When The Call Hits Home

When The Call Hits Home | Episode 6 : When ADHD and First Responders Collide - Navigating the Complexities Together

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Jennifer [00:00:07]:

Hi. I'm Jennifer Woosley Saylor. I'm a licensed professional clinical counselor and the kid of a cop, and this is the podcast when the call hits home.

Ashlee [00:00:16]:

Hey, everyone. It's Ashley Gethner. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I'm also a child of a police officer.

Jennifer [00:00:22]:

Well, welcome back to When the Call Hits Home, and we have our guest, Andrew, with us today. Thank you so much for being here, Andrew. We're excited to have you. Can you just start telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Andrew [00:00:36]:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So, yeah, again, my name is Andrew. I am a licensed clinical social worker. So about me, I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 6 years old, and I kinda just turned it into my whole thing. So I went to school for social work. I got my master's degree in social work, and I found the love for helping other people with ADHD who struggled in a similar way that I did. So I've been providing services for people with ADHD.

Andrew [00:01:02]:

I like to say I've read more books than any one person should in a short amount of time about ADHD, and I just love talking about it.

Ashlee [00:01:11]:

Well, we're so excited to have you. And one of the main reasons why we wanted to have you on here is because Jennifer and I obviously both work very, very closely with first responders and with the first responder community. And with this podcast, we're also hoping to kind of touch on the parenting aspect too in children's responders, which ADHD can come with all of that. Right? And so we wanted to ask you a little bit if you could just explain the diagnosis of ADHD for us.

Andrew [00:01:37]:

Yeah. So ADHD is a horrible name for what ADHD actually is. Let's let's just let's just lead with that.

Jennifer [00:01:46]:

I love that.

Ashlee [00:01:47]:

That's where

Jennifer [00:01:47]:

we're starting.

Andrew [00:01:48]:

Yeah. Yeah. It I mean, it is, though, because, like, ADHD is so much more than a deficit of attention. If anything, it's an excess of attention just in areas that we can't control. So we think of ADHD, we think of executive functioning. Prioritizing, impulsivity, emotional regulation, time management, and time awareness. Right? All of our executive functions. ADHD impacts all of those different areas.

Andrew [00:02:16]:

So it can present with 3 different subtypes. There's a hyperactive impulsive, the inattentive, and the combined. So there's different ways that this diagnosis can present. It's a childhood disorder. You have to have it from the time of childhood. You don't just get it.

Jennifer [00:02:34]:

Okay.

Andrew [00:02:34]:

And so yeah. I mean, in a nutshell, that's how I explain ADHD. It's an executive functioning disorder, not as much just attention deficit. Executive functioning.

Jennifer [00:02:45]:

Can you just define, executive functioning just a little

Andrew [00:02:48]:

bit? Yeah.

Jennifer [00:02:49]:

About that. Like, what falls under that umbrella?

Andrew [00:02:52]:

Yeah. So think of everything here. Right? Right behind our forehead is our prefrontal cortex. So our prefrontal cortex is what allows human beings to be human. Right? It's that advanced level thinking. It's things like, like I was saying, planning and prioritizing, emotional regulation, impulse control, so on and so forth. Right? Those higher level functions that humans have that no other species has. Right? Mhmm.

Andrew [00:03:23]:

So and if we wanna get even more technical, there's about 5 brain structures that we've known to be associated with ADHD. So we're talking the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, the corpus callosum, and I'm gonna blank on the 5th one, but there's a 5th one. But we know that the dopaminergic receptors, the dopamine receptors, aren't properly working. We believe that this is associated with roughly 42 different genes that could be tied to ADHD. And so because of that, you're gonna have different presentations. It's a spectrum of symptoms. It's not just one linear presentation. It's a spectrum of symptoms, and all different things can impact it.

Andrew [00:04:09]:

It. It can be great. It can be really great in careers like first responding, right, where you have to have heightened alertness and attention and be doing multiple things at a single time.

Jennifer [00:04:21]:

Right.

Andrew [00:04:22]:

Right? But you're just sitting around idling your thumbs. You're gonna get in trouble. So it's it's kinda like a double edged sword.

Jennifer [00:04:31]:

I'm sure. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you kinda answered this a little bit, but, you know, what led into you specializing in ADHD? You know, you shared your own experience, which I appreciate you being so open about that. But could you talk a little bit about that experience and maybe what you feel comfortable with, obviously, about maybe being diagnosed and what that meant for you? Mhmm.

Andrew [00:04:53]:

Oh, yeah. I'm not shy. Okay. So I'm if if any any of your listeners follow me on social media, you know I'm very, I like to use myself as an example, not only on social media, but as a therapist. Because when I work with people, I'm transparent. Right? I struggle with it too. So I was diagnosed when I was 6 years old. In the nineties, it was pretty easy for someone like me to get diagnosed with ADHD.

Andrew [00:05:15]:

Right? But I was also a textbook case, according to what my parents told me. I I I was off the charts ADHD. So I struggled a lot. Socially, I struggled. Impulsively, I struggled. There were a lot of things that I struggled with just growing up knowing I had ADHD. I would get really emotional. Like, I remember when I was in 6th grade, kind of a tangent, but bear with me.

Ashlee [00:05:40]:

Good.

Andrew [00:05:40]:

I I really wanted to get in the LEGO club. I didn't get in the LEGO club. I left that classroom crying in the middle of class, and the teacher had to talk me down. Right? Like, I experienced emotions in a bigger way, but it was also the nineties. Shiny Object was how we understood ADHD back then. We didn't really understand it, so I faced a lot of that internalized stigma. I still do. A lot of people with ADHD feel like, I had a client say to me, and I felt this, that I felt broken.

Andrew [00:06:11]:

I felt like there was something wrong with me because my brain didn't work. I am sure a lot of your first responders have said similar things to you because of the trauma that they went through. In that sense, ADHD and trauma share a lot of overlap. Right? We because of the way that our brains are working, we just I felt so different. Right? So growing up, I didn't want other people to feel alone. I found psychology my junior year of high school, and it was like putting on a shoe that fits really well for the

Jennifer [00:06:39]:

first time.

Andrew [00:06:40]:

You know?

Ashlee [00:06:41]:

I do love that.

Andrew [00:06:42]:

It's so cheesy. But, like, oh my god. It it made so much sense to me. And then the more I practiced, the more I just gravitated towards ADHD. Understanding it helped me understand myself. Being vulnerable online helped me understand myself. It's that radical acceptance that I kind of had to come to terms with. So for me, that's part of my ADHD journey.

Andrew [00:07:03]:

But it's it's not easy. Like, even today, I still struggle. Like, it's not always gonna be easy. And it's understanding that that's been part of my ADHD journey. Love that question, though. Thanks for asking.

Jennifer [00:07:15]:

Oh, it's a beautiful answer, and I I can remember that moment too of being like, oh, psychology, that's perfect. I I it's a good feeling when you find your club. Right?

Andrew [00:07:24]:

Yeah. I'm sure both of you have that similar experience because, like, you you we don't. Anyone who's a therapist who's listening knows that, like, you you don't get to this because you're bored and say, therapy sounds cool.

Ashlee [00:07:36]:

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and one of the things too, first off, I love that we've already talked about the brain because I feel like we're making our listeners really dive back into the episode right before this, and our little video on our social medias of the brain. And so that was such an excellent way to explain it, and I appreciate it. And, also, just your experience with it. Like you said, you are so open about it, but I think that's what helps so many people. Right? And and that's incredible.

Ashlee [00:08:05]:

I do know with ADHD, though, there is so much misinformation that goes around, and I think it's almost it's so hard. I feel like I I hear it both ways as a therapist. People are so into, like, yes, ADHD. Like, we need to focus on it. And then I'm now hearing people with this information be like, it's overdiagnosed, and it's not, you know, it's it's not as valid as we think it is. And so what is some misinformation you hear about ADHD that you would want our listeners, our first responders, and their parents, right, like, of their children who may have it as well? Like, what do you want them to know? What is some misinformation that you've heard that you you want them to know about?

Andrew [00:08:43]:

Alright. Let's take some big ones. I spend a lot of time on social media dealing with this. ADHD is overdiagnosed. I'll lead with the one that you said. So we know 75% of people with ADHD have not received proper diagnosis. Any mental health condition any mental health condition at all can be misdiagnosed, including ADHD. Right.

Andrew [00:09:04]:

There's certain things like so what I recommend as a therapist, you have to rule out certain things before you get to ADHD. One chief among them is a trauma related disorder. Symptoms of CPTSD often overlap with the emotional dysregulation and the impulse regulation that you see with ADHD. Right? It's important to make sure that when diagnosing a condition like ADHD, you have someone who's trained in it. It's like, if I went to a hematologist and said, I think I have a yeast infection. Right? Like, wouldn't wouldn't be the right doctor for it. So you you wanna make sure that you're understanding that it's not overdiagnosed. It's woefully underdiagnosed.

Andrew [00:09:48]:

And it can be misdiagnosed, but so too can anything else. Unfortunately, mental health is not an exact science. We can't we don't have a nice little model of the brain that we can just pull out and say, you know, let's look here. Yep. You're ADHD. It's unfortunately, we're not there yet. I hopefully I think we're leaning more towards that as understand more about genetics and brain anatomy. Right.

Andrew [00:10:10]:

But we're we're just not there. That is a big one, the over diagnosis. Stimulants are another one. Oh, yeah. Stimulants are oh my god. I hear I've I've gotten into it online with this one in particular. I hear a lot of people try and compare, like, Adderall to meth. It's just not right.

Andrew [00:10:31]:

It's like saying it's like saying water is hydrogen peroxide. They're chemically similar, but they aren't meth. Right? So there's a lot of parents that you'll find are scared to put their kids on this medicine. Mine weren't. I'm grateful. Stimulants are the one medicine that really gave me the most improvement in my symptoms and allowed me to get where I am. Are there risks with taking a stimulant? Sure. Are there risks with taking any medication? 100%.

Andrew [00:10:56]:

Right? Simulants have side effects, like insomnia, loss of appetite. Some people may experience anxiety. Right? You talk to a doctor, you monitor it, but you don't compare it to meth. Right? That is a big misnomer that goes about the EDG community. So much so, I think that's what's fed into the stimulant shortage that we've had. It's not overdiagnosed. We're not using it as meth. I would say another one is that we can just try harder.

Andrew [00:11:23]:

Right? You hear a lot of people say, just try harder. You can do it. There's a really great book that just came out from the Holderness family. ADHD is awesome. It really talks about the fact that we are not doing a lot of these things on purpose. On the outside, it looks like we are. With any mental health condition, especially with ADHD, it seems like you have more capacity than you actually do. We just don't.

Andrew [00:11:48]:

Capacity changes. You lean into something like if you've heard of spoon theory. Right? You only have so many spoons throughout a so if you haven't, let's explain that one really quickly. Spoon theory is the idea that we start each day with a certain amount of spoons. Doing certain activities uses up our spoons. So some people have more spoons to do for a certain act takes more spoons towards another activity than it would for someone else. Right? So it's not a matter of not trying hard. It is a matter of inability.

Andrew [00:12:19]:

It's not an excuse. It's an explanation. That doesn't mean you get off scot free. It means you make accommodations. But understanding that ADHD is an explanation, not an excuse. So to recap, it isn't overdiagnosed. It's underdiagnosed. We aren't meth heads.

Andrew [00:12:36]:

It's not not for funsies. We're not Not

Ashlee [00:12:39]:

not Not for funsies, he says. No. I love it.

Andrew [00:12:42]:

I I say that all the time. Like, if we were doing this with funsies, we wouldn't miss prescription doses all the time. It's not for funsies. True. We aren't doing this on purpose. We cannot help it, and it we feel more shame than anyone else in the world can ever put on us. So those are kind of my my big three misunderstandings of ADHD.

Jennifer [00:13:02]:

I appreciate you sharing those, and that makes a lot of sense for sure. And then I just wanna

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When The Call Hits HomeBy Dr. Ashlee Gethner, DSW, LCSW & Jennifer Woosley, LPCC S