ADHD in Midlife: The Signs, Perimenopause & More with Kate Moryoussef

Self Care Club - The Midlife Edition

In this episode of Self-Care Club, hosts Nicole Goodman and Lauren Mishcon welcome guest Kate Moryoussef to explore the complex intersection of ADHD, perimenopause, and midlife women's health.

Key takeaways

• Kate Moryoussef was diagnosed with ADHD at 40 after perimenopause symptoms like night sweats and brain fog unmasked lifelong coping struggles that were previously dismissed as anxiety or personality traits.
• Up to 75% of women with ADHD go undiagnosed until later life, often because traditional diagnostic criteria are based on male presentations and fail to account for female masking behaviors like perfectionism and overcompensation.

Main topics

• Late diagnosis of ADHD in women over 40
• Perimenopause and hormonal impacts on neurodivergence

Notable quotes

"Just because telescopes were invented, does that mean that there's now more stars? There's always been the stars there. We just needed the telescopes to see the stars."

Conclusion

The episode provides a vital neuroaffirming framework for women navigating midlife

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Hello everybody, I'm Nicole Goodman and I'm Lauren Mishcon and welcome to Self-Care Club, the Midlife Edition. Speaker 1 (0:09) How many wellness products have you and I tried over the years to test out whether they're good, whether they're worth your time and money? And most are just expensive and they just clutter up your bathroom, your kitchen, your whatever. Speaker 3 (0:23) That's why I approached our sponsor AG1 as I approach all our wellness things, deeply suspicious and very cynical. Speaker 1 (0:31) It is your process. Speaker 3 (0:32) It is. But I have to admit, AG1 passed. the test it is a curated blend of vitamins and minerals and live cultures and they're clinically backed to support foundational nutrition gaps delivered in one scoop so instead of rattling around with capsules every morning it's just one scoop water shake you're done and how does it taste oh refreshingly mangoey pineappley vanillary and not the pond water that i expect it to be surprising because it has got really good things in it like vitamin c and that helps to keep you pepped up and ready for anything so Speaker 1 (1:12) you're listening to this all you need to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash self-care or you can hit the link it's in our show notes isn't it lauren and you get 20 pounds off of your first order plus five travel packs vitamin d3 and k2 And a welcome kit all free. That's amazing. That's an amazing deal. There's also a 30-day money-back guarantee. Full Speaker 3 (1:41) details about the health benefits of the individual nutrients are also in our show notes. Speaker 3 (1:50) Do you think it is worth getting a diagnosis in midlife? If you've got your career and you've got your family and life works for you, is it still worth going to get a diagnosis? Speaker 2 (2:01) Listen, if life is working for you, then maybe just awareness is enough for you. But for many, many, many people, life isn't working. 20 years ago, we didn't understand breast cancer the way we did. You know, we didn't understand any type of neurodivergence or mental health. You know, there's this analogy of just because telescopes were invented, does that mean that there's now more stars? There's always been the stars there. We just needed the telescopes to see the stars. So this is just science. It's progression. It's research. We know women's health is wildly under-researched and underfunded. Speaker 1 (2:45) October is ADHD Awareness Month. And this week in the news, women were calling for doctors to be given better training on how to spot the signs of ADHD after it was revealed fluctuating oestrogen levels during perimenopause are triggering a wave of late diagnosis. In Speaker 3 (3:03) fact, it's estimated up to 75 % of women with ADHD will go undiagnosed until later in life with the condition only unmasked when perimenopause frequently causes a sharp mental health decline that Speaker 1 (3:14) forces them to seek medical support. One woman who understands this firsthand is Kate Moriuseff, who was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40 and who we are delighted to have joining us on the show today. Kate is an ADHD lifestyle and well-being coach, EFT practitioner, the host of the ADHD Women's Well-Being Podcast and the author of the ADHD Women's Well-Being Toolkit and mum to four amazing, uniquely neurodivergent kids. Kate, a huge welcome to Self Care Club. Speaker 2 (3:45) Thank you. Nice to be here. It's nice Speaker 1 (3:47) to have you here. Speaker 2 (3:48) Very good to be here. Speaker 1 (3:49) Kate and I have known each other for many years. We started out this weird podcasting journey together, didn't we? And we still seem to be mad enough to be doing it still. So welcome. Speaker 2 (4:00) And I think we've hope we've been Speaker 1 (4:02) on each other's shows, but never we've never done it in person. No, Speaker 2 (4:05) no. We've always got something to talk about there. Speaker 1 (4:08) Yeah, yeah. But today we're going to talk about ADHD and perimenopause and all the things that it throws up. So for any woman who's Speaker 3 (4:16) listening into today's show and the title has sparked their interest and they might have spent their whole life thinking, why can I just not get my shit together? Speaker 2 (4:25) What Speaker 3 (4:25) might ADHD look like for a woman in her 40s? Speaker 2 (4:30) So... What I'd like to sort of caveat all of this is it doesn't just appear out of thin air. It doesn't just pop up, you know, in perimenopause. We will have suspected that there's something that's been going on for maybe all our lives since we were children. Maybe knowing there was something slightly different or we struggled a little bit more with certain things or more anxious, more disorganized, more restless. It can show up in so many different ways. But we will have found coping strategies in scaffolding and there would have been ways that we just managed to dig deep and find that resilience to just keep going. The energy, just the support systems. And then as we creep towards perimenopause and our hormones begin fluctuating. And what we also need to know is that women, neurodivergent women are more likely to begin perimenopause earlier. Speaker 3 (5:22) Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. So Speaker 2 (5:23) we're more sensitive to our hormones and we're more sensitive to the fluctuating hormones, which is why not only does it show up a lot in perimenopause, it shows up in puberty. It also shows up postnatally. It can sort of be masked a little bit during pregnancy. Is that because you've just got so much oestrogen in your body? Is that why? Yeah, we've got like higher rates of oestrogen and progesterone. And for some women, it can be really helpful and we can just sort of... feel a bit more clear headed and just a bit more sort of like an equilibrium of our mood. And then perimenopause comes. And in the early days, it's fluctuating. It's up and down. And so some days we'd be like, oh, I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine. What is this all that? You know, what's what's the first? And then other days it's just like this. What is going on here? And we start thinking, you know, God forbid we've got dementia or, you know. different patterns and our cycles just change. And that is when women are starting to think, OK, I used to be able to cope with this. It used to be hard. Maybe I needed some, you know, help or support, but I'm really not coping anymore. Speaker 3 (6:30) So Speaker 2 (6:30) that's why we're seeing this. And also awareness, understanding. Women are talking to each other. There's podcasts out there, articles. I mean, I discovered my own ADHD because I was. you know getting my daughter looked at but I also listened to a podcast about it and I went oh my god that sounds so like me and I went down a whole rabbit hole and then realized that you know I'd been living with it because I've been questioning it for years what Speaker 3 (6:55) what are some of the signs maybe for you or if you don't want to go into your own stuff what are more of the general signs that might be just dismissed as Speaker 2 (7:02) personality traits yes so very much so um It could just be it ranging from scattiness, over-talking, forgetfulness, restlessness, being enthusiastic, being overly passionate, being loud, too talkative, not talkative enough. But it can also show up as mood disorders, anxiety, depression, PMDD, skin picking, disordered eating. Like it really ranges from what you think is very surface level of, oh, I forgot to hand my homework in again, or I've lost my keys again, or I can't read a map, which people sort of laugh about and, you know, scatty and, you know, all over the place too. I've been... diagnosed with bipolar or you know a mood disorder or something like really serious and catastrophic where they've been a very strong medication for and this is why I take this very very seriously because it can be debilitating to live with if you don't know it you don't understand you don't see it and you don't get it treated and and helped and so when people turn around and say oh it's just everyone's talking about ADHD well You know, if you've seen this way of it manifesting in your family over generations, whether it's addiction, like I said, maybe disordered eating, but mood up and down, like one minute being absolutely fine, the next minute, like, can't get out of bed, then it's important that we look into this and we get the support. And sometimes it's just... awareness and understanding and some self-compassion alongside medication or coaching or you know that type of thing can Speaker 3 (8:46) someone be like really successful in their career and in their family life and have adhd but have no really obvious signs that they've got it well they will have obvious signs to them so Speaker 2 (8:57) you're talking about women who i see all the time people who are in my community people who i hear from who are wildly ambitious brilliantly successful highly intelligent and articulate and on the exterior look like they've got everything going for them but this is being overcompensated by um perhaps um OCD um perfectionism um anxiety um checking over checking worrying that type of thing so they're like keeping themselves in check correct cover up well aren't they also symptoms of their ADHD It's all it all kind of like rolls into because if you don't trust your own brain and you've got evidence that you do forget things or miss things or misplace things and you don't want that to happen in your life, you don't want that to be, you know, part of your personality or maybe it was part of your personality and you were criticized for it and you were picked up on it, you know, as a child in school. And you then just say, I don't you know, I want to. be a good girl. I want, I want people to like me. And then that's when the masking comes in and the masking is the most exhausting thing. And that is why so many people, women especially, have suffered from many burnout cycles. They might not even know we're burnout cycles, but they just sort of like, oh, that's just how I live. You know, I just have to go to bed for three days. I have a migraine, you know, and that's, you know, that's just the cycle how I live. And then you get better and then we carry on again and we just keep going. And then it's that awareness, that understanding is like, I can't live like this anymore. Sometimes it's quite a big crisis that might hit them. Very often it's perimenopause where the hormones have stripped everything back and they've just not got that resilience anymore. So Speaker 3 (10:45) what happens to those, if we start talking about perimenopause and ADHD, what happens to ADHD symptoms in women when you come into perimenopause? Do they get more exaggerated? Speaker 2 (10:56) Yeah, I mean, for example, I'll give you, you know, my personal story is that I was 40 and I definitely was feeling more anxious than I used to. Bear in mind, we were in the middle of COVID or the early stages of COVID. I was homeschooling four kids. Speaker 3 (11:11) I Speaker 2 (11:11) was retraining and starting my own business. That's a lot. That's Speaker 3 (11:15) just a lot. Speaker 2 (11:16) Full Speaker 3 (11:16) stop. Speaker 2 (11:17) That is a lot. But this was a different type of anxiety that I couldn't quite put my finger on. And I was waking up in the middle of the night. I was drenched in sweat and I couldn't trust my brain as well as I used to. I used to be able to hold everything together just just about. And this time I was just like, I've got, you know, I don't know why all the magic tricks I used to use that. maybe weren't that healthy that weren't great coping mechanisms that the people would look at and go that is not the right way to do things but I I knew how to do things that way and I couldn't dig for that you know I just couldn't reach for it anymore so I went to my GP and I told her all Speaker 1 (11:57) of this and she said oh it's anxiety I'll put you some on on the anti-anxiety medication I can't tell you how many times I've heard that yeah and I there was something in me that was Speaker 2 (12:05) like I Speaker 1 (12:06) don't want to take this because I know there's Speaker 2 (12:07) something deeper because this has been part of me for so long This is not just COVID. This is not just homeschooling for kids. This is just an exaggerated version of myself who could cope, who was struggling to cope. But thank God I had the physical night sweats because many women don't have. Yes. All the missed period, like the really classic Speaker 1 (12:28) symptoms. If you don't have those, you get completely like sent away. Speaker 2 (12:35) completely yeah Speaker 1 (12:36) i still get a regular Speaker 2 (12:37) period i've been on hrt for four years and um i still get a period but the the night sweats was like okay there's something else going on thankfully because of what i do and i was you know like understanding health and wellness and had connections i was like i'm gonna go and speak to a specialist here yeah and i ended up very long story my daughter specialist well this was more about adhd And it was my daughter who was nine at the time. We knew something was going on for her that wasn't just dyslexia, that wasn't just processing. There was something else. And my two brothers were diagnosed with ADHD when we were kids. Speaker 3 (13:15) Oh, Speaker 2 (13:15) wow. So ADHD was in the family. Like I knew that, but no one ever discussed ADHD in girls. It was never even a conversation, Speaker 3 (13:22) even Speaker 2 (13:23) though looking back at my school reports, it was all there. In plain sight, they're written in black and white. No one, I was really well behaved. I was good. I was quite shy. I kept my head down. My brother was really quite challenging for my parents. And so it was when I was reading ADHD symptoms in girls and I saw it in my daughter and I was like, well, that's me as well. So it kind of kickstarted this whole rabbit hole of ADHD. And then it was, you know, a year later. I went on HRT as well. But Speaker 3 (13:54) there's so much overlap with perimenopause symptoms and ADHD symptoms. You've got like the brain fog, the poor sleep, forgetfulness, the emotional regulation side of it. So how can you untangle which bits are which? Speaker 2 (14:10) It's a hard one, actually. It is hard. But I think what I would say is... If you are dealing with things that you look back on and it was 20 years ago, 15 years ago, you know, as a kid, like you remember certain things and maybe feeling very socially anxious or not being able to sit in class or hearing your teacher but not absorbing anything or struggling to get what's in your head down on paper. Like it can show up in so many ways. So in academia. you know we can understand it but it can also show up in friendships as well there's something in adhd that's very um prolific and most people sort of you know feel it it's called rejection sensitivity i really wanted to talk about that i've put it Speaker 3 (14:54) in the show later on but i Go for it, because I'm really interested in that. What is it? Can you explain that? Speaker 2 (14:59) So it's not in the DSM-5, which is the psychiatric sort of main book, but it should be. It's a trait that most people relate to if you have got ADHD. And that just means you are more sensitive to people. around perceived criticism but maybe real criticism feedback feeling left out um feeling more sensitive to people's opinions perspectives judgment it just you just feel it quite deeply and sensitively and and if you remember feeling like that's a child like feeling left out or why didn't they invite me or um feeling that people were talking about