In a surprise announcement to kick off Season 7 of podcast Grey Areas, host Petra Bagust has revealed she has been diagnosed with ADHD.
Best known for tackling the challenges of womanhood, ageing and mental health with guests, in this deeply personal episode of Grey Areas, Petra turns the spotlight on herself to find out exactly what happens when ADHD meets perimenopause.
“I kind of just felt right to provide this episode as an expression of my experience and embodiment of ADHD – a potpourri of ideas, voices, and really good stories,” she explains early in the episode.
Part of coming home to this neurodivergence in myself is acknowledging that I am mostly late everywhere and it's not that I don't care and it's not that it's impossible to be on time… but it is sort of impossible to be on time.
“So today I was on time for an earlier staff meeting than normal and I was even cramming in extra things – our son was sick and I was taking him to school and dropping him off because he had to go to school and he's recovering but he's feeling terrible, and I'm writing him a note in the car.
“And I was getting every green light, which was the only reason I was on time, but I'm like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, I just love this new me that's working with me’. Turns out… I had left my glasses, my AirPods, and my lunch at home. So I feel like there's bandwidth for some things, but not other things.”
In Petra’s exploration of her ADHD, she has a candid conversation with her husband Hamish about how it influences her marriage and parenting, and chats with others who are navigating the neurological condition to find out what works and what doesn’t.
She also speaks to experienced Auckland neuropsychiatrist Dr Greg Finucane about the unique challenges of having ADHD while going through perimenopause – which he says can cause “things to unravel”.
“ There's pretty good evidence that people without ADHD going through the menopausal transition can have demonstrable cognitive changes on neuropsychological testing,” he explains.
The commonest thing is verbal memory deficits. If we test by giving people a story with a lot of information in it or a big long list, [you can] see how they struggle with learning this new information and then being able to tell it back to you. So in people without ADHD, that's an issue.
“So it'd be no surprise, and it seems to be the case, that in people with ADHD who've had a tenuous adjustment or adequately compensated or whatever it is, when they get the extra cognitive hit around the perimenopause, that things unravel a bit.”
Petra says the discoveries she has made since getting diagnosed and recording the episode have “changed my life”.
“I hope this isn't the end of the conversation, more an addition to it. I hope also that this kōrero helps make space to discover more about how your beautiful brain works, both within you and in relationship to others,” she tells listeners.
“Because for my money, there isn't a better or best brain. There are multitudes of brains. We know they're all unique and we, in essence, get to look after ours so they can look after us. It makes so much sense.”
