Nov 24
When Martha Barnard-Rae was finally diagnosed with ADHD after years of being told it was just anxiety, she started structuring her home and work life around her brain’s unique needs and saw a complete transformation in how she lives and speaks to herself. Since getting her diagnosis, Martha has gone on to give an inspiring TedX talk about ADHD and start her own copywriting business, Word Candy, where she has the freedom to let her ADHD strengths shine. “I want people to understand that ADHD is a part of me and I can use these powers such as they are for good. And I think the more that I can kind of say about it, the more people will understand and they can go, ‘oh, I want to work with her because she does those hyperfocus weeks because she can work in that way.’ That's a feature, not a bug.”
Join us this episode as Martha shares all the ways she’s redefining success for herself, her vulnerable experience on the TedX stage, how she fills her “bowl of resilience,” and so much more.
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"I had good parenting, but the way that I want to parent this child with ADHD is to help them understand that the things that they're doing and the reactions that they have are not bad behaviors."
- Martha Barnard-Rae
"I used to lie a lot as a child, and as an adult I've kind of looked back on that and gone like, why did I do that? I just didn't understand why, like I would lie about things that I didn't need to lie about, and like later when I was a teenager, I would lie about where I was going, even though I wasn't like going anywhere “bad” or unacceptable. And then when I read ADHD 2.0 and kind of understood that that's impulsivity, it made a lot more sense."
- Martha Barnard-Rae
"I started listening to your podcast and I got the recommendation for the book ADHD 2.0, and then I kind of was like, ‘oh, this is ADHD.’ Like there were all these things about my life and things that I do and things that I did that I was like, do other people do this?"
- Martha Barnard-Rae
- Martha reflects on her own journey to understand feminism, recalling a moment in her early 20s where she realized she was a feminist after taking gender studies classes.
- Martha's appointment with the doctor led to a diagnosis of ADHD, and she was provided with a test to confirm the diagnosis.
- Martha discusses her experience as a parent of a child with ADHD, sharing her struggles with understanding and regulating her child's behavior.
[27:41 - 42:53] Internal Family Systems and Therapy
- Martha discusses Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy with her therapist, learning about different parts of the self based on past experiences.
- Martha's therapist uses Depth therapy, a form of EMDR, to help her process memories and emotions through binaural beats and other stimuli.
- Martha shares her experience with ADHD and how she overcame memorizing her TEDx talk by using a creative approach.
- Martha discusses her struggles with memorization and how she overcame them through creative methods.
- Martha believes that despite her challenges, she would be a good fit for a TEDx talk due to her profile and advocates for accommodations to support speakers with disabilities.
- Martha shares her experience starting a business while managing ADHD, citing the challenges of working from home during the pandemic.
