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“My ADHD diagnosis gave me permission to feel deeply & express without shame”.
Neurodivergent women have entered the conversation around ADHD in droves these past few years – and they have a lot to say!
I’m 200% here for any experience (or in this case, diagnosis) that supports a woman to inhabit her unique flavor more fully. Adele Wimsett is such a woman.
Today on the podcast we’re chatting with Adele Wimsett, a UK-based Women’s Health Practitioner specializing in supporting ADHD women to understand the impact their hormones have on their traits, taking a solution-focused approach to creating an ADHD-friendly lifestyle.
In this episode, we explore:
- How Adele received her ADHD diagnosis & why it was so validating
- Rejection sensitivity dysmorphia & other ADHD traits that women can experience
- Bridging science and the womb in ADHD, exploring how our hormones & cycles impact symptoms
- Gender bias in ADHD research and what the research tells us
- Menstrual cycle awareness & how Adele uses this to support her neurodivergent symptoms
About Adele Wimsett
Women’s Health Practitioner | www.harmoniseyou.co.uk | @harmoniseyou
Adele empowers women to balance their hormones and harness the power of their cyclical nature.
She specialises in supporting ADHD women to understand the impact their hormones have on their traits, taking a solution focused approach to creating an ADHD friendly lifestyle
Transcript
(This transcript is generated by AI so might not be perfect) ? Oh, and let’s take you off mute.
Amy Frankel (00:28:04):
Welcome to this conversation on Adhd and the womb exploring how hormones can impact neurodivergent traits for women. Today I’m joined by the very delightful Adele Wimsett, who is a uk-based women’s health practitioner. Adele empowers women to balance their hormones and harness the power of their cyclic nature, and she specializes in supporting adhd women to understand the impact that their hormones have on their traits. This is a really fun conversation with Adele, who shares with us how she received her diagnosis and how it was really validating. We speak about some of the common traits that women can have around adhd. Some of them are not at all the stereotypical traits that we attend to associate with Adhd. We also speak about rejection sensitivity dysmorphia. Adele then shares with us some of the research to bridge the womb and science and explore a little bit more detail around some of the gender biases that actually exist in Adhd.
(01:08):
And we speak about menstrual cycle awareness and some of the strategies that Adele uses to support her to inhabit her unique sensitive body so that she can flourish more fully as herself. This interview contains adult language, so if you have sensitive ears around, perhaps best to pop in a pair of headphones. But I thoroughly, I’m sure, I thoroughly sure that you’re going to enjoy this conversation whether you have a diagnosis, suspect, a diagnosis, or just feel that in some way you are on a degree of a neurodivergent spectrum and there’s a lot of uniqueness to you. This is a very rich and useful conversation. So a warm welcome
Jenna Ward (01:59):
And extend such a warm welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for the conference. So let’s dive right in. adhd, I feel in the bubble that I live in is the very topical, a very, very topical conversation, diagnosis, self-diagnosis question that a lot of people around me, whether they’re clients, whether they’re people that I’m working with in a coaching setting, whether they’re friends or people whose podcast I’m listening to, I feel like there’s a lot of conversations happening around adhd at the moment, which is in the bubble that I occupy. Such a refreshing thing to happen, and if you’re willing to share, I would love for us to start with hearing a little bit about what sparked your personal journey with Adhd and this path of exploring it in your professional capacity.
Adele Wisest (02:52):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as a little girl, I always felt different. I always kind of knew my mom would say, no, you weren’t like that. You were really confident and you had loads of friends. And I was like, I feel like that. It felt like really hard work, and I was a real good girl at school as many undiagnosed adhd women can and diagnosed can relate to. And I did very well academically. That was kind of like my saving grace. So I was a child of the eighties. No one was talking about ADH adhd then. I mean, and it definitely didn’t exist in girls.
(03:29):
So that was my sense of being younger, that I felt things so deeply. The fear of getting something wrong or rejection was debilitating for me. And I was kind of seen the word anxiety and anxious got bandied around quite me as a child. That’s what it was like. If I was going to fit in somewhere, it was probably pushed into that kind of category. But I did have this inner a
confidence. It didn’t feel like that, but I could manifest in that way. So then I ended up doing a career in youth justice where I specialized in female offending and special educational needs. So at that time, I had a really robust understanding. Also, I thought of adhd, but I was dealing with the very stereotypical, naughty little boy presentation of that. And as things progressed, I had a 20 year career in that field, and I used to joke that, oh, that’s my adhd.
(04:25):
You know, I’d make a joke at some of these things that I knew were quite adhd, but at that time, women weren’t even seen to be able to have adhd. So that’s where I was with it. And then several years ago I started, I’ve then had two daughters. I obviously left that field for various reasons, and I began to notice some traits in my daughters that were very present in me as a child. And obviously thanks to all the incredible information we now have access to, I started to think, okay, there’s something here. So I went along to an adhd talk, which happened to be taking synchronicities. It happened to be taking place close to me via site. And within minutes of talking to him, he was like, so, you know, are like adhd, right? I was like, yeah, I do. And within four weeks I was fully diagnosed and he was like, do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this? I was like, doesn’t everybody, he’s like, no. Okay. So suddenly I had this very unexpected experience of feeling the most validated I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt so seen, I felt so understood, and since then there has been this incredible unraveling of connecting with myself, understanding myself, and being able to offer myself the deepest self compassion that I’ve ever been able to in my life, a real pure compassion for understanding of myself. So that was my journey with diagnosis.
Jenna Ward (05:57):
So often when we think about typical medical models and the medical industrial complex, the idea of grouping together symptoms to kind of pathologize them isn’t necessarily an empowering experience for a lot of people. So it’s really interesting to hear your story and perhaps it’s the level of maturity, insight, disposition. I’m sure there’s a lot of factors at play, but it’s so refreshing and delightful to hear that you really felt validated, seen and understood in receiving that diagnosis. And from the anecdotal experiences that I have of hearing other people receiving that diagnosis, often it’s people who identify as women who are more mature. So I’m talking about either approaching mid-age or in their thirties or forties. Generally the narrative that I hear is it was like it was a relief. And I think that’s really wonderful actually, because something that brings us a sense of feeling seen or understood that feels like it is a diagnosis that brings more power rather than removing power or autonomy. I’m just so in favor of that. Has that been what you’ve noticed with a lot of women, perhaps more mature-age, women who, when I say mature-age, like I’m not that mature, but I’m a little mature. Has that been your experience in your professional work of noticing other women who are receiving diagnoses as well?
Adele Wisest (07:37):
What’s really interesting is this is a question I get a lot because a lot of women are self-diagnosing, and for me, I don’t care whether you’re self-diagnosed or not, we don’t wake up one morning go, I’ve got adhd, we’ve been down rabbit holes, probably silently by ourselves, looking at everything, doing every task, look at all the information going, oh my gosh, I’m ticking every box, but am I the imposter syndrome ticks in? What if I’ve got this wrong? If I’m not this, then what’s wrong with me? We kind of go through that journey before diagnosis usually, unless someone’s already picked it up in us. But you have to remember, for a lot of women who have reached that stage of their life, they have probably spent a lot of their life being misunderstood. They have probably been misdiagnosed, mistreated, misunderstood their entire lives, and we’ve constantly subconsciously or consciously tried to fit in and then suddenly having this revelation of this thing, and it’s like, oh my gosh.
(08:33):
So there can be this huge relief. And for me, it was a very empowered experience because I literally went into this is who the fuck I am. This is me, and I’m not going to keep masking and making everybody else feel comfortable to fit in because I’m a good person who comes from a good place. And if you find my adhd triggering, that’s not my problem anymore. Because we’ve often had our traits misconstrued as character flaws, and that’s hurtful. So we developed this in a narrative. So yes, for me it was very empowering, and I see that with a lot of women, but getting a diagnosis is such a personal choice because the flip side of diagnosis that I see is a grief. A lot of women experience grief for what could have been had this been picked up when they were a child, which for women in my season of life, absolutely was not going to happen with the best will in the world.
(09:24):
But actually we’re seeing it come up with our children and getting diagnosis for our children because there’s an 80% chance that our child is going to have a neurodivergent trait that we then go through this journey of going, oh my gosh, this is me. And that can feel really saddening for women, particularly if they choose a path of medication. I personally haven’t, but lots of women who do make that choice can in some cases find it very beneficial and like, oh my gosh, I found the thing and I’m in my forties, and so there’s this grief that they can go through. So it’s very personal, but they’re the two main things. But my experience, yes, is very empowering.
Jenna Ward (10:05):
Thank you for sharing the piece around the grief. I feel that grief is very often an undervalued and undernamed experience, which is in fact really valid, and there’s no way to move through it except to feel it fully. There’s literally nothing else you can do with grief.
Adele Wisest (10:23):
Yeah,
Jenna Ward (10:24):
Absolutely. Except to let it in. So then for you, you’ve spoken around the edges of this. I want to hear about some examples in terms of receiving this for you, it was a literal diagnosis, although it was also an inner knowing, probably well before that. How has this supported you to lean into your emotions, your sensitivities, your body as home? How has this supported you to lean into that even more?
Adele Wisest (10:59):
It was something you said just before we jumped on to record this, and I felt a physical emotion to it because it’s so pertinent. It gave me permission to feel these things and be these things that I knew weren’t generally accepted. Because one thing with adhd women is we quite often have something called rejection sensitivity dysphoria alongside that, which isn’t spoken about very much, but it’s huge. It’s actually the thing that I love my adhd, but I absolutely hate that element of it because it can be so debilitating. And when we feel we have this really broad spectrum, we either feel something so intensely the emotion is consuming, particularly if there’s something there’s an injustice or we have this visceral reaction to the things which actually we live in a culture that doesn’t really big emotions. So we’re trying to keep that small. And then we have this other end of a spectrum where there could be this massive crisis and we’re like, we’re the one you want in a crisis.
(12:06):
We’re like, right. We kind of kick in and we are not really feeling anything necessarily in that emotion into a very practical kind of approach. We have this spectrum, but I think for me, it’s allowed me, and I think it’s the maturity of being older with being able to do this around that, but being able to express that emotion without shame, without, I feel really deeply and I have an opinion on a lot of things, and I’ve had the privilege of being able to create a life around me where that is accepted mostly without judgment. So it gave me permission. Jenna, I would say it gave me permission to feel all those things. I joke that I think Adhd people have twice the number of receptors in their body to everything that we just, I think there’s this theory that aligns to me that we would’ve been the ones in the tribes that hurt the stick breaking two miles away and woke up.
We’ve got this sensitivity. We can read people instantly. We feel energy. We can read a room, which is great when you’re living in the forest, but when we’re in this world that it’s bombarding us with all of this constant thing, no wonder we’re a bit wired. So yes, the short answer is it gave me permission to feel
Jenna Ward (13:31):
And anything, any single thing in the entire world that I think gives that gift of inhabiting that emotional bandwidth, that spectrum of sensitivity with a greater sense of safety, with a greater sense of permission, with a greater sense of
self-confidence is like that is embodiment to me. That is coming home into the body, and I’m so here for that in whatever flavor and form it takes for each of our individual journeys. So let’s speak a little bit, you were just speaking about receptors as a bit of a joke, but it got me thinking about the research and about the literature. And I know this is a facet of your area of interest. Part of your work, I understand has been investigating some of the biases that exist within the research and these stereotypes around this being something for naughty little boys. And here we are speaking to a group of mature women, and this is a very relevant topic. So I would love if you could share with us a little bit about some of the biases that actually exist in the literature and some of the less common aspects around the research for Adhd that you feel are really pertinent for women to know.
Adele Wisest (14:45):
So I say with the work that I do, that I bridge the science and the womb because that is me. That’s who I am as a woman. So when I got my diagnosis, I was like, great, where’s the research? Because I work with women’s hormones, I was like, hormones affect everything. There’s going to be this huge pool of research that is going to guide me with how to manage my traits as a woman. No, I was so raged with what I found, which we know there’s this gender bias in research across medical practice and lot health and lifestyle in that world. If we include women, we tend to shut their cycles down with the pills. So it mirrors a male hormonal cycle. Even lab rats tend to be male. So we have this huge body of research about what works for
male physiology and practically nothing around what works for cycling women or women at all, particularly when we look at adhd.
(15:40):
So as we’ve said, everything we know to be true about identification, assessment, treatment support is based on what works for naughty little white boys, this little boy bouncing around the class. Now, generally that is not the female experience women have or girls, women and girls. The hyper element tends to be internalized. So you’ll notice I speak very quickly, which I’ve been criticized all my life for like, oh, slow down. It’s like we speak quickly, we think quickly, it’s internalized, and we sit with a smile on our face in a classroom, so we get missed. They’re like the lost girls. And so the girls aren’t picked up because there is this gender bias in understanding how it manifests. And then we enter into our teenagers where hormones kick in what has traditionally been seen as rebellious behavior. We are more likely to have teenage pregnancies. We’re more likely to engage in risk taking behavior and substance misuse and actually eating disorders.
(16:51):
These are much more prevalent in neurodivergent women, particularly girls who are undiagnosed. And this is directly linked to their hormones, and yet there’s nothing there to research this, to identify how do we include it in treatment plans. And then of course, we are seeing, there’s one study about a link with pcos. There’s just nothing about these hormonal fluctuations.
So that is where I began my journey of standing on my soap box and saying, wait a minute, these hormones are affecting everything we know. There’s one study that shows adhd women are much more likely to have postnatal depression, severe form of pmt called pmdd. We’ve got a link with pcos. Interestingly, anecdotally, there seems to be a link in the endo world as well, and yet none of this is being discussed. It’s not being included in treatment plans. So we’ve got this huge void of women effectively being treated as Guinea pigs with medication that we don’t know if that’s right for women.
(17:55):
We know that women are much more likely to have more side effects from medication than men. We see that the medication works better at different times of women’s cycles, depending what hormones are at play. And only very recently have some practitioners begun to have that conversation. So it just blows my mind that these hormones that are the most powerful biochemicals in the body, that our brain is covered in hormone receptors and we’re just not talking about them with adhd.
And so how is that happening? And there we go. Misogyny and patriarchy. Are our friends here?
Jenna Ward (18:30):
Oh my goodness gracious. So it’s really interesting. Before I was a feminine embodiment coach many moons ago, I was a clinical hospital pharmacist. And as you’re speaking and as we are thinking about the gender bias in the research and also in efficacious drug use, part of me is realizing, oh, the drugs that we’re using are probably off license, not off license, sorry, they’re probably off patent. So they’re relatively inexpensive drugs and no drug companies going to make good money by finding new markets for a cheap drug. And so thus there’s probably at this point for the drugs that are actually available, there’s probably actually very little financial incentive for drug companies to figure these things out. And if there’s no money in it, then there’ll be no research. That’s just my little putting my pharmacist hat on for a second.
Adele Wisest (19:29):
I love it because it’s true. That’s why we see in the hrt world, I mean it’s an absolute car crash over here in a lot of ways in the uk. And because there’s no quotas on it, no one’s making any money from sorting women’s hormones out. And so therefore, why would we bother sorting out 50% of the population
Jenna Ward (19:54):
Such a big, we begin to crack open the can of worms. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. And so if we are thinking more centrally around cycles, around hormones, around that transition into having cycles and cyclic hormones, so in that period for young women or if we’re coming out of having a cycle maybe in that peri or menopausal period, I can just see that there’s such huge variance and possibilities of how this could be impacting how we’re feeling the efficaciousness of different treatments, whether it’s drug treatment or alternative treatment. I’m really curious for you to hear a little bit about what have you noticed with your cycle in particular, and what do you use, what’s your strategies in terms of supporting or I would say supporting yourself given that we’ve got this bit of a black hole around the literature, around the evidence.
Adele Wisest (21:00):
I would be saying that your hormones 100% are having an effect on your traits and how adhd is showing up in your life. It’s not a debate, it’s a fact. The hormones play a massive role in sensitizing serotonin and dopamine in the brain, the neurotransmitters that we know, a linked to some of the adhd traits, but also outside of estrogen and progesterone, which are the hormones that we tend to focus on. There’s this hierarchy of hormones in the body. And the queen bees of those are cortisol and insulin, and very often they are dysregulated in adhd women, in most women actually, but significant in adhd women. And this has, again, an impact on our traits. So it’s really looking at the system of hormones, and without my understanding and training of that, I may have gone down a medication route. It’s not something I personally try and avoid medication at all course with other things I can bring in.
(21:58):
But it’s there. And I’m grateful that it serves a purpose to many people that we have it. But to me, it was a more natural route based on who I am to explore other options. And had I not had this foundation of understanding about the impact my hormones had, I didn’t think that would’ve been possible because what we do see, this is anecdotally, and there’s a tiny bit of research. One piece of research that kind of supports this is that adhd women are much more likely to have a challenging utile phase, say the bit just before your period. And the reason for that is that our hormones have dropped off and therefore our brain is like it’s time to slow down and rest. But of course, we are living in a world that is expecting us to show up 100% in this relentless state of action and doing.
(22:47):
And women are not designed to do that. Our hormones ebb and flow, and that’s what we are meant to be doing, but we don’t give ourselves permission to rest. We don’t give ourselves permission to stop. This can be hard for ADH adhd women because we feel like we have this drive when we’re hyper focused on something. We’ve got this drive and we literally can’t turn it off. And you’re like, oh, my PhD and I meant to stop, but I can’t. So we have these additional challenges, but actually through understanding your unique rhythm, your unique ebb and flow, yes, we can work on that foundation of supporting your adrenals. Yes, we can work on balancing your blood sugars with how you are nourishing yourself. That will have a massive impact on how you’re feeling. But equally, knowing this ebb and flow and how your traits show up at different times, we could check all the stuff from a lifestyle perspective, but the reality is there are going to be certain times in your cycle where your life needs to look different.
(23:48):
And when you can understand what that looks like for you with your unique rhythm, your unique cycle, you can then start to use your menstrual cycle awareness to apply this to your life and accept that at certain times your traits are going to show up more. Your strategies aren’t going to be as effective if you’re medicated is not going to work so well. So what does that time in your life need to look at and that look like? And that’s going to be the same when you enter perimenopause. We are not meant to be showing up in life if like we did in our twenties and thirties when we’re in our forties and fifties. We’re not meant to be doing that in tribes. If we lived that long, our role would’ve changed. We would’ve been from a very external giving, we would’ve moved into being space holders and revered for our wisdom and our insight.
(24:40):
But we’re not doing that. We’re still trying to shut what we did in our twenties and thirties. I’m wondering why we’ve got all these symptoms and it’s your body’s going stop. And that’s the same for adhd traits. A lot of women are getting diagnosed during perimenopause. One because there is crossover with hormone imbalances and adhd traits. And part of my job is unpicking all of that and deciphering what is what. But also it’s because those hormones aren’t there. The lids come off and all these strategies that you’ve been able to use so far aren’t there anymore. So life has to change. There isn’t this magic pill that’s going to go, oh, right now we’re just going to pretend I’m not in perimenopause and everything’s going to go away.
There’s this acceptance of saying, this is the season that I’m in. What does my body need now? What does my life need to look like now in order for me to flourish in this season? Does that answer your question?
Jenna Ward (25:33):
It does. It does. And as you are speaking about the shifting of the seasons and the very necessary requirement to shift how we respond to ourselves, what we expect of ourselves within the cultural matrix that we’re in, two thoughts arise. The first is, I’m in so much love and adoration of the idea around us following these seasons. I’m in so much support of the cyclic nature, and this to me just speaks to a return to the energy of the feminine, the energy of the earth, the energy of the great mother, the energy of returning from these ecosystems, these artificial ecosystems that we live in. And this return to the good rhythms and the good pulse of life. So there’s something very seductive around that. That’s my first thought. My second thought is that I just imagine there’s so many people given the systems that we live in, where that seasonal return is something that either they feel is not possible for them or that in reality based on their social location, may in fact not be effing realistic for them.
(27:05):
Maybe they’re the brand winner and they need three jobs. So it’s like we don’t have to have the answer to that. I think we’re allowed to desire and to realize that a return to more seasonal ways of operating is good for our body and good for our
planet. And how do we get, I mean, I’m a white woman with a degree of privilege in my social identity, location, et cetera. So for me, that’s something that I might be able to build into my week, but that may not be so for everyone. And we have a number of speakers at the conference who are speaking around embodied social justice. So I just think it’s necessary to name that, but at least knowing the direction that we want to move in, that’s one thing. Absolutely.
Adele Wisest (27:55):
Yeah. I would say the more privilege you have, the easier this is, and that is absolutely a point. But what I would say is that the women that I work with have a whole varying degrees of that privilege around how much they can adapt to that. And even the most privileged, you are not going to ever be in this pure cyclical phase of the feminine, but there are so many little things that you can do. This isn’t about going up to your bedroom, putting a cover on for seven days and shut the door.
Although how lovely it’s about, I was
Jenna Ward (28:30):
Hoping
Adele Wisest (28:31):
In a masculine world,
Jenna Ward (28:33):
We
Adele Wisest (28:34):
Live in a masculine world. We live in a nine to five world, we have to show up. So how do we buffer that? And it could be, I acknowledge in myself the next week’s going to be tougher. So if my head feels like it’s going to spin off that week, I can offer myself compassion. That can be the level that we are looking at in terms of buffering. It’s not about carving out this huge space, it’s little bits that we weave in a way that meets the needs of an individual woman’s unique situation.
Jenna Ward (29:04):
I loved it. I love that. Thank you. And I like how you use the word buffering. (29:10):
That seems like a lovely way to describe the little space that you carve out between these systems and expectations and how we’re operating. And there’s the very real work of as much as is possible dismantling the ways that we’ve internalized those systems and really questioning and interrogating them within us. Because while we can say, yes, I’m privileged to have that, or no, I’m not privileged to have that, there may be a degree of what we’ve internalized versus what’s our actual reality. Don’t say that to gaslight anyone because I don’t know anyone who’s listening’s actual reality. But I do know that our bodies can hold a lot of truths that aren’t in fact truths and that have just been passed down through so many generations. So I would just love to know if you were to reflect on your last few days, your last week, it looked like for you to be in this season, in this rhythm, in this menstrual cycle awareness and in this appreciation of your body, which is a body that has holds, I dunno how you language that, but in your adhd body, I’m just curious if you might be able to share with us one or two examples of what that graciousness, what that buffering, what seasonal living has looked like for you in your own life this season.
Adele Wisest (30:58):
Absolutely. So I see that each phase has a strength and has shadows of it. And I’m very fortunate that at the moment I am in my ovulation phase. So my estrogen is really high. I’m on it. I am working. I’ve got my clinic is back to back in appointments. Then in the evening, I’m on it with a life admin, all the things that I need to catch up on. I’ve got social things booked in. I’m delivering training, I’m doing some traveling. I’m running an event in London. So it’s very, I’m harnessing this strength. I’m harnessing the strength of this phase. But the shadow side of it is that we can say yes too much. So it’s very careful planning. And had I been having this conversation with you in 10 days time, I’m very conscious that I would’ve been a lot more, I would’ve tried to avoid booking it in for this time, first of all, because my ADH adhd traits would be off the chart, but I would feel very much like there’d be a lot of, I’d lose my thought train much more easily.
(32:02):
I would find it hard to stay really focused on the question and what you’re asking me. There’s a lot of arms. We just show up differently. And most of us as women, any woman hasn’t realized that that’s what we do. So you’ve got me in a phase where
it’s good. I’m not needing to really do that buffering. I’m rocket fueled because in my other phases I am slowing it down. I’m not booking in social things. There aren’t any play dates booked in for the kids. I’m not whizzing around in the house, it’s slowing down. I’m doing yoga at home, or I’m taking time each morning to really reflect before I dive into my work. Whereas at the moment I’m like, let’s go. What have we got? What’s happening? And it’s really working with that strength
Jenna Ward (32:46):
That’s so beautiful to hear. And this really speaks to and is only possible because as you dropped subtly, I mean, we’ve spoken about hormones, we’ve spoken about the womb, you’ve mentioned the word menstrual cycle awareness. So we’ve spoken in the periphery of this, but this buffering and this approach that you’re describing is really possible because you have such great awareness of what’s happening in your body, in your cycle and are so deeply attuned to that. If we just take a moment to focus and lens in on the menstrual cycle awareness piece, this in and of itself is a whole topic for a lot of women because we have this incredible spectrum of people who are not having a cycle, whether they’re using some type of hormonal contraceptive. I know for myself, for the first decade of my life, I was on a hormonal contraceptive, and it was really interesting.
(33:46):
It was about the time that I came off my hormonal contraceptive that my emotional sensitivity began to come online. And I began to really realize like, oh, there’s more of life to live here. And just this whole paradigm of sensuality and aliveness and desires. And I’ve always wondered what the connection was between those two things because I feel quite sure that there was many connections, but that was one of them. Now, this is not to demonize hormonal contraceptive because for many people it’s an excellent option and it supports them to flourish more fully in their body. So one of the things I love about these conversations is just always asterisking that what works for one body isn’t right for the next. We’re all the best experts on ourselves. But when we speak about this concept of menstrual cycle awareness, I’m just wondering for those in the room who maybe don’t know what this is or don’t have such a tuned relationship, if they cycle, if they have a womb and if they cycle, if you can just share with us a little bit about the philosophy of what menstrual cycle awareness is and its view on the beauty of the menstrual cycle.
Adele Wisest (35:04):
Absolutely. I mean, I could talk about this all week, jenna, so just shout at me if I start going off on one. But in terms of this, I actually co-authored a book on this during lockdown, which is my baby. So it’s something I’m very passionate about. But basically, men do the same thing every single day, basically from puberty to death around their hormones, which is why we can, they function really well in this nine to five model. We live in a patriarchal society, which is built around a male physiology in some ways. And so it works really well. And within this development of living in this way, we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that women’s hormones don’t do that. Our physiology is not doing the same thing every single day. Our hormones, and this will be different inside every single woman, which is why tracking your own cycle is so important because in some parts of the cycle, each gender is dominating.
(35:58):
And I describe her as the sexy party girl of the hormone world. So she’s like, she’s juicy, she’s fun, she’s sociable, she’s energized, she’s got your cognition on point, she’s lifting your mood when she’s in balance. And then if we’ve ovulated and only if we’ve ovulated, we produce progesterone. And she takes over the second half of the cycle and she’s like the zen yoga chick of the hormone wild. She comes in and goes, calm yourself down, estrogen. We’re here to calm things down. She helps with sleep, she helps with keeping us calmer. And these hormones affect every system in our body. Our cells are covered in these receptors. And the fact that these receptors are there tells us that those cells rely on those hormones to do their job properly. We look at it additionally as if they just give us a period or make us pregnant, but they’re not.
(36:49):
They’re affecting everything. They affect our skin elasticity, our immune system, our digestion, our cognitive function. Everything is affected by these hormones, and yet we’ve not been taught this. So it would make sense purely from a brain perspective that is covered in these receptors, that as we are having this experience throughout the month where different hormones are dominating and playing a role, that the way in which we show up is going to change. The amount of energy we have will change. Depending where you are in your cycle, your capacity for life will change, your mood will change, your need for sleep, how you nourish your body, how you want to play, how you want to work is going to change depending on what is happening with your hormones. And yet, we’ve completely ignored that fact because no one’s taught us generally that this is the case and therefore we live in a very masculine way, show up, do the same thing every single day, do the same kind of exercise routine because that’s what’s going to make you healthy and fit.
(37:55):
No one needs to be doing a hiit class the day before your period. That is not what your body needs. So it’s about understanding your rhythm, understanding even what you want to wear, what’s your libido like, everything changes. And when you capture this data through tracking, and you can download a free tracker from my website, and when I work with Adhd women, I’ve got a specific tool. I’ve got to track your traits against your hormones, and then you gather this data about yourself. I haven’t yet had a woman who’s gone, no, I didn’t learn anything. It’s like, oh my God, on day a psycho, like everyone knows in my house, day twenty-three, leave mommy alone. It’s a transition day. And that’s never going to change. Well, I’m sure it would at some point, but no matter what supplements I take or how much insulin is balanced, all my journals, that’s just a day for me.
(38:45):
That is tougher. And so I protect that. I then apply this knowledge from the tracking into my diary, and it can just be a color code where it just makes me go, oh, don’t put that in there because in that week, I’m not going to thank myself for it. I’m going to go, yeah, that’s a great, right now I’ll be like, yeah, that’s a great idea. Put that training event in that I’m leading on that week where my period’s due. And then I get to that week and go, what the hell have I done that for? It’s like crawling through tree call to force myself. And then what we’re doing, we’re pushing through. So many women are pushing through, well, what do you do when you feel tired? I just push through. I get the caffeine, I get the sugar I push myself through, and that might’ve been fine in your twenties and maybe even your early thirties, but once we start getting closer to perimenopause, the more we ignore her, the louder she will get. We need to listen to the whispers before she starts screaming. So that’s my kind of summary of Mca menstrual cycle awareness.
Jenna Ward (39:48):
I love, I love, love it. And I personally, I’m not cycling right now at this exact moment because I’m pregnant, but I do generally employ this. I’m not super hardcore, but certainly around my bleed and the day, just the few days just before and just after, it is such a game changer just for my overall energy and my cycle when I really do a lot of additional care and have space for withdrawing on those days. It just really helps a lot. I don’t know the full analysis of why women are so heavily encouraged to treat their body as consistent. And even when we are, for those of us who cycle very much fluid, I imagine it probably makes us better factory workers if we are expected to show up consistently evenly. And so it makes us better tools of capitalism if we have less variant, like less variability. So we can almost see it as a bit of a countercultural and counter capitalist move to, I’m just going to throw that out there
Adele Wisest (41:08):
To rebellion back. But again, I just want to really honour the fact that for some women that feels a physical impossibility because of how maybe they suffer with their period or those kind of things, which by the way, we don’t need to suffer generally with our periods. Another myth that we have there that we’re meant to just suck it up and accept the pain and the hideousness that it can be. That’s not true. There’s lots we can do, but absolutely, it works really well for a patriarchal capitalist society. For women to have a cycle that looks like a man’s that’s the same every single day
Jenna Ward (41:48):
Makes me wonder about what kind of policy our school should have for bleeding days and menstrual leave, because I know there are some countries we should look into that. That only just occurred to me.
Adele Wisest (42:03):
Spain has just bought the first one in menstrual leave. I mean, it’s not being put into practice yet, but it’s a good move forward. Right?
Jenna Ward (42:13):
That’s progressive. I enjoy hearing that. So for us to create, in wrapping up for us to create a more embodied future where a wider spectrum of normal, a wider fluctuation in baseline is embraced as just this cyclic individual bodies that each of us have. I’m curious if you had a little gem of wisdom, a little reminder, a little message to support us each in embodying that fullest flavor of our unique selves, what might you leave us with today?
Adele Wisest (42:57):
I think it’s to truly be able to do that as a woman, you have to get really comfortable with who you are. The world needs us to show up in our authentic self, but that can feel really freaking scary, particularly from a neurodivergent perspective. So I would say start with yourself in feeling into where you feel safe to unmask and be you, because then your vibration is there,
right? And your other people find you. And we can all show up with authenticity and with integrity to who we truly are. So finding like-minded communities where people have a shared experience as you, because then you realize you’re not on your own. I think that is just one of the saddest things for me when a woman feels she’s on her own with her experience, whatever that is, because I truly believe that they don’t need to be on their own. So when we get into that space and we show up with our integrity and authenticity, then our tribe finds us. So that’s what comes to mind when you ask that.
Jenna Ward (44:01):
That’s a beautiful reminder and permission. Thank you so much for your time today, Adele. It’s been a delight hearing about your expertise.
Adele Wisest (44:10):
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
