes up a lot, right? Which is, and you and I have talked about this through like learning about the show, which is not everyone has ADHD. And a lot of people who get diagnosed with ADHD don't have ADHD.
Yeah.
It's a diagnosis that is like kind of given like sometimes too cavalierly. Like you said, like a lot of people who get diagnosed actually are experiencing something else. And a lot of the like perfect nightmare conditions of our current way of living make that feel really real. Like, you know, we're overscheduled. We're overstressed. There's a billion screens.
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Chapter 5: What are the evolutionary benefits of ADHD according to research?
And it's really, really frustrating to think that I went to therapy for years, that I tried every approach to date it. I'm like, when I think of all the things I tried without knowing that there was this Fairly simple answer that is treatable. I was almost so mad that I wanted to reject it and believe that actually, no, I just had to keep trying harder.
So there was a rejection period, I would say, of the diagnosis. And I should say that you can probably see the roots of it in... conversations with my mom, like when I tell her anything about it, she's like, there's nothing wrong with you. Like you're not broken. Like she's very much like, no, I don't believe like you did well in school.
Like she says a lot of the almost cliche things at this point that are said about girls, but it's more so her coming from this point of like, I don't want you to think you're broken. Cause if you think you're broken, you might think you can't overcome things. So I hear in that initial reaction, I can kind of see like, you know, the environment I grew up in, right?
Like how neurodivergence was talked about or just the stigma that was around it and not wanting a stigma to be associated with us.
It's hard to have like a narration of like what it means to be neurodivergent from someone who's seeing it only from the negative and then to read the stuff that is like ostensibly negative, you know, that is a serious thing.
Well, it was when I read ADHD 2.0, Ned Hallowell and John Rady's most recent book, where they talk about, they don't say everything's a superpower, but they talk about pairs of opposites.
And kind of like, I think a good example, one that really helped me was that creative people, you can understand that they ruminate a lot and that rumination is potentially described as creativity applied to the past. And I ruminate kind of horrendously. And I think since reading that, I've been able to recognize when I'm doing it.
And they give you some tools in that book for essentially changing the channel in your brain so that you're not ruminating anymore. And some of the tools are so simple. But as I was reading that book, it was like, oh, I can do things about this. And I don't have to spend... money every week to see an ADHD coach, which I think ADHD coaches are incredibly beneficial for a lot of people.
But for me, it's like financial insecurity will always be the thing that stresses me out more than thinking I'm living with untreated ADHD.
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Chapter 6: How does ADHD influence creativity and risk-taking?
Yeah. I mean, my takeaway from my initial stuff was like, oh, my relationships haven't worked out because they don't work out for people with ADHD. And like things that I've wanted to fix about myself, quote unquote, like you can read every book you want on relationship theory.
I'm not going to like I kind of had this like my read on it was like I think the three things I remember the most were like ADHD is really hard on careers.
relationships and parenting and I was like I can completely see the ways it negatively impacted my career as much as I love where I am now it would have been interesting I think to have a brain that likes a straight path like I just don't know what that's like and like to not I have never stayed happy in anything whether it's a relationship like I don't know how to sustain interest
in anything beyond when I really do the math it's like for four months I'm really interested I can last a year anything beyond a year the second year I'm miserable and it's a really sad way to like do that math and I don't think that's true of everyone with ADHD but when I first got that diagnosis it was like oh yeah no I can see how it affected my career it's tough to change anything now it's like you're almost 40 you're not going to restart your career but
Um, I can see how it affected relationships. I was diagnosed right before my 37th birthday. So I was sort of like, it's pretty late. Like it, like it would have been nice to know this at 30 is how I felt. Cause it's like, if there are ways to approach dating with ADHD that are slightly, or just things to be aware of, it would have been nice to know them when you're in like the heart of your life.
dating, like period, I guess you could say. Yeah. And then with parenting, it was still a thing that I wanted to do. And it was like, oh, great. Now you're telling me that's going to be really hard too. Like, I just don't want to hear any of it.
It's hard to hear it too, especially to be like, oh, if I had known this, maybe there is something that I could have done.
Could have done. Yeah.
Yeah. Which is why that late diagnosis piece for women is so insidious. In the show, you talk to a lot of other women with ADHD. You talk to Sari and Emily and Terry, all of these people who specialize in it, but just women at the camp, for example, who have it. In one of the episodes on the show, Danielle goes to a camp for women with ADHD.
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Chapter 7: What personal experiences shaped Danielle's view on ADHD?
And for a lot of them, I think it was just really... I don't think they would describe their typical lives, like day-to-day lives, as unsafe. But I think that I kept hearing over and over from women, I've never felt so safe and so free to be myself as I do knowing that I'm in a room full of people who understand what's going on.
And it's funny, Sari actually describes the same thing from a conference in the 90s. that it was the first time she was in a room full of adults who all knew that the others had ADHD. And so they could fully be themselves. They didn't have to try to pretend to be quote unquote normal.
And for me at the camp, there were like the first two days, my interviews with women were sort of hesitant because I didn't want to be interrupting this experience that they were having. But then as we talked more and more and they started to realize I also had it, it just became this like, It was like I was one of them, but also not. But it just, the camp was really amazing.
And I think most of the credit for that is just the, it's just a product of being in the same room as other people, like being surrounded by people who you know get it.
Part of what I'm wondering is like when you say you see all these people with this comfortable shorthand and you got the chance as a woman with ADHD to be in a room full of people who were open about their ADHD and talking. And of course, you're in like the reporter's role. But like in those conversations with the people you spoke to for the show, did you ever have that moment of like, ah.
I'd say most of the women I spoke to at camp, but especially there's one woman who I speak to who'd only been diagnosed a couple of weeks before she came to camp.
Oh, wow.
And she was meant to be at camp with her husband and two children to learn ways. She spoke very eloquently, and she said that they wanted to learn how to have more harmony in their home with two children with ADHD. And then... A couple of weeks before camp, she was diagnosed. And I related to truly every word that came out of her mouth. It was just like, oh. And she was talking about how she...
felt like she was already a better mother. Cause she could now look at her kids and be like, she's like, I've always looked at my kids and thought, Oh no, you do things the way I do them. Like, I don't know what to do, but she never, that it was only once she was diagnosed that she's like, Oh, that's why I see that in my kids.
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