TheScatterChatter - The vibrant world that lives inside my mind

Freepik ( www.freepik.com ) Nino, the little mouse who lived on a farm.  Once upon a time there was a small mouse named Nino. Nino was white and he had this heart shaped black birthmark right behind his ear. The other animals on the farm used to make fun of Nino for his birthmark because it looked like a small fly was sitting behind his ear. Growing up Nino used to get very upset. He tried so many time to get rid of this mark. He washed his ear with soap and water, tried to hide it with a wooly hat and once, in a moment of absolute desperation he dyed himself blue!  You are wondering how did that happen? Well for days, he sat on the fence and watched Mark, the farm boy, dye cotton cloth blue in the big tub of indigo dye. It was a very special dye, it was brought from a far away land where everything was colorful and bright. So he saw this day after day, pieces of pale cotton cloth would go into the tub and come out bright blue. Pale as he was himself, he thought wow, If I dipp...

  Newly diagnosed ADHD Adults: Books, Podcasts and YouTube channels recommendations  Disclaimer: In my journey, my realization are:   Everything will not apply to you 100%,   You will not have 100% of the symptoms, don't convince yourself otherwise.   This research is to know yourself better and manage your symptoms better  Appreciate yourself for how far you have come, appreciate the strategies that you intuitively devised to cope. Appreciate the things that worked.   You are more than your "issues", you have many strengths, remind yourself of  that.  Even though words like "deficient" and "disorder" is used, keep in mind that we are more than that.  Starting with the BOOKS :  I am currently reading Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate and ADHD for Smart Ass Women by Tracy Otsuka ( she also has a podcast by the same name). I will do a separate post to summarize my views and takeaways.   Reading List, the book...

  Tips to Sleep better; helps everyone, but specially those with anxiety and ADHD Here are some tips to relax your body, mind and spirit to get the best possible sleep and wake up well rested and ready to go!  1. Dis-engage One of the biggest road blocks to having a good night's sleep and getting into a state of relaxation is our screens. TV. Laptops, phones, tablets, kindles, amazon echo devices, we have it all around us all the time. The constant consumption of Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, will ensure that your brain is engaged and working on information which is essentially useless. So here is a suggestion on what you can try and do:                     1. Keep your room free of devices, no TV, no laptop etc. Its a place of rest                          and it should be built for that purpose only.        ...

Life challenges and mental health As a recently diagnosed business owner, I am obviously down the rabbit hole of research on everything ADHD. The moment you search it on YouTube, the most common theme that will come up is "ADHD is a superpower". With the diagnosis comes a very intense phase of self reflection. For any woman who has been diagnosed in their adult life, they are not navigating just ADHD symptoms but also potentially symptoms of anxiety and depression. These other issues are the reasons women seek help leading up to their diagnosis. Many are in their 30s or 40s when the demands of children, work and home become overwhelming to the point of collapse.  I worked in corporate for almost 10 years of my life and in some places I thrived and in some places I was succeeding whilst struggling to the point of burnout. But as I was in my 20s and driven by my hunger to thrive, I kept pushing through. I believed that to become good at what you do, some level of hustle and bur...

  Why is therapy important and why it should be made accessible to all? There is so much talk about mental health in the last few years, but still it is surrounded by a lot stigma in our society. I am part of a so called educated, well traveled, modern circle of friends, yet so often I will hear " why do you need therapy, you have everything you could ask for" or " what reason do you have to be "anxious".  My biggest revelation in therapy has been that even if you choose to show up and do the work, your environment plays a huge part in how much progress you make.  And a lot of the time , we are in therapy to work through issues that have arisen due to our environment and our interactions with our primary care givers or our spouses. So its no surprise that t herapy changes you and the way you deal with your environment.  I started therapy in my late 30s, after several years of "self help" and "self medication" which only resulted in short ter...

Turning 40 , therapy and life altering  ADHD diagnosis Turning 40 is often a time of reflection and self-discovery, but also dread. For me, it came with a bag of mixed emotions. In the last 6 years, I have battled infertility, experienced multiple miscarriages, seen the business I put everything into shut down, seen myself go from a "successful" person to someone whose self esteem, confidence and bank balance hit zero. I went from feeling independent to being held hostage to my moods, anxieties and worries.  To keep it simple, I hit rock bottom multiple times, but never as bad as I did in March 2023, where 1 whole month went with really low moods, procrastination, hopelessness and just absolute inactivity. I remember waking up and thinking, what is the point of waking up, why couldn't I just stay asleep and maybe not wake up and think about life. This feeling was so intense, I started to worry and decided to seek therapy. By now I had obviously done my research, by this I...