Late realised AuDHD motherhood: From overstimulation to self-understanding with Samantha Johnson

Laetitia: Welcome to Neurodivergent Pulse, where we explore the often misunderstood world of neurodivergence with experts, parents, teachers, and therapists. Grounded in lived experience, each bite-sized episode gives you something practical to try. I am your host, Laetitia Andrac, AI expert, neurodivergent mum, and founder of Understanding Zoe.

Laetitia: This podcast is recorded on Dharawal country. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It always was, and always will be Aboriginal land. Hello, Samantha. Welcome to the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast.

Samantha: Hello, hello. I'm very excited.

Laetitia: Yeah, I am so grateful you said yes to this. For the story, we've met at an event about a year ago through a common friend, and it's a delight to have you on the podcast.

Laetitia: So for the listener who are meeting you for the first time, can you take us back to the moment when motherhood started to shift something in you that you didn't yet have the language for? What was happening? What were you thinking at that time?

Samantha: Yeah. I think I was really lucky. Lucky is, like, really probably a stretch of a word, but lucky in the sense that I understood stimulation before I understood the words, like, well, anything else, especially before understanding my neurotype.

Samantha: So I say I was lucky in that in early motherhood, like that really early postpartum, I had the language that I knew I was overstimulated, but I didn't really understand the reason why. So that was one of the many threads that I pulled that eventually led me down to realising that I am AuDHD, autistic ADHD.

Laetitia: Yes. So it was that moment where you were like, "Oh my goodness." And what did you do? Did you went through a rabbit hole of research?

Samantha: Oh, yeah. Started talking to therapists. Like, tell me your story because I could tell mine, but this is your... Yeah, it was almost like, you know how you often have these parallel things happening in your life, and it's like they converge sometimes at the perfect time, sometimes you wish they happened earlier.

Samantha: But so going alongside, I knew I was overstimulated. I had that language. I was researching that route. I also have kind of self-identified as now autistic, but from as far back as high school, because, like, I just turned 39, so it was very early 2000s. So the diagnosis of Asperger's was still used then, and I remember saying to friends in high school like, "I have to be Asperger's or something because I know, like, I am different."

Samantha: Yeah. But for most of my adult life, I just thought that meant I was, like, very particular about how things were in the pantry and, like, I liked things a certain way. Now, obviously, I understand much more about what that means for, like, my sensory experience and my processing experience. But the ADHD piece, like, I was very naive.

Samantha: I thought it was what I think a lot of people assume it is, is, like, naughty, cheeky little boys. And one of the accounts that I follow, this is like one of the good things of social media, she started posting these like Venn diagrams of the overlap of like autistic traits and ADHD traits, and I related to all of them.

Samantha: And I was like, "Oh my God. Oh my God, like could I also be ADHD?" So I started going down that route and started looking at like ADHD and traits in women, and it really was the missing piece that made like my whole life make sense. But specifically made motherhood make sense. And understanding, like I said, more about the sensory side of me being autistic, those components together made me realise why I was struggling so much in motherhood, why I felt like all of the other mums around me, even though they had their struggles, but like they were getting by.

Samantha: And I felt like the older my daughter got, the harder it got for me, which now, right, we understand like executive function. And I'm like, "Oh yeah," because once she started solids, that's another executive function demand. Once she started being mobile, that's another executive function demand. I get it now, but at the time, like it's not an exaggeration when I say it was lifesaving to have that realisation.

Samantha: Because I would just sit and cry to my partner saying like, "I'm inept as a mum." Like, "I don't know why I can't cope the way the other mums do." And I think one of the tipping points for me that made me realise like, no, there has to be something else because it can't be like this for everyone, but I was standing in the kitchen and talking to my partner and I said like, "There is no way it is this hard for everyone else because humanity would not exist anymore because no one would do it more than once."

Laetitia: Thank you for sharing that, Sam. Feel really seen in that.

Samantha: Thanks.

Laetitia: So you mentioned some elements of the daily lived experience of an AuDHDer in motherhood and what it look like in practice, and it's not something you find on Instagram, you know, most of the time unfortunately. But one of the other thing, I love what you mentioned around executive functioning and how it's pile up, and it's true that there is a saying that I just despise when people are coming and telling me it's gonna get easier when actually for me, I find that it's getting harder and harder. So I'm like, "Can you stop telling me that it's gonna get easier because I don't believe you anymore," you know? But what are the other thing in your daily lived experience that you experience yourself, or I know you, you mentor, you coach so many mothers who are AuDHD, so do you want to share a bit more of those experience that you've witnessed so that the listener who may not have feel seen with that executive functioning could find themself in other experiences?

Samantha: Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, a lot of it still is executive functioning, but we put it into different buckets and we think of it in different ways. But things like having different sensory experiences. Like my daughter and I, we're both AuDHD, but we are polar opposite sensory profiles, and that means a lot of the time it is this like, I say fine balance, but there's really no balance, of like trying to have both of our sensory needs met and not exceeded, and it is like this hair fine line that we try and walk and it doesn't go well most of the time.

Samantha: Like one of us is overstimulated, normally me. One of us is understimulated, normally her. And we're just trying to like get by. But it means as a mum, I have had to learn a lot of ways to like support myself and my needs so that I don't force her to suppress herself and her needs because as someone in my late 30s, I've spent the last handful of years trying to like work through doing that as a child.

Samantha: And I think a lot of the mums that I know and I see, there is that added element, especially for many of us that are late identified. We got through life so far most of the time by being quite high masking and learning. I mean, in general, women are taught to suppress our needs and to be small and all of that.

Samantha: And I think when you're neurodivergent, it's just an added layer to that. And when you finally understand you're neurodivergent and you are trying to, like, own that and embrace it, it comes with this added complication of I don't even understand what my needs are. Like, I have suppressed them for so long, I don't understand what my needs are.

Samantha: I don't know how to ask for help. Even though I need help, like, I can't identify and articulate what I actually need help with.

Laetitia: Yeah. And this is actually a beautiful segue to another question that I really wanted to ask you. We know that more and more women are late assessed, late diagnosed, and through the journey potentially of their children.

Laetitia: So ADHD in mothers really happen. You also have other phases in life through matrescence, but also through perimenopause and menopause, where you tend to maybe unmask a bit more, so you tend to learn a bit more about yourself. But there is often this grief that's coming and what would be, what has been your experience, and what would you like to share with the listener about how can we sit with that grief without letting it be the whole story? You know, the "Oh my gosh, I wish I knew earlier." Like, I've had that as well. So it's like how do we move through that while acknowledging it?

Samantha: I mean, there's always gonna be the grief, right? It's the same when, you know, for people who have unfortunately lost parents really early, really young in their life, there is always that element of like, what if they were still around? What if that was still there? I think trying not to pretend that there's grief is a big part of it, but also looking at kind of the example of, all right, that happened, that's the past.

Samantha: It's really unfortunate. It really, really sucks. Like, I wish the system better understood us and better identified us. But it didn't, but what we can do to kind of take that power back is we can advocate. Either if it's just for ourselves, like if you are very low capacity, zoom it right in. Maybe it's just for you, maybe it's just for your kid.

Samantha: If you have the capacity, advocate on the broader scale, and that might literally just be talking a bit more openly with your friendship group about what your experience is. Because what I've learned is like attracts like. And it is very likely that a lot of people in your friendship group are most likely neurodivergent in some way, but for so long we haven't talked about it.

Samantha: So if you can just be a bit more open about your experience, it's likely that someone in your friendship group is going to relate. And then if you have the capacity beyond that, advocating at work, with your doctors. If you feel like going on social media like I felt compelled to do, then do that. But understanding that the grief is always gonna be there, but we can start to try and change the systems now that we are adults, now that we do have control and say and power, and we can shape that.

Samantha: And honestly for me personally, I have realised that there is a lot of healing that comes in parenting my daughter in a neuroaffirming way. In a way where, like I said, with my sensory experience, like, I am learning I have to support myself so I don't tell her, "Be quiet. Sit down. Stop jumping around."

Samantha: Like, I want her to be able to do all of that and do what she needs to do. I'm also teaching her how to do that in an organised way where she can regulate, and trying to help her identify what dysregulation looks and feels like for her. But that I have found a lot of healing in just encouraging her to be her, and my little inner child is like, "Oh, man, I wish we had this," but, like, how lucky that I get to do that for her.

Laetitia: Yes. Definitely it's very interesting, this journey of re-parenting yourself through parenting your children, and giving yourself what's, you know, you wish you had, and really doing this consciously. Which is actually some things that I wanted to ask you. From your perspective, why is it often through motherhood that everything cracks open and we get to finally discover our true self in some ways, when actually through childhood, school, or career we didn't pick up on our own neurodivergence, or no one picked it up? What do you think from your own work and your own experience? What is this secret recipes that happen at that moment?

Samantha: I think a lot of it is the executive function piece. The piece that when you add another human into your sphere, that comes with a whole slew of executive functions. Plus, you don't have any off days.

Samantha: You don't have... Like, before my daughter, I had what I would refer to as, like, sloth days, where I would just, like, be in comfy clothes and watch TV and chill out and do nothing. That doesn't happen now. And I think when we have, like, a neurodivergent nervous system, we now understand through research how critical sleep is, how critical regulation is, movement, hydration, all of the things that once you become a parent, I hope you're doing all those things, but the reality is a lot of us aren't, and it becomes hard.

Samantha: And, like, so for me in that very early postpartum, my daughter was a little koala baby. I could not put her down. We bed shared. We still bed share. She's five years old. And, like, when she was very, very young, she was attached to me 24 hours a day. And that meant that I was chronically dehydrated. I was waking up at some points every 20 minutes because she was breastfeeding on demand.

Samantha: I wasn't eating very much, at some points living on, like, granola bars while my partner was at work because I felt like I couldn't get off the couch. Like, all of these things that our brains and our nervous systems need, but in parenthood becomes very challenging. And so for some people, that's the tipping point.

Samantha: Plus, add on the complexity that hormones brings. So as like a... I'll do a very, very, very concise and quick hormone biology lesson for people who don't understand. When you look at oestrogen and progesterone, which are very important, and they're what is unfortunately called our sex hormones, through pregnancy, those are ramping up to where at the end of your pregnancy, they are at levels that you will never see any other time in your life except for subsequent pregnancies.

Samantha: And then you have the baby, and they fall off a cliff. And that's not, like, an exaggeration. If you look at a graph chart, it is literally extremely high and then drops below baseline. And what that means is, for those of us, especially those of us that are ADHD, oestrogen is incredibly important in dopamine.

Samantha: When oestrogen is not present, it means that your dopamine regulation and processing is not happening at the same level that it was, like, a week ago when you still had the baby in the uterus. So that adds that extra complexity. And then, you know, as we age, yes, we have perimenopause. That brings its whole other hormone challenges.

Samantha: So for many of us, there is that tipping point of whether it's pregnancy and postpartum, whether it's perimenopause, whether it's... I know a lot of the time it's simply the awareness. We do know that a lot of the time mums are the primary caregiver. They're sitting there in the doctor's office filling out all the paperwork going, "Oh, well, do you understand the heritability factor of X or Y?"

Samantha: And then the doctor going like, "Well, do you understand the heritability factor of X or Y?" And then the parent going like, "Oh, blank, blank, blank, blank." And the dots connecting.

Laetitia: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So now I'd love, as I have you here, to share some of the things that actually help you or help people you know. You know, some of either daily practices or things that you've incorporated or you've seen people incorporating that actually help with expanding our capacity or changing our capacity. Because this is the thing, right? It's we have potentially conflicting needs with our kiddos. We potentially don't have the space as we had before to sit in silence and just be. You know, those natural walk... Those things that gave us regulation or those outlets, hobbies, special interests that we can just get immersed in and find that state of flow, we may not have as much time for it. So what are those little things that you've seen could help with expanding capacity?

Samantha: I mean, the first thing that I've had to take onboard myself, and I tell people all the time, is like give yourself permission to not do things in a normal way. Don't do things that are typical. Allow yourself to do something that someone else might raise an eyebrow at. But, like, if it works for you, it doesn't matter.

Samantha: The example that I give all the time is ages ago I saw, somewhere on the internet, someone talking about having their family sock drawer at the front door. And at first, of course, you're gonna be like, "That's so strange." But it's like you are eliminating steps. If you keep your shoes at the front door, someone running around the house, you're like, "Okay, let's go."

Samantha: Okay, you go to the front door. "Oh, I need socks." Going back to the room. That's not a simple like go there, come back. For any of us, like I'm still an adult, that doesn't happen, but especially for my five-year-old daughter. Like, that is... No, I'll go back there 10 minutes later and she's in, like, dress up and doing her makeup.

Samantha: And I'm like, "Well, you were supposed to be getting socks. I don't understand." So giving yourself permission to not do typical. Give yourself permission to be inconsistently consistent, which those of us who are like trying to be recovering perfectionist really struggle with because once we've fallen off the wagon, then that's it.

Samantha: We failed and we can never do it again. Just start back at zero and look for common ground. So like again, the example of my daughter and I are polar opposite sensory profiles. What do we have in common? We're both very regulated being outside. We both enjoy being out in nature. That's gonna look like her running up and down the nature reserve and doing parkour off the trees and me just like looking at birds.

Samantha: But we're both there and we're present and we're having that time. So trying to find the common ground that all of you feel regulated. And then also I think the other thing would be when you are in those times where you notice you're overstimulated, right? The ideal, of course, is we notice before we get to that boiling point, but the reality is a lot of the times we don't.

Samantha: You catch yourself yelling mid sentence, and then you're like, "Ooh, okay, let's try and find a circuit breaker." Have visuals if you can because when we are dysregulated that rational thinking part that, like, you know the things you're supposed to do, that goes offline. So have visuals around the house or have cues, like we have a bowl of fidgets sitting on the table.

Samantha: Have things like that where in those really, really hard moments you can bring it back to, like, whatever the bare minimum is. Yeah, the ideal might be going to the gym for an hour and getting it all out. That's not possible for a lot of us. So can instead it be putting my back against a wall, stepping outside maybe if there's sunshine, maybe not a day like today.

Samantha: You know, like, coming back to those really, really if I can do nothing else I can do this things, and reminding yourself that, like, sometimes that's enough, and sometimes that's gonna be the difference of, like, having a meltdown or getting through the day.

Laetitia: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And definitely the simplicity always works. And love the common ground because this is something same with us. We go by the ocean. We just have a different experience. Yeah. I'm sitting in the sand and I'm looking, you know, at the different shells and collecting them and so on, whilst the girls may be running up and down the beach with the dog and going in the waves.

Laetitia: And yeah, we all have a good time. Yeah. And we find what we need. I just wanted to be there for a minute. So something that I would love to ask you, because that's potentially, like, a ride I will die on, but all of the things that you had to unlearn from the neurotypical motherhood book, you know, the baby book as I used to call them. You know, the... I used to say that I don't have babies that are described in those books, you know? So what are the things that you had to unlearn, or that you witnessed other neurodivergent parents have to unlearn?

Samantha: For us, the biggest thing was sleep.

Laetitia: Oh yeah.

Samantha: In that my daughter didn't sleep, and I kept trying to explain and understand why she didn't, and why she didn't fit, like, precisely into those wake windows that everyone talks about, which are made up by the sleep industry, by the way.

Samantha: There are no studies that actually back up wake windows. What most people don't realise is wake windows are actually an average of a range of normal wake times for different ages, and my daughter unfortunately just lived at the very, very, very, very end of the low range of those, but no one told me that.

Samantha: And so when I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out why she wouldn't sleep, why she was waking up every 20 minutes, it took me zooming out and understanding that all the things I knew about human biology before becoming a parent that I somehow forgot, I needed to remind myself that she was just a tiny human, and she has the same biology I do.

Samantha: And of course, if she has massive naps during the day, she's not gonna be tired enough to sleep at night. So I really in some ways am so glad I had the internet as a parent, but in some ways I wish I parented before the internet because I feel like it would have eliminated a lot of problems that I came up against.

Laetitia: Yeah. Oh, yes, the sleep. The expectation of your baby sleeping through the night, which still doesn't happen for us. So it's like, you know, 10 year old and still not, so this is the thing. It's like those neurotypical expectation. And indeed, you know, the sleep time, the food also, you know, as a diversification and how it should happen. If you have kiddos with feeding differences, it's like, oh my gosh, so many things that we have to unlearn.

Laetitia: So that's a big thing. And I wanted to ask you then the power of community, because we talked about, you know, going on the internet, and that's kind of destroying us. But at the same time, there is so much power in finding other neurodivergent parents parenting neurodivergent children. I know that for me was so healing because otherwise I felt like I was failing, as you described. You know, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not doing it the right way." But as soon as you find your tribe, they see you, they hear you, and some of them may share some experiences, but even if they don't, they just understand.

Laetitia: There is a deeper understanding. So what do you find from your experience in those groups that you facilitate, that you witness, you know, through workshops and all the work that you do? What is different between coming into a group compared to going and seeing a therapist by yourself, compared to reading a book by yourself?

Samantha: What is the difference in those? Oh, it's massive. I mean, that is, it is... As much as I say I wish I had not had the internet through my parenting, I am also so thankful because of that, because of the beautiful sides of it and the community aspect of it. Me going to social media when I first had this inkling that I was neurodivergent, it helped me find other people that were having the same experience, and it made me feel like, just like you said, like I wasn't failing.

Samantha: I just was given like a different playbook, and both for myself and my daughter. Being open about it within, like, my mum's group in very early postpartum was helpful because, of course, just statistically there were people in that mum's group who also are neurodivergent, and we were able to be like, "Oh, yeah, man, this is like F-ed and it's really hard."

Samantha: And it helped me understand why some of the babies, the mums could put them down for three hour naps, and they could bake and clean, and I'm like, "I don't understand. I like literally have gone to the bathroom with her strapped to me. I don't know what you're talking about," like having that level of relatability with people.

Samantha: And now, like, I mean, my daughter's only five, but being able to create spaces now where neurodivergent mums can come together, one, you know that at least everyone else in that room has had some type of similar experience on some level. Like, there's gonna be something that you relate to. But in the broader sense, it means that, like, these women are understanding that they're not failing.

Samantha: They're not doing it wrong. They are just playing by different roles. Yeah. And it is so reassuring, I think both as a facilitator, but also as a mum who feels like that, that like I think we all need that reminder that a lot of the systems, I guess I'll probably go as far to say all of the systems and the environments that we exist in were not made with our brains in mind, were not made with our nervous systems in mind, and it means that existing in them can be very challenging.

Samantha: And having someone else who, whether it's said or just said with a look, but can convey to you, like, "I get it. I understand," it can just make you not feel like the only person out there in the universe on your own.

Laetitia: Completely. And how many time did I feel completely alone, you know, carrying both my daughters, one neurodivergent and a baby, you know, in a sling up to they're two and two and a half years old, and having backache and, you know, sleeping like this and just, you know, the koala babies that you just hold. Oh my gosh, I wish, you know, when they were so little I could have had another parents living through the same experience. So now having older children who still don't sleep through the night and needs a lot of co-regulation at night and needs, you know, different needs than other children potentially do, and you don't have any books describing this, you know? Then, oh, there is something wrong with your child if they're not sleeping after this age, and who decided that? And as you said, it's, like, made up.

Samantha: So yeah, I think it's the same, like I said, with I forgot my daughter was, like, a small human with our same biology. If we look at evolution, evolutionarily speaking, it is only, like, a blip on the timeline where we have been sleeping individually, where we have been putting our children at maybe weeks or months old in a separate room. Their nervous systems have been wired for centuries and centuries and centuries to not feel safe like that.

Samantha: So of course, when you have a little one who has maybe an extra sensitive system, they wake up and they're like, "Whoa, this is not safe. Where's my adult?"

Laetitia: Yeah. Where is my adult? Definitely that. Yeah. So, where is my adult?

Samantha: Oh. You're right there. I feel like that, and I'm 39.

Laetitia: So before we close out this interview, I just wanna ask you this last question. For the partners or co-parents, siblings, friends of late realised AuDHDer, AuDHD mother, what is one most useful things they can do today? What is one things that they can do to support us or to support you, and then, you know, or things that you've seen that can support so that we can also invite the rest of the village to come into place.

Samantha: So many things come to mind. I really wish more people understood that we have fluctuating capacities. Both in that we might be really ace in one area of life and then struggle in others, in term of fluctuating capacity, but also we have a cycle, and our hormones impact our capacity and our capabilities.

Samantha: So, you know, whether it is still in what's called the reproductive years or perimenopause or beyond, but, like, our hormones do impact us. So trying to understand that can be, I think, huge for an individual but also for support people. And starting to learn the systems that your person has created, whether the mum is the primary caregiver or not.

Samantha: But, like, whatever the systems are that work in the house, the mum has probably got there from trial and error. I know I have. The reason I do certain things with my daughter is because I've tried it 50 other ways and it's backfired and it's blown up in my face. And so when I try and correct my partner of, "Hey, do it this way," he sees it as me just criticising his parenting, and I've had to explain to him, "You have to realise I have done it all the other ways. I'm trying to make it easier for you. Like, please let me help you because also it helps me."

Samantha: So understanding that, like, if they could understand the systems a bit better, whether it's parenting or whatever, but, like, don't ask for a list. Just start to learn what the list is type thing.

Laetitia: Ooh, I like that. Observe and learn from that observation rather than questioning it and they're like, "Why do you do it this way?" You know?

Samantha: Well, and even just, like, I have what I call a go bag by the front door, which is full of spare clothes and sensory support items and regulation items, and every time I leave the house, that goes into the car, and it's something like that of, you know, a partner, support person learning, okay, if your partner has a go bag, don't ask what's in it. You sit down, go through it, understand what's in it, and then you help make sure those things are there because it helps lighten the load for everyone.

Laetitia: Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sam, for joining today. For any of our listeners who want to find out more about you, and of course everything will be in the show notes, but how can they connect with you?

Samantha: Yeah. So I am most active now on Instagram, so it's Sam Attempts Motherhood, and I have a website, attemptingmotherhood.com. I have a ton of free resources on there, some paid, but there are oodles and oodles of free resources, and the podcast, Attempting Motherhood, which will be making a resurrection soon.

Laetitia: Yes. When the time is right, it shall happen. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much...

Samantha: Thank you.

Laetitia: ...for today. Welcome to the Neurodivergent Pulse. We're joined by Zoe for our quick pulse check. So Zoe, what makes mornings really hard sometime?

Zoe: I always forget what to do, and I like don't get out of bed. I'm too comfy in here. I'm just gonna stay here all day.

Laetitia: Yeah, transition out of bed can be difficult, right? You really like your bed.

Zoe: I do like my bed, too. But I don't like sleeping.

Laetitia: You don't like sleeping. Yeah, that is true. It's very true. So what helps you have a smoother morning?

Zoe: When I get up slowly, I brush my teeth. I get... I go down for breakfast, and I go to school ready for the day.

Laetitia: Those are smooth morning, when you know what you have to do in which order, right?

Zoe: Yes.

Laetitia: And if you could have a perfect morning, what the perfect morning would look like for you?

Zoe: It would be staying in bed for like 30 minutes.

Laetitia: Yes.

Zoe: And then getting out of bed quietly, and going down to eat breakfast, and coming back up to brush my teeth. Then watching a little bit of TV, then going to school.

Laetitia: Not bad. Maybe we can try this. Ah, watching TV. Yeah, watching TV in the morning. Would you like to do that?

Zoe: Yes.

Laetitia: Okay. We'll explore this. Thank you, Zoe, for joining us on the Neurodivergent Pulse for your quick pulse check. That's a wrap for Neurodivergent Pulse. If this helped, follow the show and leave us a quick review on your favourite platform. You can even share this episode with someone who needs it. You can learn more about our platform at understandingzoe.com. Thanks for listening.