Top AuDHD Expert: Shocking Risks of Undiagnosed Female ADHD & Autism | Dr. Samantha Hiew

[00:00:00] Samantha Hiew: female adhd looks like the female autism phenotype for autistic women we have less of that gl network and more of that brain networks work really well on their own but then if you try to connect them they aren't as it and so then a female autism looked different to build autism should we give it a different name i was dismissed in my autism assessment four times and the criteria that they used to assess me was very mail center the whole process took seven or eight months before i finally got a diagnosis

[00:00:33] Dr. Brighten: do you think that it is easier for women to get a diagnosis of adhd than autism an inspiring voice in neuro diversity doctor samantha hue is a keynote speaker lived experience researcher and founder of adhd girls a platform reshaping how society understands and supports neuro women named a difference maker by pbs america she has spoken to over one hundred thousand people trained eight plus f companies and is the author of tip of the adhd iceberg a compassionate guide for late diagnosed neuro divergence

[00:01:05] Samantha Hiew: seven to to eighty percent of adhd often core curves with autism and if that individual has more than eighty eight day then we're looking at a nervous system that needed regulation before it needs to be stimulated and with the adhd we find that people don't often respond to

[00:01:24] Dr. Brighten: in your research your experience what do you believe is that the root cause of adhd

[00:01:29] Samantha Hiew: i think that does any evolutionary

[00:01:32] Dr. Brighten: welcome to the doctor wright show where we burn the bs in women's health to the ground i'm your host doctor jo b and if you've ever been dismissed told your symptoms are normal or just in your head or been told just to deal with it this show is for you and if while listening to this you decide you like this kind of content i invite you to head over to doctor wright dot com where you'll find free guides twice weekly podcast releases and a ton of resources to support you on your journey let's dive in what is one myth about adhd that must go away

[00:02:08] Samantha Hiew: i think the fact that you know adhd is just focus attention you know executive dysfunction so much of the myth around how we're too sensitive you know how like we're so emotionally this regulated you know that has to go because seeing adhd as is something as a a symptom rather than a process you know or a system you know that whole body system experience you know is is it's what we need to look cat

[00:02:38] Dr. Brighten: alright let's cut back and reframe that then because we so i live in the united states right that's where like we operate it's very capitalist right it's all about work production drive moms you better be able to do it all you gotta be a super mom and so the executive dysfunction is what gets felt and highlighted but what you're saying is that there's a whole body system experience can you explain that more

[00:03:04] Samantha Hiew: so one of the reason why i came i i came to this conclusion was because i i took a deep dive into a adhd when i wrote my book tip of the adhd iceberg when i did that i realized that because my background was in genetics in in my undergraduate years and seeing that actually there were genes we inherited from our parents that us to like increase sensitivity to the world and this didn't just impact our brain development also impact all our body systems and in fact some of the what they call the hot genes they were expressing up to fifty four different tissue types

[00:03:39] Dr. Brighten: mh

[00:03:39] Samantha Hiew: and because of that like i looked into understanding our physical conditions and and then realizing that actually adhd very much differs from adhd which i later had an autism diagnosis and realized why adhd medication itself didn't work for me mh you know i needed so much more support which is a whole body support that includes nervous system regulation you know understanding the newer divergence to trauma my informed perspective you and so much more the physical health social emotional you know that's a whole bunch of systems there i apply here

[00:04:19] Dr. Brighten: yeah so i wanna talk about that medication not work so we we see a there's a couple common experiences for women one being it's cyclical it doesn't work but second being perry menopause and menopause medication no longer working not doing the same but then there are people that it just doesn't work for at all and i always wonder is there a c occurring autism diagnosis that has been missed

[00:04:43] Samantha Hiew: yeah so we know that adhd often core curves with autism and it can be up to seventy to to eighty percent you know in some people and the medication that they pre prescribe prescribe for adhd you know really targets the dopamine norepinephrine epinephrine pathway and that in itself can spike the dopamine the norepinephrine levels and if that individual has more than adhd then we're looking at a nervous system that needed regulation before it needs to be stimulated mh you know because there is so much that it's already kinda influx within us you know that needed to be balanced us before we bring in the stimulants and often with the adhd we find that people don't often respond to high levels of stimulant or if they do then there is a certain discrimination that's happening in their body and some people might find that it worked for a little while and then it stopped working mh you know and then they have to go back to the drawing board go back to the psychiatrist and they ask for perhaps non stimulants or lower levels of stimulants as they try to then you know regulate true like adding maybe hormonal replacement therapies especially when we are at the peri age or any kind of really big hormonal transitions that's happening in body yes you know

[00:06:08] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah well and for people listening norepinephrine enough is a stress hormone and it's so interesting because these stress hormones you know we call things stress hormones reproductive hormones yeah have receptors throughout our brain and these stress hormones act like neurotransmitters within the brain i mean the brain has all of these receptors for hormones that are docking in there and influencing us and so if you have a d regulated nervous system you already have and most neuro people have this baseline of d regulation of extra stress you know and so you already have this d of your stress hormones what you're saying is adding that medication on is just really gasoline to a fire that's already burning out of control

[00:06:51] Samantha Hiew: yeah especially when stimulant medication actually increases the stress in our body mh as we know and the adhd or mike respond to that more positively but i that also depends on your nervous system because if they've had a trump a trauma traumatic history then that can also cause some symptoms that mimic you know trauma this regulation and when you know the medications kinda taper off then with audio adhd and we are looking at much more than dopamine and norepinephrine we're looking at ga glut serotonin so when we spike that level of no norepinephrine and dopamine we are yes adding gasoline to fire whether that also depends on where they are because our biology is so in flux that sometimes we actually need the medication but at other times might go so high that we struggle to bring it back down and that's when we may feel more of that like heart population you know i'm just kind of light on edge because those neurotransmitters you're right they heard of that stress hormones where they called a kit cat that can never pronounce that wear out and yeah so when that goes up you know then it can take time to clear we have different biology as well right with our neuro experience and that's where you start to see the diversity in our experience because those who you know we have like say they they found maybe up to seventy nine different differentiating variants for adhd you know that can cause something that might first as adhd and part of this is how fast can you clear you know and how fast can you make this dopamine you know and norepinephrine and how fast can you clear them and if you don't clear them fast enough then your body could be at a state of like being quite hyper you know for put put potentially something like one or two or three days yeah you know before it goes back down and if your life your live context surrounds you know maybe you know taking things that are you are used to taking like coffee or out of things that we use as coping mechanisms mechanism before we diagnose or start up the medication and then we add them on then that's where you start to see people maybe having mysterious side effects the medication that they are unaware of and this isn't communicated then to your prescribing clinician during their appointments then they are often less wondering oh we don't know here so people are shooting in the dark in terms of giving someone a medication and i'm not knowing what's gonna happen and in many cases it can help but we need to understand what we're dealing with mh

[00:09:36] Dr. Brighten: well it's interesting because we can do genetic testing so people are often like we'll ask me like have you tried medication there's this idea that if you have a condition and you don't personally use the medication you must be anti that medication and so people will make that assumption about me in stimulants but i know genetically speaking i do not clear cat at me and so i have that warrior gene they go up they don't leave for days

[00:10:02] Samantha Hiew: yeah they are

[00:10:03] Dr. Brighten: the c t which is really interesting i'm starting to dive into the research more around because what's really interesting is that we see that c t the comp gene so you don't clear cat means as well but you also don't clear your estrogen as well and so we see that c o t gene i'm spelling it out for people so that yeah i'm hoping the you know the the transcript actually reads it out so people can understand whatever saying but what we see is that's a really common gene among adhd people and when i was going through the research i found that i was like well neon like i knew i had this gene like ten years ago like that would have been a clue of what was going on but it was for the reason of having that gene i should explain to people so this means that we why we called the warrior gene is that i don't i real read romantic and i just finished up a big war in zodiac academy and i'm like whoa that would have been me i would have been out there fighting for hours because my tat means would have been up and they wouldn't have stopped and it's so interesting because i think a lot of times people view this as like oh you've got a genetic defect something's wrong with you and it's yet we were the ones who would have fought for the tribe until the threat was completely extinguished and would have like been out there doing all that but in a modern world when i get affected with stress my cat c are not going to clear it's gonna affect me so much more and i've done saliva testing i've done urine own testing to track like how is my cortisol how you know i'm such a nerd

[00:11:34] Samantha Hiew: that i love this is everything i

[00:11:36] Dr. Brighten: and like i went through a stressful situation of something really traumatic of losing a dog and i was like i want to track my my cat means through this and i did not clear those they stayed up and i tested him my husband at the same time because i'm like we're both having this experience and his are like totally normal like he had a spike initially goes down to baseline but mine persisted

[00:11:59] Samantha Hiew: i love that i love that journey because what you just explained you human eyes our experience because so many of our experiences is internal and people don't see it and when you act or react as way to a situation it is often biological there is a source right and you know what it is and you can then mitigate you know by maybe altering your lifestyle or you know knowing that if stimulants don't work for you maybe you know you'll try another a means that and as for me i went down to quite a low dose yeah because i realized at a high dose i was just like on fire you know and then one thing i'm curious about is that the comp you talk about the warrior do you have a slow comp or like a fast

[00:12:40] Dr. Brighten: can't it's like slow clearance

[00:12:42] Samantha Hiew: yeah yeah yeah so that's what i did a warrior or the warrior right

[00:12:47] Dr. Brighten: oh warrior or the warrior because i'm in your book

[00:12:50] Samantha Hiew: i i didn't write about that but i probably should have but i i talk about it in my talks yeah because like yeah so if you have too much of it at and the one time you can also make your worry mh you know with the hyper vigilance but yeah you're right the warrior definitely it's in there you know but there's so much jet play and that is actually one of the gene that is expressing up to fifty four different tissue types and is in your old in your pancreas and like everything mh so it is has a massive impact

[00:13:17] Dr. Brighten: yeah and you talked about other genetics that make you more sensitive to the environment and i often think in the framework of women like we're already programmed to be more sensitive to the environment right because we have to create life just state life then feed that life with our body and the environment has to be safe but i'm curious you from that genetic perspective with adhd women why have you found in your research

[00:13:45] Samantha Hiew: so there are a lot of different genes like the the m mao a you know that that's one that actually they say contributes to either you know aggression or or on leg off and there are just like dopamine genes like the r and also there's another one that is responsible for serotonin clearance and can cause rejection sensitivity and i also realized that actually after deep diving into genetics you know it is not just a gene variant it's how we're unmet you know how they unmet as well that you know can determine whether the protein that that gene makes you know actually functions in a biochemical pathway and if it isn't mutilated you know kind of typically then we can lose that ability to you know say another like some some of the gene variants that are involved in energy production and toxin clearance mh you know all of this like they're they are involved systemic you know pathways in our body and you know the pathways that give us energy you know also is the big one and and d h you know this is something that we talked about so much that some people don't even believe but it it is a thing

[00:15:02] Dr. Brighten: yeah

[00:15:03] Samantha Hiew: and and we supplement for it i mean we need like meth form of this supplement you know what is it bee mind you know and and you know what is about health badly

[00:15:11] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah yeah yeah it is benign work correct

[00:15:14] Samantha Hiew: yeah yeah yeah so so if we take the usual portfolio that won't really work you know if you have that innovation but then i i also realize that i had you know when and correct my biochemistry through the supplementation booth and still that wasn't enough you know then i looked at the hormones and i was kinda doing what you did you know testing myself but also testing other people around me like all my kids have been tested partners ex partners you know see what i'm handling

[00:15:48] Dr. Brighten: were bad so ex partner your hormones no

[00:15:53] Samantha Hiew: yes i mean sometimes you just have to theater that what if you're a good match and then i had to really accept that it was time to start home on a replacement therapy

[00:16:03] Dr. Brighten: mh

[00:16:03] Samantha Hiew: because i i i didn't really want to for ages and ages for then it became so jarring that actually you could be so much better with it because it was such a huge difference mh between me in my high estrogen phase and then me like lu face like and and that is not just me i've done collective like live experience research and i love that some women have said that when they enter lu face to get into the existential crisis yeah and started a saying that god was doing with my life and am mine in a right place you know and and when that passed like i'm fine fine mh you know and and so when i did start by h hr t it was it was life changing

[00:16:46] Dr. Brighten: you started hr t being in perry menopause yeah only last year

[00:16:50] Samantha Hiew: okay in november

[00:16:51] Dr. Brighten: yeah because women why i wanna clarify is because i will get women that are in their twenties and they're like can i just take estrogen during my lu phase like can i can i just take that then i don't have to deal with you know this this progesterone coming in i'm like no i'm sorry it doesn't work that way and if we gave you estrogen and your estrogen too high on phase you're probably gonna have a histamine issue and then we might be dealing with pm because of that or rage issues or feeling just like you have the flu all the time it's a horrible feeling yeah so i just wanted to to clarify that i think people it was actually interesting he spoke at a conference in the uk that was several years ago and we i was on a panel and a woman asked like about hr t and she was like certainly you must be against this and i was like oh no when it's my time signing me up and people were surprised because they're like you've been prescribing i i explained i've been prescribing hr t for like i mean when i was in intern still like i have been prescribing hr for over a dozen years now and someone said well what like but you tell people like using the pill like you wouldn't use the pill for these things so i don't understand and it made me realize like there's so much misinformation about hormones and so when we're talking about hormone replacement therapy we're not talking about the pill we're talking about a topical estrogen which is a much lower dose lower risk of clots and it's just the lowest amount to give you the most benefit

[00:18:20] Samantha Hiew: n bio identical yes that was the bit that i probably didn't realize before i started hr t because i somehow had bought bought into the stigma you know but then i started reading doctor l mo book and i always you saw that

[00:18:35] Dr. Brighten: yeah i've endorsed her books that everybody they're great books

[00:18:39] Samantha Hiew: so i i love that she's done brain scans you know and really checked yeah the different like what's going on in our brain mh the pre men puzzle perry and then a post you know and see that actually we have significantly lower brain energy you know in peri menopause yeah and and she talked about body identical hormones and also so she dis responded you know that myths about like breast concert certainly

[00:19:03] Dr. Brighten: yeah i'm but don't use horse urine and people prem out and a lot of the medical community in the scientific community are like progesterone same thing not the same thing you want bio identical progesterone which is protective and now is the the breast cancer research is coming out progesterone is looking really ugly

[00:19:23] Samantha Hiew: yeah but then that's in all the the the marina coil isn't it mh and the yeah the home hormonal contraceptive but also there is another layer that i have to deal with which is having a slow count it means that i can't really introduce too much estrogen at any one time like too quickly so i've been going like what they say start low and go slow yeah you know and and that has been my experience and on the days when i forget to take my progesterone i'm getting like wall oil in the next day which is actually what happened today yesterday i forgot to do it like when i went to bed and so i knew today i'm gonna need to just like tune and kind of like regulate you know because like when you have a nervous system that's always flux because of that biological changes that is happening it's it's almost like okay you're tuning you're tuning in to att to yourself yeah not to like give yourself pressure you know i must not feel like this but he's like if that is what you're feeling like accept and try to learn to like regulate yourself it might not be the most perfect you know strategy but at least you're kind to yourself as well when you know

[00:20:28] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah and it's important you talked about the meth b vitamins as well we know those are very important for estrogen clearance to the body i have episodes about estrogen and i will link to those if you guys wanna deep dive more on it but i'm curious has anyone checked your testosterone as well because i often know see that being an issue adhd adhd and odd his women their testosterone gets forgotten and they have d regulation lack of motivation they wake up they're not ready for the day they're super groggy they're crying all the time they don't know why it's almost like you know i i feel like we we need we have it's like testosterone are a little shield sometimes to be like not everything penetrate the surface

[00:21:10] Samantha Hiew: so i'm glad you asked us because no one asked me i went to the hormonal clinic and even though it was a private clinic where i was paying to my nose still had to bring the knowledge you know no one talked about this you know until i raise that question and i got test it like and they test it just test and and it is on the low side you know and they have always known it's on the low side they and i brought my records and they didn't say anything about it i think because people are quite cautious you know perhaps there is enough research on adhd women what you know esther s does and also knowing that you know in pcos we already have high end androgen levels then maybe that needs to be caution you know but i as far as i know i don't think i have pcos but what i do have is pots and posterior your post art aesthetic tachycardia syndrome and yeah i think that's that's it so then i have that you know kinda nervous system this regulation that didn't happen because of that anything like if i don't sleep well then the next day it's like know it almost feel like there is a bit of a tidal wave inside me yeah yeah i don't know whether that's the day where i'm gonna be able to switch on or not and you talked about histamine in this well because high estrogen can reactivate histamine and then that's test stern help pal starts i absolutely no

[00:22:30] Dr. Brighten: yeah testosterone does help with mod the immune system but in terms of like research specific on women testosterone and histamine i have yet to see anything substantial i'm that but it's not because this isn't real i think that's the important thing for people to understand everything women is are experiencing is real we just don't have funding to actually get it research i mean we look on the united states it's about two dollars per endo endometriosis person that's the allocation of research every single year and yet when it comes to male potter bald or e rectify dysfunction like you if a man like you know can't feel like a man and doesn't feel sexy like we pour all the money and research to it what my mind is how often men will comment to me when i bring this up and say well then women need to be doing their own research why are they complaining i'm like then stop taxing us stop taking our money from men's health and then telling us just to deal with it

[00:23:27] Samantha Hiew: yeah and also the the fact that health research is you know largely governed by people who perhaps don't really have over you know under that's also due to the female you know kind of generational burden of being caregivers and mh and you know that there are lesser female aca and there are male aca and but i'm know about the histamine thing i i think is it the balance between estrogen and progesterone that helps so

[00:23:54] Dr. Brighten: yes so that helps immensely and that's i mean this is why i'm like i'm craving more research because every like neuro virgin woman is an n of one because we actually don't know we haven't studied it and so sound women you'll give them oral progesterone they feel so much better they're so calm so we talked about ga before chill baby be we calm like everything's good it's like whispering sweet nothing's to you but other neuro day convergent women something is off in that system and we don't understand why it is that when progesterone gets meta metabolized to a pregnant it set off like this cascade so i actually just shared on my social media so following me miscarriage i o i felt so good the day before o the day of o modulation i passed it and it was like a dark cloud moved in and i have the past history of pm and i was like oh god i know this feeling so so well and so you know the question is like okay do i go now in a couple of days and get my progesterone tested and see is it that my progesterone off optimal too high too low like what's happening and i honestly i was just like i don't have time for that we're feeling like this so i was like we are going to do some saffron we're gonna do some acetylcholine we're gonna hit omega threes we're gonna start at cla like i'm gonna do the things that i know work for pm patients and it's worked it's it's working which is good but i'm like women shouldn't have to go through life like let me just experiment here and there we should have data to say okay here's how we know what will work for you

[00:25:31] Samantha Hiew: yeah i love that like i feel like you know just speaking to you and then you clearly have a medical qualification but like so many other women in the neuro diverse community we've been going around looking for strategies mh for like centuries and i i i did like this life experience research you know on neuro women and i love the answers that came back with yes cheers thought they were like you know kind of adapt you know and we know that for a fact that we needed something like that because we have a biology that is influx mh you know and yeah the saf thing has been talked about loads of supplements another one was actually being single that was funny was like late

[00:26:14] Dr. Brighten: in seriously though like for anyone who has pm for sure anyone in perry menopause even if you're not neuro diver being in a like c habitat with a partner is really hard and something that i had posted like if you feel like you know every two weeks you you know two weeks out of every month you feel like you wanna leave your partner check pm d maybe your partner sucks that's real but maybe check into pm d but it's the same thing that i see happens in para menopause so we seeing peri menopause menopause there's a lot of women initiating divorce people are like oh it's just because women are having midlife crisis i'm like no women are losing their capacity for executive function for lending their brain to another partner they're sick of care taking and they're realizing that there's all these unmet needs and this person is never gonna step up and meet those needs because they've just seen them as a commodity as a means to an end to fulfill the life they want and like has a horrible place for someone to be

[00:27:12] Samantha Hiew: yeah but so i'm this is something that i personally had been going through you know over the last few years since my diagnosis and i have delivered talks on this and i can look at the science and trying to understand why we you know got get to later in life like i don't even know if four are late late later in life but to me i still feel like a little kid but apparently we're in midlife and we have this midlife crisis but it's not that simple is we looked into the brains you know scans of adhd like autistic women and adhd rate and there was new research that came out in doctor gina rip book on female lost of autism mh and she found that the brain of autistic women you know we are like more socially wired to connect and also like heavily socially camouflage you know to adapt to what people need from us and and that you know takes time for it to kind of differentiate of discern between is this autonomous or this this not you know and when we are younger we had more of that sex hormones right that floods our brain and maybe service a filter for people's behaviors you know and we may take more kinda shit i was trying to buy a better footprint

[00:28:40] Dr. Brighten: and with tracks

[00:28:41] Samantha Hiew: but to very and and then when you get to your forties those late thirties or forties or if you have surgical induced man menopause or your bike your bulk your body decides to go into man menopause early then those sex hormones start to plummet mh you know and which we do experience every month anyway but when you get to a certain age you just don't have as much of it yeah than younger women and those hormones served as a filter to filter is no longer there you know then you start to wonder why did i do this for like do i count hear what about me yeah you know and i feel like you're in the season of truth and and that truth you know will be revealed in many ways first through our biology but secondly true the way we relate to one another also if we're still willing to be the emotional caretaker in that relationship which many people don't want to be when you get to a certain age they wanna live on themselves

[00:29:39] Dr. Brighten: mh yeah i agree with that are you you used the word camouflage a lot of people use the word masking as an just to cover that but but cam is what the research says and really at the crux of of the behavior that we're participating in and it covers it masking falls within under that term of camouflage can you explain cam if this is the first time someone's hearing it

[00:30:01] Samantha Hiew: yeah so camouflage is like the next level of what is masking but it's totally different in that you're adapting a behavior that you think is accepted it could be a neuro behavior and often is because we scan our environment to see what is it you know they expected or accept in the norm here and then we take on a totally different persona that eventually becomes us

[00:30:24] Dr. Brighten: mh

[00:30:25] Samantha Hiew: and then i've been talks to the community where women start to kind of wonder who am i yeah twenty years after you know they first got like no no i actually no i've even diagnosed with adhd disorders just diagnosed with depression mh and being given ss you know being able to function in that relationship or in work and then twenty years later then start to wonder who am i on underneath is there is a sense of self that is quite diffuse yeah i see it in the community right now you know collectively looking for answers and then having been mis diagnosed not just with depression and anxiety but also borderline personality disorder several different mood disorders you know as dove that is our fault you know when we have this baseline that we go into the world you know with different ways of relating to people and regulating and also adapting different personas and then find that actually doesn't work either because you know then actually our truth really wants to come out and and that's when people start to leave you know their relationships if they weren't align but yeah chemo is something that is very real and and i love that you know later in life when people start to want to be more of themselves it can look very clunky mh you know when we're starting to like oh i'm gonna be me now and we're gonna just suddenly get the outburst of like with being authentic yeah and then it will look so drastic and like you know was shocking to the person who who's so used to you being does you you know

[00:32:04] Dr. Brighten: yeah it's true so you you talked about the camouflage piece and then the miss diagnosis but sometimes occurring diagnosis of mental health conditions autism with autism adhd adhd so anxiety bipolar disorder depression why do you think medicine and even society as a whole there's much more willing to diagnose a woman with a mental health disorder than to recognize that she has a different nervous system operating different from a neuro

[00:32:35] Samantha Hiew: this because the research were done on a certain population that isn't like you know inclusive mh of us and also part of the research isn't wrong you know part of research is that yeah there are genetic variants that contribute to you know what will look like bipolar and also schizophrenia yeah you know but the mood disorders and there there is an innate physical sensitivity but then a lot of these personality disorders have a root in relational injury and where we have sustained you know trauma from a young age and then you know trained and do have relationships with people and when we encounter triggers those behaviors aren't always voluntary most of the time they are primal you know and it's reactive and and so i left about looking into what does audience actually look like before trauma and then what does it look like after trauma and we're looking at you know someone's capacity to love and and it is highly different because went with trauma you add that highly hyper vigilant you a thing that you look into every thing a queue as if like it's it's a sign that they're gonna leave you know i've done something on oh my god i'm i'm gonna be left alone and and and stuff like that you know and i know so because of our innate way of being right being autistic or autistic adhd or in an adhd where we can feel overwhelmed quite quickly and then with autism and adhd there is that sensory sensitivity so from very early in life you're going into social situations and does those cues are too much

[00:34:21] Dr. Brighten: mh

[00:34:22] Samantha Hiew: you know because the they've done research showed that the autistic brain actually it was a highly male research and i said that the emotions in a sensory you know and the cognitive part of our brain is kind of the same so we process feelings and thoughts s like our senses they all feed into the same place whereas autistic women that we have less of that gl you know network and more of that individual network where like auto brain networks work really well on their own but then if you are try to connect them they aren't as connected and that's in female autism and so then if you feel that sensory challenge it can be very heightened in your brain but it can also be very contained so often women tried to contain that you know because it isn't socially accepted and then they then have meltdown on your own or shutdown dance on their own or you know if that becomes so overwhelming that you can't control it like with adhd then you kind of work you know yeah so it's it's it's it's a very interesting discovery

[00:35:29] Dr. Brighten: yeah well that is interesting and also in the context of what you said earlier of autistic women wanting to have more connection and wanting to be more social which often isn't the way that autism is perceived it's perceived is you know somebody who can't communicate who can't actually cannot connect with others and we find that that's just simply not true

[00:35:52] Samantha Hiew: yeah because the face of autism right is what used to be the rain man and sheldon people in asia i don't even think you know like don't don't even would hope to have a representation people from different cultures also like that doesn't look like that and so when you look at female autism we because we are so socially wired to connect even if we may prefer to have our own space and you know even if we do have sensory to challenges we often mitigate that by you know compensating by being more social mh you know and and perhaps more more literal you know they're we we basically have invisible for us so long yeah because we didn't know what to look like an at and there is a new article in new scientist that says a female autism look different to male autism should we give it a different name and yeah it was interesting because we can but how then are we going to acknowledge that it is a thing and maybe we are going to move towards its understanding neuro divergence it's a very natural way of being yeah and and the thing is when you talk about this then people who you know fall on the kind of the stronger spectrum of as then they will feel underrepresented so you know like i've i've had like conversations with my colleagues colleagues other speakers who say they work in the mental health clinics and the your divergence specialist clinics if that exists where they they they see like those with more severe like support needs you know they may not be represented by older the conversations that we have so what does that where does that leave us yeah you know as the collective because i think you know what is implication on this rise in diagnosis on us as a society

[00:37:51] Dr. Brighten: yeah i think that you know when people say that okay there's male autism there's female autism should we give them different names i often think about heart attacks heart attacks like men have them women have them but women present differently women's experiences differently but it's still a heart attack like at the baseline of it and it almost feels like this idea that like we have to call it something different to actually get clinicians to recognize that it's different and i think you're right you know we've seen a huge uptick this year in the united states with the talk of autism and then saying well we've got high support needs it's funny because i've seen i've seen doctors say there's high support needs and then there's no support needs and i'm like no no sorry do you get the diagnosis of autism there there has to be some level of support you need and it's interesting because i'll have people say to me like why did you need the diagnosis obviously you've been fine your whole life i'm like so you what you've seen of here's fine but it's funny because i look back at things like even ten years ago like i would say to my friends like when i'm in a conference and i take a stage i speak i give it my all i meet with everybody i will stand there for hours and i will meet with every single person who traveled to come see me then i will go back to my hotel room it will bury myself in blankets cover everything up put in ear plugs and sometimes have a good cry and i would say that to my colleagues and they're just like that's interesting and nobody ever clocked it is like oh you you allow yourself to the point of getting regulated by the way i actually don't mind that for anyone listening please always come up and say hi to me i love that i would never be where i'm at in this world if it wasn't for people who support me but it's like you know i have to go back into my cocoon and dissipate some of that energy recalibrate but you know i explained to people often of like you know the the child pair that i have the executive assistant i have like all the people i have support i mean as a female entrepreneur that scene is you're so successful you've built a team you're so smart and i'm like what you don't understand is that i couldn't function without this team and i had to build a life of support systems because society said and and i've had people argue like you're probably more moderate needs with how much support that you've you've gotten and i'm like what is it actually matter because what society is said is that you graduated you have a doctorate you have a license you're able to function so therefore we're not gonna give you the support you need you look fine on the surface

[00:40:22] Samantha Hiew: yeah and i i love everything you said jun because i i resonate with that so much people think you don't need support but the hidden struggles and you have haven't and i call them hidden because when you appear on stage people see the part of you that actually loft to do what you do mh know so that is not a show that is huge authentically channel you know your love for flight knowledge and helping people through it you know that is so important to you almost like oxygen and you need that part you know to be you but then in order to keep that going and also be everything that society expects a woman to be you know you we we need incredible amount of support you know but people don't see that and because if you had to do the work that you do and care for children and you know cook for them and you know look after your schedule it's nearly impossible and the meltdown dump that people tend to have you know behind closed doors they are real as well but will we show that we may talk about that and you know i've actually openly had the melt meltdown stage i because like no i can't i i can't actually control it

[00:41:30] Dr. Brighten: the meltdown on is because i see all the time people on social media label is a tantrum and i'm like a meltdown is not a tantrum can you explain it

[00:41:38] Samantha Hiew: so often the meltdown soften is a result of a nervous system overload you know and it happens it's what appears to be so quickly even to you because all the stages you know that you kinda take on his cues from the environment that is both external internal right the away you know and and you've voice trying to deal with this like signals that are breathing you know like the lid and eventually when you feel like you know okay well it's coming like a tide ways and that can look like sudden outburst like crying you know if no reason what appeared to be no reason but by the time a meltdown happens it's really too late mh your senses your feelings you know your thoughts have already like been overwhelmed and they can come from as simple as you know if you turn up on on stage like i've had situations where i turn up in a a room where i to give a talk and the light is really bright like white and it's too hot in the mic has mh and it's like a whiplash you know it's happening and people don't see that but that is going to contribute to your tank being totally fallen and or we're brim and so yeah that's that's how i see meltdown because it often happens so quickly and without you know as being able to explain it and with all the adhd we have nervous system this regulation because this autonomic where often we don't know how to explain how we're feeling in that moment yeah but it takes time to kinda then say it

[00:43:13] Dr. Brighten: yeah and you know i think a lot of people can always relate to a panic attack like they've seen a panic attack it's been in the media enough to understand that a panic attack is completely out of someone's control with a meltdown there is no sense of fear or dread but it is the same sympathetic overdrive the nervous system gets overwhelmed and it is a full speed head train and that's already left the station and it has no breaks and the only thing you have to do is wait for enough you know for you know in the physics perspective the train is gonna have to meet enough friction to slow down but the it still has to run its course and that's much like a meltdown and i'll see people being very judgmental of people having meltdown and being like why can't you just hold it together why can't you just just just just just and it's because the nervous system can't and it's even the like well what are you feeling more questions what do you need how can i help you that also can just contributes to things and you know i see this in my children when they have a meltdown and it's like okay just brace for impact because there's just nothing that can be done in this moment we just have to be a safe space for them and make sure they're safe as their nervous system works this out

[00:44:28] Samantha Hiew: yeah completely it's like i i love that you you did decide like when when people ask you what you need like i don't want conversation right now like i can't talk and i just really can't like tell you because that is another demand yeah you know i just wanna be left alone like yeah under a duvet maybe in a assault we would a sole next to me and just not talk to anyone

[00:44:47] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah yeah yeah so i wanna ask you what did it look like for you you talked about how people stepped into their more fun authentic self like they realized like oh here am i'm this you know this different person i think a lot about i don't know if you've ever in the movie i heard hug

[00:45:05] Samantha Hiew: no i'm hot it's i haven't i wanna watching them

[00:45:07] Dr. Brighten: okay okay so there's a there's a part where basically an existential crisis that's in and he's like how am not myself how am i not myself how am i not myself and i feel like that is something i remember watching that movie i was probably in may twenties and asking myself that question and being like wait who am i actually and having this moment of feeling like i'm not always showing up as my authentic self and i'm going along with things and saying i'm interested in things and doing things that i actually am not it still took like a while for me to work through that but i feel like that's true for a lot of people as they start to question how may not myself what did it look like for you stepping into your authentic self

[00:45:48] Samantha Hiew: such a complex question very complex like situation because i'm thinking you know my authenticity city isn't always like you know i but i'm just saying like my natural state isn't fully ina authentic but then being authentic to me means that actually if i don't feel right about something i'm going to say it mh and if i'm around people who make me feel uncomfortable then i will have just assert boundaries and this is not something i've ever been able to done do very well mh you know and and it starts from saying no when it is something that i don't feel it's line to me right now and say no louder because i have what is essentially a utility boo where i need to feel useful in order to be accepted and loved and in fact after writing my whole book in order to support the near diverse community and pouring my brain you know what it looked like when i read it again was i imposing my brain to the world you know and it was like if i was able to rationalize this and understand process then i can help me and everyone but then that in itself meant that am i not allowed to just be me without being useful and that was a huge realization for me that i have been trapped in my head for as long as i can remember

[00:47:21] Dr. Brighten: i so relate to this

[00:47:22] Samantha Hiew: yeah and i didn't know how to feel mh like i thought i could but it was so outward i felt what everyone else felt and i knew how to help them because that was how i was useful as a child and then it transferred into every relationship that i had you know if i could be of value and in fact one of the things i used to say to my ex partner was that i can be of really high value to you as if that was a really good reason for him to stay which it was it turned out to be the reason he stayed because he needed me not because he wanted me and that was really painful for realization when eventually i knew that because i was light by and he loved that but he didn't love the whole of me and that i couldn't be myself the full you know kind of authentic messy reality of me in that relationship something in me was really breaking to come out and that looked like anger or suppression and because it wasn't express it came out as a fire you know wasn't i directed at him it was directed as how i would regulate which was spying i was like essentially having a meltdown and that was when he left and i was just like wow okay and that was when i had no choice but to feel and fought at whole month i had sit in bath to regulate my nervous system every day and i've never felt grieve that was so deep and so complete because that abandonment wound mixed with the utility going

[00:48:58] Dr. Brighten: yeah

[00:48:58] Samantha Hiew: it wasn't just from me it was from my mother i saw her as a marty for five children you know she had modeled to me what love looked like and i was so angry but i didn't did that and i was angry at the fact that i was always the provider never provided and when i asked people to step up to help me it didn't always look nice you know didn't know i couldn't ask nicely because i didn't believe that i deserve of it mh and so yeah so that that that took such a big journey for me you know people in order to fully understand that actually this is who i am and i'm gonna work on actually maybe not even being used to people and just being truly me and actually start living from me and this year i did that i i live from me and you know i poured my energy into what gives me energy which is community impact and the event that i set up in april it is probably the time when your community told you about me was when i was trying to recover from the pain of that heartbreak and mh and i turned up you know with my voice shaking not actually filling confident at all i was feeling so beaten down and didn't really believe that i even deserve to be there i've never hit so low in my life and yeah and then from then on i just got up and realized that actually i had to have that experience to understand that i could never outsource love i could never outsource emotional safety because in indiana i was forced to be my own emotional anchor yeah and that was so hard but i had really amazing people around me friends who were going through similar things and we understood each other and the community we live parallel lives and then it was interesting because we all had this unspoken thing inside us and when we get her in a safe space who's the first time i felt like if i was gonna tell you this story it wasn't just a it wasn't a performance because like so many corporate structures back you to go and share your story but then you speak and you kinda go into the space and the silence but in a community it's so felt in a women who have have those experience who went through similar things but in at different timelines and if you're at this timeline where you had to deal with this you know emotional authenticity city then perhaps then there is so much love and value in being together in a safe space and that's that's what i poured my energy into this year even though perhaps it is not the one that makes the most financial sense but i i know that for me i need to really lead from my heart and if i do that always be okay so that's authentic authenticity for for you

[00:51:53] Dr. Brighten: yeah know beautiful thank you for sharing that and i think you know what i wanna highlight about that is an off when people think about camouflage or mask and they think about deception you're trying to just fit in you're trying to be the right person that you get into the group and what they don't realize is that you're often self sacrificing your own needs to show and meet the needs of others and you know so much of what you said is i've never heard the term utility weren't wound before it's definitely something that i'm like oh gosh there's another layer to work on for myself you also you mentioned utility wound you mentioned a abandonment wound what other kinds of wounds do you see that women are dealing with in your community

[00:52:34] Samantha Hiew: yeah too much boo

[00:52:37] Dr. Brighten: oh my god i'm not the truth i'm actually working on in the book and i think i'm like i really think the dedication is gonna be to like every woman who's been told she's too much

[00:52:46] Samantha Hiew: i don't know i believe that women holds so much power but we have perhaps silence that life force that is within us and and that's why sometimes i i feel like in my journey now like i kinda crossover over from being scientist to a bit of a a shaman and i i i feel like because our stories isn't just in our body like physically but then the nervous system imprint that we have is from generations before us and we had you know so many oppression throughout history right if you think of even you know the times when women used to speak like burn on stakes for telling the truth or actually wanting more alive you know that is frowned upon and then you know the fact that we've had like know health research that was based on us and in women's empowerment i run a company called adhd girls and not a single day passes by where a man doesn't tell me what about us right like yeah you important

[00:53:48] Dr. Brighten: i just wanna say like i actually made a video because and i put this on social media because i get asked that all the time what what about me like what about men what about talking about men's health what about and and they have this need and what i'm really it makes me angry is i see all these men who do not have expertise in women's health yet they are assert themselves as experts and women's themselves inserting themselves into our story because it's such an easy profit for them and i watch women who go to them because a man is finally validating their experience and then it's so refreshing and it's so amazing and so you see them like blowing up on social media and i'm and i don't think these are necessarily bad men it's not what i'm saying it's that they're following a capitalist route and women are a means to an end rather than looking at their own community like you and i women are fighting to get our information out there and to support women and we i see these men and i'm like there are men who are fighting with us to give them information like you could be serving them like there's such a need in men's health community as well and i've interviewed a couple of male practitioners just to put them out there because women would say i need someone for my husband to follow i'm like these these are the people that are doing that but it's so sad to me that men need support but there's some kind of barrier happening right now where like there's not other men standing up to give them that support

[00:55:17] Samantha Hiew: yeah it's it's it's it's interesting that you say that yeah i mean i such resonate with that there are so many yeah of disco conversations that i've had and actually i even try to ban to suit it you know like in my early days i'm your diversity and i think that's why it's i started talking about neuro diversity instead of female neuro because people are asking me you know to be more inclusive and it's i i find it even funnier when i'm first asked to go and talk about you know neuro in women and then they change it halfway and say down a lot of money in the audience and i have actually been in a room in an insurance company where i was talking about o ovation and the hormonal cycle and the men were fixated yeah it's still say wanted it to know

[00:55:58] Dr. Brighten: same i have spoken ad so there's been several like health corporations that have hired me and i come in and speak and it's the men with the most questions about women and so it's something that i'm always like my lane is women's health and i will speak to you know how as a man you can support women but i'm not gonna speak to what your experience is i think that's the thing that definitely runs rubs me wrong as when men are like oh you're you're a neuro day virgin woman or woman on your period or you're a woman with peri menopause this is how you feel and i'm like you do not know you did not know how i feel i always love when they're like talking about like moms and being like oh yeah as a new mom this is how you must be filling and i'm like ask yeah that's a novel thing ask us how we're feeling

[00:56:43] Samantha Hiew: i i really love this and i think like actually in the future i want to start talking more about relationships and that's because you know we have man who are very interested in women's health and that's because it affects them mh you know women are everywhere in our ecosystem in order for them to thrive they need to have good relationships with us and the thing is we all have different wounds you know we go into relationships with that need to be useful do not leave me and then they come the man comes into relationship with i need to control this if it's not controllable i need to withdraw if i can't withdraw then i'm gonna feel trapped i've seen this again and again and again in every relationship mh and so happens that in neuro relationships the autistic adhd preparing is so common and can be painful if we don't understand what we're dealing with you know when people can feel that maybe the money in the relationship can feel like our the you the female partner is too intense during some times of the month and then the female partner spills like they don't feel accepted and they have to kinda suppress a bit of that fire and eventually the fire comes out anyway and it then looks like a obese or narcissistic amp have pairing but the truth is we all have different kind of you know archetypes at different times and it is that you know what is unspoken you know in the vacuum that is the issue here mh you know in our relationship

[00:58:20] Dr. Brighten: yeah why is it so common that adhd autistic pairing in a couple

[00:58:25] Samantha Hiew: yeah i i love that i think one of your question was around like adhd and how adhd arise and i have done like a bit of deep dive into this because they it's mainly from the adhd perspective and they have a study that looked at the evolutionary biology of adhd and they say that the risky alleles the gene variants that contribute to adhd whether it's that sensation novelty seeking and the things that lead people to mice is gradually being phased out in the population and they the

[00:59:02] Dr. Brighten: because you expire before your time before you can breathe right

[00:59:06] Samantha Hiew: right yeah yeah and maybe you would self medicate to mice yeah right and then the authors in that paper actually like post perhaps because they made it with autism you know alright and then and then i kinda help me visualize that somewhere after the evolutionary lineage adhd met autism and thought you have the structure and routine that i need and you have the adventure that gets me out of that you know feel and whether it's men or woman in different you know kind archetype i don't know but eventually we then have this mating take place that you know eventually give rise to adhd which now we know is an entirely different brain dynamics and brain structure and it is completely different to pure autism or pure adhd you know and that's why like we have already she something completely different and we have to treat it differently you know and eventually accept it as the way of being

[01:00:03] Dr. Brighten: i wanna i wanna talk about the difference in the adhd brain but i'm curious so you adhd girl who do who do you partner with have you have you seen a pattern of the ben you're trying

[01:00:15] Samantha Hiew: tend to go for to safe once or what look to be safe once you know because the safe once i have a pat going for nice guys

[01:00:24] Dr. Brighten: mh

[01:00:24] Samantha Hiew: and boy that's a mistake because what

[01:00:28] Dr. Brighten: more nice hey i wish this was tea

[01:00:30] Samantha Hiew: i i thought oh it's this person really kind very nice but then we're living in a time where people who are nice also had their different wounds mh you know they didn't really feel safe to express themselves and within that there's a lot of in on the england city going on yeah and what i value so much you down authenticity city and seeing what i you know experience in private and then what i see you know how people act in public and then there's a dissonance you know and i don't like that so it it kind of make me feel like do i trust you

[01:01:04] Dr. Brighten: and cannot handle dissonance i cannot handle a contradiction my brain feels like it's itching if i see a contradiction i don't know if you're the you're the same way

[01:01:13] Samantha Hiew: completely yeah yes

[01:01:15] Dr. Brighten: it'll try insane i don't think about it for like years to come the contradiction that i witnessed

[01:01:19] Samantha Hiew: yeah and i like a lot of my work are to actually kinda match what is inside and outside as well i'm still in a process you know but yeah to the partners that i tend to get attracted to other ones who i feel are a safe place mh but then they also happen to be quite controlling because there's a reason why they're safe or stable because they're quite rigid yeah that rigidity isn't something that i can take you know i need freedom in the relationship as well as faith you know which is a lot to us yeah you know but yeah that's that's why i'm single

[01:01:53] Dr. Brighten: yeah well it's you you met my husband briefly and my ass is because adhd adhd like we are that pairing and it is for sure that like the man can't plan a trip like to save his life and have like everything packed in the list and like everything and that is what i like thrive on like we went to iceland and he was talking about like oh my god we would've have like never survived it if you hadn't done a whole of research and sure that like you had everything you had list and you had everything organized and it's it's so interesting though but he is less he's more risk adverse and i am more the the risk taker i was actually explaining the my child was we were listening to music he's twelve he's like and we were talking about a mo pit and he's like oh who would ever go in there and i was like me hi i used to like live in the mo fitted at concerts and he's like what and then my husband's like explaining like your mom used to like bungee jump off bridges it was totally not safe like she used to do all of this wild stuff and like he's like oh what what happened like you're not like this person anymore i'm like i take risks in different ways now but i have small humans who depend on me and that that stops me but it is it's just interesting that you say that because i'm like there is this dynamic of we have our strengths and our weaknesses within our relationship that we figured out and it is because of being neuro virgin is like you could never do this and yet like and i'm my biggest thing is like i hate driving i you know that this is where i relate to young sheldon is like statistically speaking if you're gonna die it's gonna be in the car like let's i don't like this at all and like he's like i love driving like driving like my favorite and so you know i think it's really interesting how you find those pairing without ever knowing that you're actually neuro and coming together and i don't think it's too much to be like i need freedom and i need safety you're like is not too much that's too jazz i don't think so at all

[01:03:53] Samantha Hiew: yeah i guess like it goes back to actually just being the person that you truly are you know right at the beginning mh you and for me i you know was quite trapped in my head and i don't think i was really like a line in internally and externally so for me then i attracted a partner that only likes a certain inside and then you know that was really difficult you know at again but now have my eyes wide open and hopefully but with better result in the future you know but i'm i'm pretty content right now

[01:04:25] Dr. Brighten: good well i wanna ask you so we are often masking and we don't always do that around the people we trust right mh like our partners are family that we want them to be our safe space and we let our mask down but that's sometimes results in the the partner or the other person this in interpreting your emotions as being mad or aggressive you know these terms that people put on us but also sometimes resent because they're like you show up and you do all this for other people why can't you keep that up with me how can women approach a relationship when that's the dynamic

[01:05:03] Samantha Hiew: yeah it's interesting and i think that's why we have to go in straight away first time well you know like it's different now no so many of us are are like i totally get it so like you need to really have that go back to the drawing board mentality

[01:05:20] Dr. Brighten: mh

[01:05:20] Samantha Hiew: where you're like actually and know that there's a role that is set here and there's an expectation of what you want from me but i don't think in this stage that i'm i at now you know where i'm discovering who i really am that i can give that to you not when i'm in lower energy face anyway yeah and are you gonna be okay with that and that's such an honest conversation right because then sometimes even if you're okay with that theoretically when it actually happens you know when you're actually in a relationship and all the messy triggers start flying all over the place life happens then you know your automatic response gonna happen then can you heal together you know in or do you need some time apart in order to heal you know on your own before coming back so that's that's a tricky face i suppose because for me i actually held on for very very many years before eventually you know tell my husband i spend that i can't do it anymore and and i think in this new face of my life that i i i know that i cannot i can no longer suppress myself or my voice or my emotions so whoever i'm going to meet will have to be okay with that and that person will have to be able to match my fire which is is not always gonna be there you know like i i met somebody who said to me that the reason that you know you can just have this outbreaks or rage is because you've had to put a lit on your emotions for a long time but if you are able to practice like actually releasing yourself on a more regular basis then you won't get to the point of you know a overflow that is so true yeah you so true

[01:07:09] Dr. Brighten: one are the some some of the ways that you find are helpful for you to release those emotions

[01:07:15] Samantha Hiew: oh i love movement the moment and voice activation i am i was saying to you i went to at to moscow ceremony mexican we went to a heat at lodge it was like heart in there it was like a sauna and a steam room and i thought my new was gonna die in here you know

[01:07:34] Dr. Brighten: he don't throw me regulate well but the real

[01:07:36] Samantha Hiew: well that's that's what i thought and as soon as you close the door i was like oh my god it's dark i'm gonna talk you know it was panic attack and then i thought okay you know apparently the principle is that your body knows what to do mh and then is it you know in that lodge i lost at two hours and i couldn't even go into a sore for like ten minute minutes there's a lot warmer in a sore of it that that was kind of like a milder experience so so yeah i i found that movement and voice whisper me and that was very much map to my own unique needs for other people it may be nature walks you know but what i have found is that we whether it's men or women have had our waist suppressed mh so many neuro man feel like you know they aren't able to just really express the authentic self and then the archetype so you know what is accepted the spiritual bypass which i see everywhere and

[01:08:41] Dr. Brighten: excellent what that is for people who don't know okay

[01:08:44] Samantha Hiew: so that is another thing that i have done too by intellectual our experience by not feeling it by going to yoga to release the stress without fully dealing with the why it was a time where it's it's almost like you're going in to look for protection and you when you keep you know the spiritual activities to protect yourself you never really deal with the wounds underneath and you're bypassing your actual growth mh by looking for this band aids it's not always easy because because i said with our sensory sensitivities and our coping mechanisms over word decades over the lifetimes you know actually just being more stress ave and actually leaving something we draw you know dis when something intense happening is not easy to say go back into your body it's more about a tuning as assuming to what we need and yes it's like they're tapping into that internal wisdom so for me like some takes you know being being able to shake it out in my body being able to dance and move and to sing and chant i couldn't stop singing and since i got to mexico i don't know why there's something in this land that's making me like no just wanna take small

[01:10:12] Dr. Brighten: singing and eating this is the way it is here

[01:10:16] Samantha Hiew: yes yeah some families are so connected you know i i love that element you know which in the west is not so much like that you know i i moved from asia to england and people are quite disconnected from their families you know like children leave home at age of sixteen or seventeen to go up and year out yeah to me like born a new diaper child like their brains like fourteen mh you know like how can you go into the world like that you know and then we make those choices from growing young age and then then is not surprising that there is a rise and diagnosis this now in the west whilst people in other parts of the world wondering what does does adhd look like in people like me you know like from southeast asia i've i've given talks to apa pac companies they're like why isn't there a single asian person in the new diversity you know groups that's because your culture don't see your challenges as something that needs to be fixed maybe they see it as something that you need to tolerate or you know suck it up or do something about it out ways you know that's so much the line involved

[01:11:24] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah it is interesting you know the other thing about other cultures shows you're talking about mexican culture like it's not the norm for every child just to go off to go to college they usually live at home we see this in other cultures as well where children live at home and they attend university so they still have their safe place their place to process like they have their support we see other cultures with multi generational households in the west in the united states it's in the uk where you're from we don't see that we see a very fractured family unit and i wonder if that is an environmental stress that exacerbate the operating system of a neuro individual that makes it more pronounced but also the fact that it is that way means you have to be autonomous as quickly as possible and when you're neuro as you said like you know there's the thirty percent rule right like our our brains are essentially like three years younger maybe that's why we still feel like kids i don't know i'm my forties two and i'm like i don't feel like i'm in my forties like and i still actually like get child in some ways but it is something that i think that kind of pressure is on neuro individuals of like grow up grow up faster like you know in the united states you're asking five year olds what do you wanna be when you grow up my twelve year old is still like i have no idea i'm like that's a fantastic place to be in life what a fantastic place to be because that means you still are exploring all potential out there

[01:13:02] Samantha Hiew: yeah a hundred percent and yeah so when we are put into a culture and actually does my experience because i i've i'm a cross cultural woman i have lived half of my life in asia where that generational household very much exists and then another half of my life being smack in the middle of very cold city in leads when i first got there and then london having yeah suppose without any family like support you know true throughout every single phases of my life that happened after that which is you know getting married getting it pregnant having a baby and you know dealing with like that decade of existential crisis and now and i i see really jarring you know very different way of being that is not supported by the community element mh because one of the the principle that they were addressing in that to moscow lodge was fear and i remember just walking along the street and thinking but it's a different type of fear for you guys here in mexico because you have family and you live under one household that's is interconnectedness there is reliance you know with in the west and in the uk or in the states and we are very much living on that you know the mass those hierarchy needs it's very much about autonomy fulfilling a potential and you know leaving like the household early on to find your growth and your place in the world but then with neuro children you know they are going in very early in life with that expectation from the world you know yet being under equipped to deal with that from a very young age i think i found a paper that looked at the development of mental health challenges beginning from like zero to five to six to twelve and you know eighteen is that different parts of our brain are developing you know at different times and then the amygdala load limbic system make and actually knows the with adhd it's the motor control you know so that's why children with adhd will get diagnosed they're are like you know failing all it replace hyper active and then next the amygdala you know limp the limp limbic system starts to come online and we get like children with adhd especially girls you know can be diagnosed bit anxiety age of eleven to twelve and then the dopamine minute check seeking you know part of the brain comes online before the prefrontal cortex you know that tells you that this is not a good idea you know like what are you gonna do with like another year's time or dangerous time you know that doesn't come online so we're looking at a nervous system that is you know that is gonna have that that seems too much and being equipped to deal with that we have that fear an society system you know wrapped up where we early on and so there is debt that higher proportion of what as post traumatic stress this order mh you know and adhd is like probably true five types more likely to get that and people with ptsd are two times more likely to be adhd so yeah that is very difficult place to be so when you then hit the transitions in your life where now i gotta deal with this again what do i do and your brain will go back to the time when you had to deal with something alone without any help whether it's it's at six to seven years old where you are being left to cry mh where something happened to you and no one did anything about that or maybe you left home when went to university that might have been your first type of experience like what i do here yeah you know if people do not know and and then that that fear system you know it's the fear response is high and and and you're in survival mode you know and and so then what do you do you know and you you you almost can't blame people to go into spiritual bypass because then i'm safe here yeah you and it it it it it is it's that's why community i find community is the answer you know to being more connected you know and and because if you're you come from a fearful place if you make every decision like that then you're gonna attract the wrong people there wrong opportunities into your life but if you come from a place of purpose and authentic you know and and whilst feeling like you're you're not alone then you're more likely to be able to make decisions to read align with you and health healthier for you to find

[01:17:39] Dr. Brighten: yeah i so speaking of trauma your book tip of the adhd iceberg you said you mostly wanted to find out if ga monte was right to go on about trauma as the name cause for all the pain in our lives so what did you discover

[01:17:58] Samantha Hiew: so the reason i said that is because so many near divergence were messaging me after they attended like a talk about mental health and trauma and how ga talked about sorry carbon mart like if you're are listening i'm sure you know what you say is right for you but trauma is certainly something that could be our constant companion but then because you know you also said that there not a single gene that causes adhd yes there are seventy nine gene variance and counting and that experience of adhd isn't just focus or attention it is an entire systemic you know experience and so when you say that okay what we experienced is the pain and that is also true but then before that we were born with that increased sensitivity to the world and that was passed on by our parents yes a lot of it could be epi you know that we you know kind of acquired in the womb but a lot of that also you know you can prove through looking at the genes that weren't med that were just regular genes they're hanging out and they were still there you know they were inherited it and so that's why i said that he wasn't totally right to put it all down to trauma and that but and he can also it shouldn't be discounted out of the story but that it is a condition that will affect your entire way of being and it affects people even people who who have said that they had no traumatic experiences you know from childhood so i feel like we tend to overs simplify a story you know and then it kind of i had a bit of that like realization when i was on a little psychedelic trip i'm more allowed to say it here

[01:19:49] Dr. Brighten: you i'm gonna doctor sarah godfrey who very much was talking all about her md mma experience as part part of her processing trauma and a lot of people are using ketamine or by ayahuasca

[01:20:02] Samantha Hiew: mental health

[01:20:03] Dr. Brighten: yeah exactly well it's interesting because gosh was that like twenty eighteen maybe the institute of functional medicine had an entire conference dedicated to essentially psychedelics and all the research coming out of stanford and all of the research being done yes they were like patients are very much going to be interested in this so we need to be well equipped and navigate it

[01:20:23] Samantha Hiew: yeah exactly and in australia they've legalized that and they're doing lots of clinical trials but then for me i had a supervised you know psychedelic experience far with my my friend who actually does clinical trials and she yeah gave me a kind of moderate dose it's not micro dosing or psilocybin and probably at a time when i was looking to go deeper but probably wrongly time because i was actually going through a traumatic experience but what it did show me was that when that moment when i felt like my sense of self was being dissolved you know that they say like when you threatens the psychedelic experience in your default mode network can disintegrate integrate in that process and in that time like i just didn't like the person who always thought what people thought about me you know who think like okay i'm not good enough that person left mh and then i saying why is everyone so serious why ga my team turning the world into you know like looking at our traumas and nothing else you know and that was when i was like someone someone to say something about this and and and that's when i thought you know why are we so serious like can't we just play more in aaron and and i feel like that was when i really truly understood who i was as a child before the world posts all in pain unto me you know by being so hyper sensitive to everything and and i love that essence and i try to remember it you know sometimes it's a bit hazy but sometimes i like i remember what it would felt like to be so care free you know as a child and i want to be more like that but also i wanted to add a caveat here that if we are predisposed to something like by buy by bipolar or schizophrenia which many neuro are then like they don't naturally recommend psychedelics an experience yeah because it does yeah regulate

[01:22:26] Dr. Brighten: and i would also caveat that you should not do any kind of mind altering treatments and last you're under the care of an experienced clinician who will also help you integrate afterwards because i've definitely seen people who sought i just need to deal with you know whatever i'm dealing with by having this psychedelic experience and they come out of it in a far worse state because the person who was administering it didn't understand mental health didn't understand rein reorganization and there was no container and support as they rolled out of that and then they were just left to deal with you know i think sometimes you know people will be like you need to just deal with your trauma and get to the root of that but you don't always have the capacity for that and sometimes your body has locked things out and buried them down because you have to heal and this is something that i always say to patients of like healing the physical body's the easy parts and once we get to to a state where like your hormones are much better and your body it your gut is functioning better and all of that then all of the emotional stuff you haven't dealt with that's gonna be the final body the physical body healed now the emotional body you actually have to work on and that is the part where people people don't usually wanna go there they're like my gut is good i am five

[01:23:42] Samantha Hiew: it's very very true and that's for for some people it's a good reason and i love that you say that actually because i i i did read read in a book because it dan siegel book about patterns of personality development and where he said like some people are just like with with with the previous predisposition to mental health conditions they may not need to feel everything in their body like the traumatic experience but maybe it's enough for them to just understand because then you know you can then move into a clean slate because feeling so much pain in a body isn't that advice especially if it kicks it's just response you know and i should like say that we do with what we can deal with and you know for some people they just prefer to do it in their timeline and mh we cannot rush the process

[01:24:33] Dr. Brighten: so when it comes to trauma this is one contributor to the experience of an adhd individual but in your research your experience what do you believe is that the root cause of adhd

[01:24:45] Samantha Hiew: and so as you mentioned all the different layers right i think that there's an evolutionary layer to begin with that we have inherited this gene variance that causes cellular changes in our body and it was so interesting when i looked into adhd you know it was affecting things like glucose my alcoholism hormonal you know clearance energy production insulin there is so much to it and also like immune system like cytokines production but we autism also it's like it affects the structure that hosts cell together you and that structure i it i'm tore pathway and without that they can cause like cancer you know and then and like many neuro regiments are like putting more more more more risk of cancer because of that under stress response so that's the biological layer right but then adhd is a bio cycle psychology emotional and relational survival story mh you know i i think like if we wanna put adhd on a piece of paper then okay you know we're gonna be able to list all these traits and symptoms but it's is happening in real life to people how do you support a person like holistically then you look at you know not just that focus or regulation of their emotions but also nervous system emotions and how to then have relationships with people you know and that's that's that's why i think like with adhd that's that's the course but then also what we're gonna do with it

[01:26:21] Dr. Brighten: mh yeah it's it's so interesting how you talk about those differences there i i've come across the the same research i mean dis regulated is the word than i have for the adhd adhd autism experience we've got nervous system dis regulation we've got immune system dis we've got metabolic dis regulation and we've got hormonal d regulation like it's all taking place and for so long research and medicine has separated our hormones from our brain function now i must say that like certainly i see like the the generation you know before me of g collagen were like don't reduce women into just their hormones and don't say their hormones affect their brain because then will be seen as the lesser and we won't be able to advance and i so i get how that was part of the narrative but i think that it really did set us it set us back in a away that they didn't intend but they absolutely did influence and with that to understand you know you you referenced doctor lisa mu research of like estrogen and energy metabolism in the brain you know the adhd brain already has like half a battery supply it already has such a hard time generating energy and then it burns so hot it moves through that energy so fast so then when you take estrogen away right because that's what the o will do you i won't take it away but if you live long enough and that's the goal estrogen is going to go away we're definitely going to see the brain fog we're gonna see the memory issues and there's a lot of women in hairy menopause menopause who can relate to that they've experienced that and i know that doctor me work says like oh but once you're through peri menopause things get better i have not seen that be true for the neuro brain i have not seen the lack of estrogen and then things just level out it's almost as if once that and and so this is what's different the neuro brain has been scanned and she's seen in the research then once you got through menopause that roller coaster of estrogen thinks stabilized and and it's not so it's not as bad as it was before i have not seen that be true for neuro brains once that estrogen is gone and they've lost that capacity i have just seen the struggle never ends and the deficits begin to climb more and more what has been your observation

[01:28:41] Samantha Hiew: a hundred percent that's why i love lyft experience research mh that is free you know and people aren't doing it you know the thing is you can test is all in a labs but to get the funding to really just look at neuro women you know it is a a climb for you know and actually so far i've seen

[01:29:01] Dr. Brighten: people have to know their neuro yes how many don't even know

[01:29:04] Samantha Hiew: yeah exactly so like so far i've seen like people who do come and anecdotal research they're getting the funding but in order to do real biochemical you know brain scan brain in in imaging research we're not doing that and yeah it is true and women have told me and that's okay well you think peri is matt wait do you eat the pulse man bowl age rate east doesn't live and there are many many neuro will diagnose who i come to know in my life when women remain in your fifties and sixties they don't take medication they have hr mh you know and hr t has been able to help them yeah you know and they were even wondering to any medication you know so like yeah it is almost like a prerequisite for that stage in life you know and we do hope that women get some support before we get to the post because we know that if you don't that mental health you know risks you know can happen in that ten years before menopause yeah which it's what happened to me actually

[01:30:03] Dr. Brighten: yeah no and for anyone listening just to underscore what you said we don't wait until twelve consecutive months of no period has happened and we need to start it earlier it's i've always prescribed that way of like if you are struggling i'm gonna prescribe now i'm not gonna wait until your periods gone and literally i would have doctors writing me being like you you are not following the guidelines and this is like not the way it should be and i'm like but this is what works i think that's the thing of like i have friends that are autistic and they're like i always wanna see an autistic doctor i'm like right because they noticed the patterns and they shift and they're not afraid to challenge a paradigm that's wrong like when you see that it's wrong like you're not going to do that and it's also something too when you have a human in front of you and they're having a different experience i love that you talk about the lived experience research because we need to address the human i always say like i don't have time so i'm forty four i don't have time to wait for a research study to validate what my needs are i will be part far in into menopause by then like i need to be intervening now doing things now for my health so you know for people listening we don't we don't have to wait until you're officially in menopause we can start things sooner and typically it's starting progesterone if you're early enough going to a doctor who recognizes your peri menopause it's usually progesterone because you get the sleep disturbance sleep disturbance makes executive function not existent ask eat mom ask any h adhd mom having a new baby and not sleeping so it's usually progesterone that gets started and then comes estrogen later as the o finally are like oh we're on our way out and testosterone is part of the conversation whenever estrogen is and the reason for that is your o is produced fifty percent of your testosterone but if you're neuro your adrenal glands are the other fifty percent and they've already been working over time your whole life so i see often that the dha production from the adrenal glands that typically starts declining at age twenty five in neuro women who have been high masking you know what what gets called high functioning but really just like high masking showing up how you know trauma they haven't dealt with that dha isn't the level we need it to be at to actually be able to produce some testosterone and even some estrogen from that mh

[01:32:28] Samantha Hiew: yeah that is so interesting like i find like because we're talking so much about s estrogen and progesterone and not enough about testosterone and and you're right the research isn't fully you know kinda out there yet for neuro women and tessa but it's almost like you have to kind of understand your own biochemistry as well before we will start with this and as you said just now you know we progesterone when you introduce it to some women it's like okay but then just out of women it can completely dis regulate on nervous system that's really sensitive as for me like i found that you know if i take the full dose that they recommend to protect you know the full dose of progesterone that i need to take alongside estrogen for half a month and if i take that i become really groggy the next day yeah and like also down which is interesting

[01:33:20] Dr. Brighten: mh

[01:33:21] Samantha Hiew: and then so i take half of that and sometimes i forget take get so that is not in the nice guidelines yeah that's not in the research because they haven't done that research yet mh and they say if you wanna go down that route then we have to check your ut trend lining in a few months and well you

[01:33:38] Dr. Brighten: can also always do vaginal which is y i've had to do them they're

[01:33:43] Samantha Hiew: not progesterone yeah for progesterone that's why i do yeah i i even wait to find out what it's likes to take it true them mouth yeah i just knew that but even that it the so that it's the milder effect mh then but it it a radius quite a lot for

[01:33:57] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah it's interesting because there's a subcutaneous injectable here called terrace in mexico and i don't know if it's in the eu yet but it's what is used in fertility treatments and i found when i went inject that oh man never ever been happier in my life like i was so happy and i'm like there's something about this subcutaneous and i think because it's not like this bolus that just hits your system it's gonna be this sustained over you know a day or two that you're having this absorption of progesterone that really it was i was doing this as part of fertility treatments and really worked well for me i also did six hundred milligrams daily like three so three times a day two hundred milligrams and it never had that effect on me but that i'm pointing this out because this is a different like here you have an adhd i have an adhd diagnosis mh i can take oral progesterone i sleep like a baby i feel great you take it you're groggy the next morning and you're filling down and of course you're like i want people know that they're doctors who will say oh well i don't that doesn't happen to people regularly and it must be something with you if a alone it's coming from progesterone affects ga receptor in the brain ga is a big stop you don't get the neuro ex neurotransmitters ga is like shut everything down of course you're gonna describe it as feeling down but i just wanna i just wanted to point out the differences because we have the same diagnosis mh we've have a different experience with progesterone

[01:35:35] Samantha Hiew: because i have a different maybe i don't have the same thing you do and you don't have the same other extra occurring conditions and that's why i talk about that as well when we look at support on what i have that i said before is pots and also what i've come to realize is cass and that will be triggered by different things in my life but one of it was a flu in january and then also emotional stress can trigger that having that histamine you know over production and so with pots my if i have high estrogen then i'm kinda hyper activated it my blood vessels are pushing you know kinda squeezing and then when i have progesterone it can help to balance that out but if i forget to take one or dear other then it's kind of like what's going on here today like my heart is little little becoming really fast and i always have to hold it here to keep it regulate it and and that is something that will always follow me but also at the same time i think sometimes when we know so much about our body we can look too much into it and that may cause the anxiety mh i think like if we can balance our lives you know in terms of like doing out of things to regulate our nervous system then half of the challenges you know it it doesn't have to be supported by just medication or hormones and the reason i know is it's because i lived for quite long whilst in a peri stage without knowing because i potentially started in my late thirties feeling like that and then i gave birth at age of thirty nine mh there was a double w triple w and then last year in my heart that i thought i was having a heart attack because i was at the very very very stressful month with like like over third talks that to give one month and then i was on a higher stimulant dosage than i needed so then my body wasn't clearing it but also i was pumping stress yeah you know through my system and then one day i was like giving a talk in fe and i just stopped reading as for stinking this is not how am i going to talk my cut breathe you can actually do that no i just realized not even if you don't breathe and i really didn't know how to recover from that i did lots of tests with my gp and they said no you don't have any irregular heartbeat mh you know but my aura was showing me that cortisol was spiked you know true roof i considered like lowering my medication and you know did lots of things but then one thing happened where i went to a yoga retreat and i ate vegetarian like vegan food for a weekend and i thought that was it you know then maybe i can like go detox and all that but are now looking back that was it i rented a yoga retreat and there were lots of breath work mh there were lots of singing there were lots of regulating true movement on i think like you can eat all the good food in the world and maybe have be healthiest as you can be but if you have a stressful environment whether that comes from work or relationships then you're still gonna need support for that you know and that is so important such a core part you know and i rethink it boils out to our expression because what we don't express was suppressed mh and and with that comes lots of health issues and to quote our friend carol mu said if you don't know how to say no your body says no for you and i truly felt it

[01:39:14] Dr. Brighten: yeah i think i would love to hear from people in the comments if that's ever been their experience that is was so much my experience in my twenties of like i didn't say no and then i would just get so sick and then i remember if there were times where i was like wanting out of things and i'm like i wish i could just get sick and and then you know adult need like you know i i was technically adult but my brain wasn't totally formed yet was like wait you could just say no but that was never modeled to me that was never something that permission had been given to be able to say no i you know i wanted to ask you you said we are seeing an exponential rise in women being diagnosed with autism and adhd since the pandemic with those twenty three to forty nine now the largest group receiving the adhd diagnosis why is that

[01:40:06] Samantha Hiew: sorry there are a few factors here as always is something and not complexity in that we see like generational differences but also we see the female labor burden and with the earlier ages the twenties you know they're at a generations set they don't take no shit and and they also are very aware of mental health and a language that comes with it tiktok diagnose a lot of people yeah especially the ones in the gen z and the early millennials and then with us the older folks yeah still don't take tiktok yeah yeah i guess and cool and trendy and think we are you know dealing with increased demands

[01:40:55] Dr. Brighten: yeah

[01:40:55] Samantha Hiew: and there's nothing like pandemic to tip that demand over the mh and that's when we couldn't cope with that over loan demand with no outlet you know and there were a lot over people who had a lot of alcohol during the pandemic you know as a way of coping and then there's also when people were at home filming videos talking about adhd and that's how i've found out you know about female adhd

[01:41:20] Dr. Brighten: yeah

[01:41:21] Samantha Hiew: so that your six tiktok not actually through instagram okay

[01:41:25] Dr. Brighten: yeah meta yeah we're still the

[01:41:27] Samantha Hiew: i'm a little bit old for tiktok but you know it's cool so yeah that's how i found out and there is that twenty three to forty nine years k h group that was that stats was cited in a yeah times article in the uk and they say women you know are the largest contributor to the rise diagnosis which then made you know people want to specialize in it to make money but for me it was always about just trying to work out what happened to me yeah and what happened to us you know and yeah that's that's when hd goals was born many

[01:42:04] Dr. Brighten: mh i so i really appreciate you saying that because and i wanna go back to the fact that when i do wanna acknowledge and i felt like i didn't acknowledge this properly before then the high needs group be nonverbal the usually the intellectual disability c occurring autistic which everyone's like oh that's just autism but it's actually a c occurring condition with autism those people don't have a voice on social media the same way i will say that i have come across nonverbal creators who are doing written texts and and they're still showing up that they are underrepresented but what's interesting is that they're underrepresented on social media but when it comes to what the us government wants to do this is all they're focused on is those with the intellectual disability c occurring with autism and saying all the rest of you you're not really autistic you're not autistic enough which i think is is a whole other challenge but there's been a big concern about the rise in autism and and i have been out there saying we are seeing more adults diagnosed like this umbrella of their this many people now diagnosed with autism are people who always existed so sometimes when we're chasing certain things you know in the us right now they're very much the government's very interested in like did our vaccines causing autism and and we're back to you know that conversation that i feel like has always been around it just like kinda of peaks and and dips but that you know that whole conversation i'm like hold up but we but this big number rise that you're you're calling this epidemic is because so many adults now are finally being recognized and it is incredibly painful i think when you see leaders of a nation saying things like you're not autistic enough to worry about or you're just fine when you've struggled your entire life especially with all these c occurring conditions so you've talked about pots mixed connective tissue disease autoimmune diseases overall there are so many like not just mental there so many c occurring conditions that nobody has even recognized those in this population and they've been told things like you're mali lingering your drug seeking like you just want attention and in reality you're neuro diver

[01:44:28] Samantha Hiew: and that's why i think you do the work you do and and i want to address the fact that adhd isn't just in the brain or autism you know isn't like something that people's think because you're looking at you know a population that has occurring conditions in nearly all the organ systems in our body mh and our way of being you know pre us to those conditions and the pathway to that you know can be burnout out it can be all sorts of life changes and that's why even though we look like we have lower support needs what we don't know is that what is happening internally in our body that is causing people to have ill health mh you know and and i i know people who start medication after a adhd diagnosis who actually i can really see that if they go down this route of like just over working because that's what the medication does actually it kinda shifts the energy into your brain and yet you'd like to disconnect from what's happening down here and from the neck down and is not good for our health and eventually we're going to run into health issues and then happened to me quite quickly within two years and and now i manage it i still take medication because i started with that and i just manage it with other things so it can be a tool in your you know like adhd or adhd management but you also need to know what is going on you know in your body and your health mh

[01:45:52] Dr. Brighten: yeah and you know to to the point of talking about adhd i've also i have like all these quotes actually my questions from the of things i've seen you say but you've said many audience to women are still dismissed in assessments that separate autism in adhd despite research showing that c occur in eighty to ninety percent of cases so what is going on there

[01:46:17] Samantha Hiew: so like like you went into your like like you're were saying you do mind me saying about your diagnosis your your autism diagnosis where you said you didn't sorry i i already said but but but you can cut this out no no you gonna got this i've talked about

[01:46:29] Dr. Brighten: you know it's funny that you found out on instagram because i can talk about on threads i can talk about it on tiktok and it's totally fine people like yeah whatever whatever and i talk about if i talk about being autistic on instagram like i've had to take down posts because people have just come me being like you're just seeking attention oh my you're just trying to get on this trend you're like all of this stuff like stuff to the point where and it's just something that i'm gonna say that for everybody listening i've never interviewed a podcast guest that hasn't experienced bullying online for on social media and it really makes me think like as i've talked to so many people in the podcast i'm like what are we doing as a society what are we doing as a society bullying people online so anyhow you can talk about it

[01:47:18] Samantha Hiew: okay

[01:47:18] Dr. Brighten: i just was putting it out there that like i do talk about it but you won't often see it all my instagram because for whatever reason it's where the self identified autism moms who are like autism is only high you know support needs and if you're anything else like you're taking away from my child yeah who are healing their own wounds i want people don't go after all autistic to the moms because i feel like yeah they're living in a society that's giving them absolutely no support and sometimes people are even saying this is what you get for creating a child that has deficits and my heart breaks for them so i just wanna be really clear that i'm not dis these people i'm saying that they are they do have their own wounds and that i can understand and respect why they will act in the way that

[01:48:02] Samantha Hiew: they do so like is like everything you said is the reason why i i i actually created the rd adhd life experience research and ran the event for women i was dismissed in my autism assessment four times and the whole process took seven or eight months before i finally got a diagnosis and the thing is i wanted to see what this process was like i wanted to see what the system was like but at the time i didn't know what rd adhd look like in women we're talking twenty twenty four like july and yeah they knew that i had an adhd diagnosis so a lot of the symptoms they're like was that adhd oh no that's trauma you know that's trauma totally not all i'm a woman

[01:48:46] Dr. Brighten: you whoever is yeah drama

[01:48:48] Samantha Hiew: yeah also then the list the criteria that they used to assess me the eight zero two it's very mill centered and i brought it up you know after they said no the first time what about i'm asking scale and they were like yeah we can do that and they didn't so the the the next time it was like lots of validation i was just crying every time because the questions that were asked very much hit the kind of relational wound you know where i'm like the bullying that happened in university and you know just never really feel like you fit in like that was may and yeah and i know so then using the intellect to be useful or to fit in because that was the place i had a role and and so all this is not easy you know actually a lot of women say that the autism diagnosis was far harder

[01:49:36] Dr. Brighten: mh

[01:49:37] Samantha Hiew: the assessment was far harder than adhd because with adhd yeah you wrecked your life you had like self medic and you have problems like windows this area okay you have adhd but we autism them it's so much more intimate and intense and so because of that i launched the life experience research asking adhd women or women who identify it both autism and adhd what it was like to lift you know s and adhd and i checked what are the what do these traits look like to you hyper activity and pulse and attention social communication rep repetitive behavior and interest sensory to challenges mental health hormones you know like loads of stuff yeah occurring conditions things that people don't ask you in the assessment and so i feel like there isn't really this checklist out there and it needs to be developed and most the people have asked you know why can't there be a dual diagnosis and there is now it's just very expensive mh you know and

[01:50:37] Dr. Brighten: it's only been what less than a decade since the dual diagnosis has been allowed and for people who there's some there's some people you might be autistic but who get really rigid about the dsm and so when i'll talk about emotional dis regulation in adhd they're like that's not part of the diagnostic criteria therefore it's not part of it i'm like it might not be part of it anymore but the dsm was never made for the patient experience it was made for the clinicians ease of diagnosis

[01:51:05] Samantha Hiew: i actually wrote on expose in psycho day my work yeah in like step one like it was like the ab and i'm gonna get like we'll cancel here

[01:51:17] Dr. Brighten: come for us i dare you

[01:51:20] Samantha Hiew: it's like the apa you know is represented by the dominant culture in that certain you know part of the world mh and the people that they say are inclusive you know were brought into the conversation but i have been in rooms because i work in d in the early days i have been in room where if you are the minority in this culture then your voice isn't as loud

[01:51:43] Dr. Brighten: mh

[01:51:43] Samantha Hiew: and then there are people who hold this invisible power and there's power dynamics are like very much like who's given the opportunity to talk and speak you know and these things aren't discussed you know they are like dd dsm is very reactive you know that has been changed when george floyd you know was murdered and then they add a cultural angle to it but do people use it some people don't even know it exists

[01:52:10] Dr. Brighten: yeah

[01:52:10] Samantha Hiew: there's a cultural lens that you can use within the dsm five there's a section in there where you look at how someone something someone looks for help you know for the challenges and what are the challenges regarded as india culture and what does the culture think of that you know because often there is a cultural control and that is not just within that culture is that culture trying to survive inside a bigger culture yeah and and we know for a fact that this things you know people are talking about it but it isn't in medical fashion mh as a thing i wonder why you got raging women you

[01:52:49] Dr. Brighten: i actually was talking on a another podcast i can't remember who was with if i find a guys a link to about like how i have you know talked with counselors and i've worked with like spiritual intuitive and they've been like you had this rage here and like you ring you need to clear this rage and i am always like no i will be keeping that thank you very much because i don't take you know a lot of people know my story i mean i'm late not diagnosed adhd i'm also late diagnosed endo endometriosis and like there are things that medicine has done me so dirty and and it absolutely pisses me off and i've had a lot of heartbreak and i'm linked i'm not gonna just let that go and move on and comb my way out of this like i'm gonna be mad about it and i'm gonna take that anger because it's energy and i'm going to channel it into making sure it doesn't happen to other women and i'm gonna talk about it and i'm gonna share information about it i'm gonna give resources about it and i think that's so often the term female rage is used as a way to like try to put us back in our place like label us and push us back to be be quiet smile more just be a polite good girl and where has that gotten us sick dead dying like no like this is not good like so we have to speak up and i think that having having rage that you would channel for you know whether it's for your life to be better or for the greater good like that's not the negative thing like you're you're getting it out you're moving it out and you're creating purpose from pain

[01:54:17] Samantha Hiew: yes i love that you have the shi archetype you know and i've seen it you know

[01:54:22] Dr. Brighten: i'm a kid of i love she rut

[01:54:25] Samantha Hiew: yeah but then it's so cool that you know you are using that what people think is intensity you know s perhaps the thing that you were born to do you know maybe god made you that way so you won't be quiet you know and you might be tested along the way but that only makes you stronger because if you weren't born that way then you will just you know be beaten into submission that you won't and because of that you are healing yourself alongside healing out people that's why people trust you you know i think that that rage when channel you into the right place and being allowed to ex xp express is going to rebuild the world but first we have to set it on fire mh

[01:55:08] Dr. Brighten: well i so i actually grew up yosemite and i will say that great forest do have to burn for new life to grow and it is the reality of nature so why would it be different for us do you think that it is easier for women to get a diagnosis of adhd then to get a diagnosis of autism not just from the like answering the questions and checking it off but do you think medicine actually would rather like they think it's okay like adhd that's fine but odds i i don't know if i wanna diagnose you with that

[01:55:36] Samantha Hiew: yeah so again that is so varied at different people because i i i think like it's easier to spot female adhd if someone's you know persistent showing chaos in their alive but what if they have separate support but what if you know they found a safe system in their family maybe those people won't even look for a diagnosis you know i've had encounters with women who have stopped self medic for years and then when you see them now they appear more autistic because they say female adhd looks like the female autism phenotype you know when you're not in chaos you know so it is heart to discern but at the same time it's what has your life been light up to the point where you land in a psychiatrist office mh you know so yeah it is definitely easy to see a adhd or not like sometimes you get women who are adhd who may be more autistic in your presentation and they don't they don't get validated for the adhd diagnosis mh so it can go both ways and for me because i was already medicated for adhd when i went to my autism diagnosis and they're lying there you're fine it's trauma and then a few months afterwards you know rip work came up and at that book it was like oh new scientist on it at times article i'm sure she's getting lots of of time for a good reason and she said i really respect a rip for this she said that she had been part of the problem that she was trying to solve because for that case she said like you know does no gender differences with the you know brain and then like and then i was like yeah i but she

[01:57:12] Dr. Brighten: is she in that like what would be boomer generation

[01:57:15] Samantha Hiew: yeah thanks sorry

[01:57:16] Dr. Brighten: yeah so there's very much that's the thing we've observed is this mindset that like we are no different anything a man can do we can do the same like when hormones well and they're also the people that were like just take the pill and your hormones are more like a man's and you don't fluctuate and you can keep up with them and i think it's been our generation and below younger who've been like wow how's that worked out for you is so not really worked out for you but also we are different why wouldn't we embrace and celebrate our differences but i think the world changed just enough for us to be able to do that i mean it's changed just enough right the like i mean so so many like we can we can talk openly i mean there are certainly times and i i will say actually for my most recent book deal i definitely question in the back of my mind the way some publishers responded to me when i talked about being adhd and seeing their faces and i do question of like did they value me less did they view me differently there's definitely things not like granted i'm not the best at social cues but there was a pattern in which it happened three times that i was like among people that it really made me question like did they suddenly see me different even though i you know i've written three books and this is gonna be my fourth of the book like and is because well it's funny as you talk about like blowing up your life some special interests are are really well embraced special interest in science hormones like that i could hyper focus like through medical school like all of that really like celebrated but i think there's other parts of you know being you know talking about this openly that maybe they isn't totally accepted and so i'm saying that because i started down the train of like things are more accepted now and i'm like yeah but are they like there's definitely moments where perhaps they're not which is why conversations like this are important

[01:59:10] Samantha Hiew: yeah i think it's so important to break out of that echo chamber you know because i i totally recognize recognized when we are talking in these rooms and when we go to this community events there is a curiosity for people who may already be quite receptive to listening but the rest of the world are still being fed a diet you know of what is in media articles you know films and so they aren't up to speed yet mh and actually my my book that i wrote was actually especially for the other half of the population who actually do not know what neuro experience look like and i also created the first adhd in women intersection and scientific training that's trains medical professionals like those who diagnosed and support adhd women trying to understand what our experience is like and then doing campaigns you know like is something amazing like i love to be doing that since it's someday day but like i'm really much focused on the events they're good at the moment and i think like these conversations really need to break out of the echo chamber and people do not understand that actually adhd we are our human beings we might have some differences in quirks but actually we're are not less than which is different and understanding this difference the first you know step to actually just crafting a life that we can you know kind of be happy in you know and maybe more acceptance and more compassion mh so yeah and i i totally hear you there is that shift in like something in new era has changed yeah i know when we talk about the label

[02:00:46] Dr. Brighten: for people who are not familiar with how autism presents differently in women can you give like a list of of how it looks differently because i think you're right in that media has given us young sheldon which i actually felt pretty seen and that show there are moments where was like oh yeah like the not wanting to shake hands there's definitely things but like i'll just out myself if i shake someone's hand that i like i'd rather hug you and i hugged but i will think about my hand until i can wash it and it's almost like it's burning and it's all i can think

[02:01:20] Samantha Hiew: yeah yeah yeah

[02:01:21] Dr. Brighten: so there's definitely things about it we were i i just i'll share the other because usually the you're like there's quirks i feel like i'm awkward i am definitely an awkward person the other awkward thing is my son he was like oh if you were like any superhero who do you see yourself like and i was like oh i'm like tony stark i'm like iron man and he's like why because you would invent stuff i'm like no because i don't like to be handed things and i don't like people to hand me things and i also don't like people that getting too much of my space and he's like oh it's guys you're weird i'm like yes still don't that's where my brain went anyhow

[02:01:59] Samantha Hiew: we're just talking about few moments that's just

[02:02:01] Dr. Brighten: some of my my weird things you can share your weird things too

[02:02:04] Samantha Hiew: yeah if you want yeah i thought a a vague one that actually wears autistic women really identify with because of difficulty reading people's intentions mh and that has been one of the biggest challenges i would say in my life and not perhaps actually knowing but actually not being sure you know and even if you do know you don't know what to do with it you know then that caused a challenge as well you know and being hyper and that comes from having that strong drive to connect to actually be accepted socially and that can lead to camouflage fl and and so we can whole eye contact might be uncomfortable but we can do that yeah for a bit until someone points at out and then you look at it you're trial like rs d is really strong in the community

[02:02:59] Dr. Brighten: for people who don't know what our

[02:03:00] Samantha Hiew: yeah rejection sensitivity d euphoria mh he's not just autistic women that women in general has a stronger activation of default network where it leads to more domination overthinking and with autism that's like persistent like kind of expression of that default network overthinking which worsen since doing face and like hormonal transitions mh where and that's where hormonal play gets into it and like someone told me like it's not really caught special interest anymore it's caught something else and and yes people are very good at keeping up in the community it's why it's nice

[02:03:39] Dr. Brighten: to talk so always changing too i know i can't remember i know that they've chain they are like now let's call it instead of special interest i i i take a little bit of an issue of always changing terminology even though it might better suit the community when we're trying to raise awareness and actually get people like neuro typical to wrap their head things we see this a lot with other communities as well poly ovarian syndrome terrible name absolutely horrible name for the condition yet it has been generations of trying to raise awareness and finally legislators are starting to pay attention if you change the name you set everything back so it it's a tricky thing where i'm like i wanna do what's best for the community and also like when we talk about camouflage i'm like everyone calls it masking like masking is the word that we use menopause hormone therapy yes that's a thing but hr t is what everyone knows so that's that's what we're gonna use because we have to meet people where they're at yeah you know based on that so i'm sure special i know it has a different term and if we were talking only to a neuro virgin community we would make sure we had that term right googling right now

[02:04:47] Samantha Hiew: food like yeah exactly and then i i i i i can't keep up with all the name changes so so i i i would just have to say special interest and you're totally right we have to meet people where they at and and that is one of vain in my life because i i i i because whatever i do is based on like what my discovery is in my journey and to some people who are just looking for a diagnosis my interest is now here you know and they're here and then i gotta kinda of come back and and so with did special interest it's for autistic women tend tend to be more psychological human centric behaviors yeah so you get a lot of autistic women in the helper profession yep but but there's also things that regulate our nervous system like music mh and crochet you know i'm knit and some women i'm very interested in sex and and so there are i thinks that yeah may not be typical for autistic men you know to to like you know that is very much maybe more suitable for women you know or maybe what a culture thinks and accept as normal because maybe there is a drive for us to be more accepted which we have found it to be true so and yeah that is often why we are missed because we do you know present differently

[02:06:06] Dr. Brighten: mh k yeah the other thing that i have seen that was really because i always thought all my special interest is hormones and then i saw this psychologist saying the north clinic female autistic love plants and and i was like and at that time i recently moved so i had to part with my plants but i had like seventy five house plants and i was like it might be me but i'm also you know i also find that a lot of the things that autistic women are into in special interest goes back to that utility wound you talked about before it's about how do i have value to other people so that they want me around because i think that when you know as you were saying so reading intentions is difficult reading social cues is difficult but there's also this longing to belong and i think that women find themselves in this place of like i have to have utility otherwise i won't get invited to the party or i won't be you know part of the inner circle i certainly experienced this in a community where i was living where people were having like events and i wasn't invited to them but when they had a hormone problem those people always texted me they always call me and it's so when you were talking about the utility wound i was like oh that came up for me recently in the last year where i was like oh i need to put a boundary up because i'm thinking we're friends and i think that's another problem with autistic women is that we think we're in friendships with people who aren't actually our friends and it's something that i'm doing with my children wish someone had taught me as a child to ask what makes a good friend how do you know someone's being a good friend and how do you know if someone's just using you and i i had this epiphany of like wait a minute all these women are just using me because they're always my friend when they want something for me but they're not my friend when they're like having parties are inviting people over or i have a birthday and i invite them and they're not coming and so i think that's something i'm not sure if that's an adhd or adhd experience as well i would i would imagine it is yeah but very much an autistic experience of like you have to have a special interest of value to people that you are kept in the community

[02:08:31] Samantha Hiew: because it works both ways as well because you actually love to you know find out more and talk about it so you naturally do talk to people about it and that's when your light up and that's one thing that i actually have been describing in my autism assessment by my husband who was my developmental witness which is another reason why i didn't get the order of diagnosis is that yes the ra said yeah that he said that i can go into a monologue and then he's like not interested and i'm still okay and it's like okay once gonna stop i didn't realize that mh because when so interesting to you and then you talk to somebody who maybe you work with like what we're doing now we're really charged about it but other people aren't and and that is one thing that perhaps i don't see sometimes you know but there is another element that okay then the friends who are with me and now i'll do they want to be with my my friend because of me or because of what i can give them and that has been my journey as well to find the people for me and it is i have other ot autistic women who asked the same thing like think would it be my friend if i didn't do this thing mh you know and and we're all trying to work out you know where our place is right now and how to just kinda have friendships and relationships with people and i i think it's very timely leader we are talking about this

[02:09:48] Dr. Brighten: yeah well okay you mentioned earlier that the rd adhd brain is different how

[02:09:54] Samantha Hiew: yeah so there was a paper that came out in twenty twenty three and i've messaged a lab that i haven't got back to me it was a japanese lab and it that paper is by wat and and wat and they look at the audio adhd brain dynamics of children compared to adhd in autism and so that paper i realized is not very gender like inclusive i think thirty boys and tree girls for adhd and they found that there is a different brain pattern that tends to happen in the adhd brain and that differs from pure and pure a adhd

[02:10:38] Dr. Brighten: mh

[02:10:39] Samantha Hiew: and they had a something that looked like a venn diagram of adhd it's gonna kinda of sammy in the middle but then it kinda or overlap autism social communication pattern but it doesn't with adhd so then the adhd phenotype looks very much like the social communication of autism and in my observations it's not been validated by scientific research but just by looking at the community events that i hold you know by coming across adhd women we tend to have more of that female autism phenotype but then right quite different to adhd so they say with adhd that's that difference in switching attention but with adhd is more about you know task switching because you are dealing with a brain that is both control and rigidity and in instability like over flexible you know so then we can go from a state of being very hyper rigid to completely over flexible so then it can confuse people yeah when you see that it come up you know so yeah that that's how i realized that adhd they say that is a totally different brain you know dynamics compared to pure adhd and pure autism

[02:12:06] Dr. Brighten: mh

[02:12:06] Samantha Hiew: and several other papers have been published now to look at that but still not that many gender you know kind of looking at just women or or men they were they they are still like quite early days from what i've seen you know many adhd men have also say that they're very into like hyper like and and you know tuning into your environment to see what is needed that come lodging the masking is also very very prevalent

[02:12:33] Dr. Brighten: mh

[02:12:34] Samantha Hiew: in the demand community so we don't know yet you know what goes after this but what i do know is that you know that brain dynamics also make you loop in a very familiar pattern you know and and that's why when we go into relationships and encounter trauma from that relational injury we can look like we had this organized attachment because on the one hand oh no i don't i don't wanna do this anymore and then your brain loops into this pattern where like oh no i want it you know i don't want it i want it i don't want i want it near a number of like relationships that i come across our adhd and that works that way the push pull and you know that this organized attachment stall that that's very prevalent

[02:13:16] Dr. Brighten: mh when you talk about so you said the id adhd has more of the autism phenotype in terms of communication how does that look different than the pure adhd communication

[02:13:32] Samantha Hiew: i guess the adhd that's more of that overwhelm you know and that chaos and that's socially like just trying to we're function socially but then they hit a point where they'll just not be able to do it whereas with autism there is more camouflage fl they actually you go all your way up but then with adhd what's interesting is that we know what is expected that we may be more willing to do it mh like there is a fine like a deeply autonomous neuro type that actually unless we're doing it for us or our way not gonna wanna do it mh you know and yeah

[02:14:14] Dr. Brighten: do you find that as a struggle in your life of

[02:14:16] Samantha Hiew: yeah hugely that's why i don't have many friends

[02:14:20] Dr. Brighten: but i i i see this like i see it play out in my children as well where we're like this is the way i planned on doing it and and i will i can recognize it in them so i can like hold space for them and be like oh but sometimes sometimes i'm like no it has to be mama's way but it is very much something that like my husband will be like i don't understand like just do it like that i'm like i can't i can't it's already been decided the neuron pathway was like laid down two days ago you don't even know like it's got to be this way

[02:14:53] Samantha Hiew: yeah you can't fight it either it's like you know can't do anything about this sorry

[02:14:57] Dr. Brighten: well that's the thing that you bring is that a lot of people think why don't you just act better you know try harder or do more but on a neuro chemical level it's just not possible can you explain this

[02:15:09] Samantha Hiew: it's also so like a brain network mh and then brain energy bin level because that paper wat abe was one what's interesting is that they look at the energy patterns in our brain and how our energy the energy flows you know when we encounter certain tasks and and so it's it's like you know when you go into the rigidity stage then you you almost have that over stable you know rigidity will make it quite hurt for you to do what other people want from you but then when you go into that or flexible you know state where you just discount throw caution to the win and you just say yes or anything and and that can also be confusing to out of people i think that's why so many people think we have bipolar or borderline you know when there's relational shoreline line wolf

[02:16:00] Dr. Brighten: yeah yeah yeah or just labeling someone a narcissist which i think is an incredibly lazy thing that people have been throwing around it's where i'm just like that's so effortless to just be like yeah they're a narcissist it's like a way to dismiss people without recognizing that actually there's something more under that layer of what you're just perceiving and i also think like as humans we are very selfish and often when people are interacting with a person they're perceiving what's being done to them instead of ever saying to themselves like well what is their experience and it's something that you know i will often say of like you know when somebody is behaving in a certain way like what has happened that has led to this behavior like why is this the expression in this moment it's you know going back to like the autistic moms who like lash out like what what's the okay at the at the root of that if we go back like these are people who are not being supported who feel helpless who feel like they're you know trying their best and it's getting them nowhere like and that is leading to this behavior and it's not that this is well it's being directed at me it's not being done to me with purpose it is this is an expression of somebody who has this internal trauma this grief this dynamic in their life that they cannot have any control of or fix

[02:17:25] Samantha Hiew: yeah and especially when you you are maybe also autistic caring for in autistic child you gotta think about the sensory challenges as well of that you know the thing you said about like when your child is regulate and if you're not in a place where you have energy then it's gonna be quite hard for you to be there for them you know and traditionally our parents were in taught to whole space

[02:17:48] Dr. Brighten: no okay

[02:17:49] Samantha Hiew: we grew up in nothing that

[02:17:51] Dr. Brighten: yeah well i don't i don't know how it is for your family i come from a hispanic family and it very much was like chocolate culture like you're gonna get a slipper upside the head like a a sandal i'm like what do

[02:18:02] Samantha Hiew: you call we call flip flops you that

[02:18:03] Dr. Brighten: well like you're gonna get smack with that like if you you do not behave i i look at like how well you've been able to mask and camouflage through my whole life and it's like well i grew up in a culture there there is i mean even you know a lot of like mexican culture is not you don't you think you have mental health no you don't now you have mental this shoes no you don't like no no no like you need to drink water take nap like it's that's just not what's happening

[02:18:29] Samantha Hiew: yeah exactly and that that's the culture can't control you know because everyone says it doesn't make it normal you know and and if you know how it feels like in your body and if you then go into a different culture and you see actually other people seem to validate that as challenge mh but not my culture and yeah this still something that i i recognize recognized from my asian roots and then being in the uk people don't see therapy as necessary you know and yeah so it still feels like a big privilege to have but

[02:19:00] Dr. Brighten: yeah well then we were talking before and you were like wow you got your autism diagnosis and was like i had to private pay you were in the uk system which i just hear horrific things about people trying to get an autism diagnosis and it's not i i think people think like oh people are trying to get this diagnosis they want this diagnosis no they just wanna know why they operate in this way and as you were talking about you you know cried during your assessment i cried during mine and i can't even remember the question but i remember my answer of just being like everyone and my whole life has felt like everyone else has had like the rules to the game of life and i had been spending my entire life trying to figure out how to play this game right and i can't like no one will just tell me like what are the rules how am i supposed to operate and so i feel like i'm constantly failing i'm constantly putting so much effort in but then like i missed the mark on that and then as you were saying the rum illumination happens and then you're you you're dwelling in that and i just remember crying in that moment and i'm also someone who's like i don't like to cry in front of strangers like yeah but it was just time you know people will often ask like why bother getting the diagnosis now like you've gone your whole life what what do you say to that

[02:20:20] Samantha Hiew: oh because of older the potential conditions that i could find out how to manage so it was only last year that i learn about pots i live my whole entire live not knowing about that and that was why i was nearly had a what i thought was heart attack and i know that an autism diagnosis doesn't give you much more than a brochure you know so yeah it's really like okay what is the point wine is actually if you know that that is you then it's quite nice to be validated for it but it's also quite strange when you're getting from a system that actually doesn't know what it's like to be you you know so there is absolute point because there is so many you know transitions and stages in our lives where being autistic adhd you know that can control a spanner in the works i want to know and i want to be prepared you know because i that really have that anti preparation thing you know anti anxiety and and as to your point about not having a manual to life i felt it as swell and i've heard other woman told me the same like they feel like they're an alien was landed on earth and had to watch humans you know and and and is by watching that we learned to camouflage and and then now i i realize more and more that actually perhaps i'm just built a different way and it something that i need to get comfortable with i'm never going to be palatable to everyone i'm not gonna be like them and is constant work to show up just as me and be authentic in and it's to find a people like me as well and when you do are so nice you can tell each other oh i understand when you're overwhelmed and you know i'm not gonna call you because i know you're working and also if i'm sitting in a corner you know in the group event it's because i really can't be bought it and that's okay mh and it's it's like when you find those people then you don't feel like you have to be different than you and that can feel so nice and you can sleep at night you know yeah and there's a lot of relationship audit you know that we had to do for like bigger girl

[02:22:31] Dr. Brighten: yeah and and i think your point about the c occurring conditions is so important to understand that you're gonna be at higher risk for so many things i mean it wasn't until my endo endometriosis diagnosis that i was like wait a minute and i went and looked and they're is research showing that autistic women adhd women and you know when we we talk about this ocd to like these other neuro diversion conditions they do fall into these buckets a lot of times and we seen there is a higher incidence of endo endometriosis among these women and so one of the predominant theories of endo endometriosis what i think is the best at this time is that during embryo development something went aw and cells that were to become the ut lining and migrated and ended up other places and then responded to our hormones and so this is how we end up with endo endometriosis if you think about that from embryo development something was different in the programming i think you can start to understand how someone can develop into a neuro diver full being and it not being something that like was just you know just because it was trendy or just because like you know some environmental insult got introduced i think and i love to hear your thoughts very much that of all these environmental insults that we've seen that people are trying to attribute to the cause of autism i do believe that what it is is that genetically we poor report detox justification we have an over reactive immune system like we already genetically have these differences and they've absolutely never been studied with some of these medical treatments that we are administered administered and so people often look to that and say well that must be the cause because things got worse a a switch was flipped overnight and things were so different i have a child who experienced pan as pediatric autoimmune neuroscience disorder associated with strap he got strep it flipped his immune system and overnight he was a completely different child and that's having lived through that and having seen the research very much my thought of like what we're attributing to the cause really it always existed this this was a neuro diver being in ut but these environmental insults came in and this individual did not have the capacity to detox to regulate the immune system to protect the nervous system and now we're chasing these as causes when really they are ex what actually existed what are your thoughts

[02:25:10] Samantha Hiew: yeah i i love that i love everything about that i have so many thoughts and i'm trying to organize my brain and yeah so i i love the fact that you brought the biological systems into the discussion about you know how much we know in the medical profession because there is a disconnect here and i've always struggled with the fact that you know people who diagnose and treat and support neuro generally don't have enough like knowledge of how everything connects and there is more of that you know kind of like a connection you know now you know in conferences and there is a need to link scientific research with medical fashion and the live experience community mh because i give so many folks to the community because i love it i just love women who are just like me and there's no hierarchical difference because when we go to the medical profession there is a power dynamics that we are immediately dis empowered mh you know and the thing is we're not being hurt here right you maybe maybe we're looked at like oh your body your brain you know the system in you know you're actually like or what's in the medical textbook book what did the conference say hello human you know yeah and and then there is that scientific research it's always been there so i found is this this papers that looked at the biochemical metabolic pathways of that are impacted in autistic and adhd individuals there were all of things that you mentioned you know in nervous system immune system melatonin synthesis ga and the body calming system is d regulated and so much more detox justification like you say you know state stress the cell to cell connection and so much more there is also that inflammation that they believe to be the course you know for a lot of the occurring conditions that happen right but inflammation is a system a a process what is inflammation you know and and that's when you look at the connection right between the brain the heart the gut you know in sort of body and what do we do you know to support somebody who has you know these challenges and and for your son like you know perhaps there are very specific you know treatment and support that supports the symptoms and and then we look at long term you know management and so yeah there's definitely is a need to connect biology with you know how it manifests in the live experience community and i feel like we need to be the bridge for that

[02:28:02] Dr. Brighten: how do you think it's possible that we build that bridge

[02:28:06] Samantha Hiew: oh i think the thing is there's so many people who are working in the private sector who are trying to solve a problem but it also looks like to trying to profit from a situation but like how do we build a bridge i believe that we need a personalized care framework you know and and that's because from everything that we discuss if we're gonna bring that you know into the community then they're gonna have to find out what they are unique way of being is like even within the adhd and autism phenotype you know then from there we can work on it and then we look at the bio cycle emotional relational perspective and for me like i always thinking systems you know in but then yeah getting the biology you know in the regulated state is the first step

[02:29:01] Dr. Brighten: and a

[02:29:02] Samantha Hiew: lot of education and for me i've always thought of that personalized care support

[02:29:08] Dr. Brighten: yeah it's what people are clamoring for and yet this is another way that the system really has to be completely dismantled to be able to set out to do that you mentioned melatonin differences i know people listening are gonna be like say more

[02:29:24] Samantha Hiew: yeah so our body may have challenges producing melatonin at the right time and maybe i was so getting rid of it and so that can cause all sorts of issues like you know delayed sleep face which i know you've talked about and getting up at wild times you know especially when we got two the her proposal stage some women getting up at two am you know having something i can't remember the your term now but it's the form of insomnia where you forced sleep really early and then you wake up at one or two o'clock in the morning and then you don't sleep again until five and then the next day you're like a zombie and and so you know we know also if we don't sleep well everything breaks you know like breaks apart and we know that with adhd there is that was that the gl fu system like the brain goes into a bit of a car wash and maintenance when we are asleep if we go to bed late then there's less of that and then if we you know don't have sleep then that's even worse so yeah we have this regular upkeep that's very necessary but when we have the melatonin imbalance that is not just innate but also can be brought upon in our live stage of being paramedic puzzle like having hormonal difference then that can really throw us in the works

[02:30:46] Dr. Brighten: mh

[02:30:47] Samantha Hiew: and what are your thoughts in it

[02:30:48] Dr. Brighten: yeah well the other piece of it so there there's the delayed and then there's the fact that people aren't just getting sufficient melatonin and is that that's also a really important antioxidant and so you know as you were talking about how medicine likes to be like compartment analyzing things and just being like this for that and that is all but melatonin being a part of sleep is also protecting cells and it's protecting your brain cells and if you think about you know the the neuro brain tends to have more free radical oxygen species disease this is very dangerous and i think that this may be a contributing factor of why we see such a higher risk of dementia especially among those with adhd and who are untreated is that yes there's not the but there's also not the antioxidant protection happening in the brain then you add on the fact that there's eating issues among adhd autistic people right like you're like eat a rainbow and they're like but it's yucky or it's boring or i don't wanna have to prep it or i'm overwhelmed by the produce section in the store that i think that's another area that we really have to bridge and i think that that's that's also been an issue with ultra processed food coming in people will say like oh it's the ultra processed food that's causing adhd i don't think that ultra processed food is causing adhd or autism just by fact that it existed before we had ultra processed food but i don't think it's helping and i definitely do think it can make symptoms worse i mean if we go to the gut brain connection we know that's huge there's a lot of gut dysfunction it's it's interesting because when i got my diagnosis of autism i was like all the digestive issues i had my entire childhood and i looked at that and i was like oh man like that was a sign right there i don't think actually back in the eighties and nineties we understood that the gut dysfunction that can come with being neuro but i i look at that piece and i'm like of course think of course can you talk you know a little bit about the because you you mentioned the gut aspect of autism in adhd

[02:33:05] Samantha Hiew: yeah so definitely it's a huge huge pride in how inflammation can take place in our body and how you know the neurotransmitters are kind of like produce and and scent to the brain as well and the autistic individual like the research have shown that we're born with like gut d biases and that the microbiome composition in your gut is potentially more pre like cannot i pre you to mental health for challenges and so with that then you have that different gut like structure where there is a higher level of leaky gut you know where i can't remember the exact definition of that now but it's when like the food doesn't get absorbed you know in a right way and then you can kinda leak into like your system that ties right to be there

[02:34:01] Dr. Brighten: and personal not hyper perm

[02:34:02] Samantha Hiew: i think so yeah

[02:34:03] Dr. Brighten: that's the germ no that is but yeah you said you couldn't remember the terms so yeah i'm bridging a gap here great awesome because i can't remember all the terms and no and it's your work is working so much in community that you adopt the language it's like i say leah got all the time but if i'm speaking at a medical conference

[02:34:23] Samantha Hiew: yeah

[02:34:24] Dr. Brighten: it's intestinal hyper perm ability i feel like i do a lot of code switching in that i degree there

[02:34:29] Samantha Hiew: it'd be a translator so then there is that got a brain connection right that we know is vital because it's not just one direction as it turns out it is bidirectional so whatever that you're feeding your gut you know will help your brain or not and whatever you're thinking will help your gut or not you know so that is a vital bidirectional relationship and in the uk i don't know what what's it's like here but i have heard that it's a problem as well it's the my got this dialysis mh toxicity city you know that that people tend to get in the house that they live in very damp and often can you know cause a infection in in your gut that causes difficulty in absorbing like the nutrients from the food so you could be eating really well you know but your body isn't absorbing every thing that could really help it from the food that you eat on that apparently michael do got this virus can also send wafers to the brain that increases inflammation and that in itself already courses mental health challenges but we don't talk about hyper mobility you know in the out ortho autistic adhd community where yeah that's like hyper mobility eds danlos syndrome and then the pots seems to be a trifecta of conditions

[02:35:49] Dr. Brighten: mh

[02:35:50] Samantha Hiew: that can also affect this sort of gut brain connection in that yeah so there is like when you have like high shoes that can also cause challenges you know with bringing like kind signals to the the brain and thereafter so then we're looking at a system imbalance it's funny when you talk about this regulation because i wonder i've always wondered if if it is good to call anything that's regulated but that that's what we deal with right in in a medicine i prefer to see it as a a system that influx those constantly is striving to achieve homeostasis but that is feel like far between yeah yeah but that's how i be it

[02:36:36] Dr. Brighten: yeah i mean well that's that's i mean exactly it's in flux i think about people will say oh there's no such thing as a hormone imbalance because your hormones are always in flux and i'm like what do you call hypo an imbalance of thyroid it's low thyroid what do you call insulin resistance like what like these are like you know hormone imbalances in the body is no longer able to get back to that place of balance and we need to have assistance and i think you know as you talk about d

[02:37:09] Samantha Hiew: in

[02:37:09] Dr. Brighten: the gut oh for people who don't know what that is it's an imbalance of your normal flo so things that should be there it's not pathogenic organisms but stuff it should be there but it's in the wrong numbers and if anyone's ever had a yeast fa yeast infection then you know you have yeast in the vagina it just takes an opportunity to over outgrow sometimes and in that d virus sometimes we you know there's that dis discoloration of gut health we have to bring in things to help that system get back into that flux like to find its tell me a homeostasis again and sometimes it's as simple as increasing your fiber and i love one is just water and fibers so love that but other times it's like no actually opportunistic organisms have overgrown yeah and we know that in some studies autistic and adhd individuals don't have enough of the beneficial flo that they should have so you know we need lots of bio diversity in the gut mh we have studies on when you're born but then there's also the eating behaviors that can develop later that can then further contribute to the d that we're seeing

[02:38:19] Samantha Hiew: yeah the number of autistic children who love white beige food early in life or a bread that feeds like you know a growth of my wine to aren't healthy but also chocolate sugar

[02:38:31] Dr. Brighten: yeah you

[02:38:32] Samantha Hiew: know it wasn't a lot

[02:38:33] Dr. Brighten: of chocolate i don't mean come here no but it is yeah the beige diet for sure and that's where you know some things like i i like as a mom i totally get when it's like it's so much i mean there's definitely times at a restaurant where my kid is eating french fries like that's what this toddler gonna eat so he doesn't have blood sugar that crashes and then everybody's in their nightmare but that's you know also where it's like sometimes you're gonna give and sometimes you have to get creative and you have to you know make a smoothie and sometimes it has to be this is where it gets like so aggravating i think when you are a neuro virgin adult dealing with neuro children and it's like no the smoothies is too thick this time now the smoothies is too thin this time like it's it's not you know this the sensory needs are always changing but you still have to like give it your all and get creative to get them the fight fibers to get them the ph nutrients

[02:39:30] Samantha Hiew: yeah i definitely find it when you introduce probiotics takes the right ones like they the their are their appetite do increase mh and it's like when you give them the right you know kind of my microbial composition they even start to taste but differently mh you know because the challenge with that you know being prone with a certain type of my microbial composition is that fruit that taste one way till someone may not taste the same to you and so like in my experience anyway like i've seen with my own child who only like like beige fruit started eating broccoli after after about like you start starting in pro probiotics and so that was really good yeah and they've also done research on that so like probiotics can support you know mental mental health

[02:40:18] Dr. Brighten: mh yeah it's so interesting the because we've even got research on very particular strains like it's not just locked of a rh it's the particular strain of that organism and how that can influence mental health or wait you know it's funny as you were saying like your child then ate broccoli i had doctor lisa a song on we talked about peggy eater she talked about zinc being a big issue and once you get zinc in because it changes taste receptors and how that can be so helpful but i was like and all my kid like will eat sometimes is broccoli and beef like that mean like i just wanna eat broccoli and beef but so i'm like i'm grateful for that but also like my oldest is like i'm gonna eat bone marrow and like oh we were just somewhere this weekend and he's like i'm gonna eat ribs and i'm gonna get all this stuff and my youngest is like m i'm not i don't even wanna look it and he's like i will eat a piece of steak that's i'm gonna good with that and then i'm gonna eat some cucumbers and i'm like

[02:41:17] Samantha Hiew: i call

[02:41:18] Dr. Brighten: out a win right now

[02:41:19] Samantha Hiew: yeah like okay i've actually known like like mothers who had like kinda turned into the entire career to find out how to give their children your children to right foods mh and friend of of mind she she she went to seek occupational therapy

[02:41:40] Dr. Brighten: yeah is

[02:41:41] Samantha Hiew: that the right right right term and i think again they

[02:41:43] Dr. Brighten: can be phenomenal but your behavior yeah

[02:41:45] Samantha Hiew: yeah for also textures like the idea relationship to food textures she said after a few sessions they completely changed like that the child was now it is now able to eat like lots of not so different food and and she also like i don't have the time for that but like you know great food out of like bone broth that has been seeping for twelve hours and then you know kind of

[02:42:06] Dr. Brighten: purchasing the gas diet

[02:42:08] Samantha Hiew: pop yeah yeah eventually we without knowing it you know she's got like lots lots of tips and as like really good stuff but you know i i i don't have the time for that i'll just have to go through the bushes yeah

[02:42:22] Dr. Brighten: yeah are there pretty have you seen anything in the research about particular strains or anything that's been particularly

[02:42:29] Samantha Hiew: i i don't remember it but i have done research on this when i was buying probiotics from my own child and i definitely like recognize the strain that you mentioned but no not not in detail mh

[02:42:45] Dr. Brighten: so we wanted to ask you how can a neuro virgin woman advocate for herself at work and in life without falling into the trap of feeling fear or shame or like they're being too much

[02:42:57] Samantha Hiew: yeah so that's interesting because often when we're in a situation my our brain might see that as all i'm i'm in this new place is a lim state of actually having been diagnosed maybe trying to un unmute but also then how do i deal with that requests or relationship that asks of me something that i'm i can't guess and that's i i love like one of the results of our adhd women survey is what do women want in relationships it's just so validating because it had all the elements that are really important to us as a collective it wasn't just me being difficult or me being like too much like we all need emotional safety we need stimulation we need yeah the ability to be a like it should not be someone's a caretaker came up quite quite quite top and but often without knowing all this if something makes you feel uncomfortable even if you cannot explain it just yet you just say i'm a uncomfortable about this i'm gonna have to get back to you and and that is in the context of a personal relationship and maybe you will take some time to process that or you get you know a coach or somebody to help you kind of work it out but then in the workplace that's where it can get a bit difficult because as women anyway we tend to need to appear like functioning really well in order to go up the ranks at work and for autistic adhd women this takes on a whole new level of being very functional hyper functioning without people knowing that maybe you're burning out left right and center inside and and so i talked a lot about burnout when people have asked me to talk about resilience how do we you know make ourselves more resilience to deal with the system and then how do we advocate for ourselves is that i suppose there point where you need to help people better understand that what you're dealing with isn't just you know in the brain it's biological and it's hormonal and that's quite education the workplace is really really helpful but also like being able to advocate for ourselves in a workplace like i i would over always say bring your whole self in there don't shoot yourself in a foot and focus only on the bat and you need to bring your strengths to it as well but you say in order for me to do my best work i need this adjustment and sometimes you don't even need to expose you know or open up as autistic adhd but it certainly helps if you do because then the law is supposed to be on your side although is a bit of a great area there in terms of where companies are inclusive so yeah i i hope to answers the questions yeah

[02:45:50] Dr. Brighten: no well thank you so much this has been such a wonderful conversation i can literally talk to you for hour

[02:45:55] Samantha Hiew: yeah i feel like we can get and it's really nice to be able to talk to you on a level that like i know you know what i'm talking about so thank you thank you for this opportunity yeah

[02:46:05] Dr. Brighten: thank you so much for joining the conversation

[02:46:07] Samantha Hiew: if you could

[02:46:08] Dr. Brighten: like subscribe or leave a review it helps me so much and getting this information out to everyone who needs it if you enjoyed this conversation then i definitely want you to check out this