This week, I’m talking with Dr. Jessica Stern about ADHD, mental health, and trauma. Dr. Stern is a licensed clinical psychologist, consultant, and clinical assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. Her areas of specialty are depression, anxiety, ADHD in adults, and trauma, as well as burnout, productivity, and corporate wellness.
In our conversation today, we discuss the intersection of ADHD and trauma, the need for routine and structure while still maintaining our need for spontaneity. We also get into the importance of support networks and how we can also check in with ourselves.
Additionally, we also talked about Wondermind, a mental fitness company that Dr. Stern is serving as an advisor. Wondermind was co-founded by Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefey and just launched their own podcast Baggage Drop which features short 10-minute episodes to help with mental health and build habits.
Clinical psychologist | Jessica B. Stern, PhD (drjessicabstern.com)
William: All right. Well, it's great to have you here. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Jessica Stern: Absolutely. So I am a clinical psychologist and a consultant. And essentially, what I do is I do a variety of different types of things to help different types of people with whatever they need to live their best life. So I do therapy where I work with individuals in individual and group therapy.
I also am a consultant where I work with companies anywhere from startups to Fortune 500 companies to help them figure out how to reduce burnout, increase productivity, help with workplace stress and those types of things. I also am a radio host. So I host Dr. Radio on SiriusXM, specifically the Psychiatry Show, which is such a great joy of mine.
I'm also an advisor for WonderMind, which is a mental fitness company co-founded by Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefi, where we talk about mental health in approachable ways. And recently actually just had the launch of our podcast called Baggage Drop, which was super exciting. And so happy to tell you a little bit more about that. And the last major thing that I do, in addition to some of those other media things, is I'm a medical reviewer for Self Magazine, where I take a look at articles and make sure that they are up to par in terms of evidence and make sure that they are easy to read for the audience. So I love chatting with people about all kinds of things, mental health-related and making it tangible and digestible for all types of struggles.
William: Awesome, yeah and I love that piece about you going in and being like, yeah, we've got to check for the evidence on these things because it's always an evolving field and things are different than they were ten years ago. And I will always find when I'm doing shows, I'll be like, oh, I know this idea and then I'll go and check and that's not true anymore. Gotta update my thinking on this.
Jessica Stern: Yeah, and I think you're totally right. And I think what makes that even more difficult is social media moves so quickly. And we know that it can spread information like wildfire. And I think in particular, TikTok, I think is a culprit for this. And I think how that relates to what you were just talking about is that people don't necessarily have enough time to be able to validate the information because it's moving so fast.
And so it's really important to sort of slow down some of that information seeking and gathering and look at it and decide, is this actually legit or not so much?
William: Whatever my wife or I sent something from TikTok, we're like, oh yeah, I learned this on TikTok, rain of salt here. Exactly. Because there's a lot of really good information, but then there's also stuff that spreads just because it sounds good.
Jessica Stern: Exactly. I think that's so true, which can be dangerous.
William: What always comes to mind for me is the idea of things being out of sight, out of mind, also being object permanence.
Jessica Stern: Yes, good point.
William: People are like, oh yeah, ADHD has object permanence, but that's a different term. It means something different. So another thing I wanted to hit on there too from what you were talking about. So you refer to Wondermind as a mental fitness company, and that seems like a really interesting term to me.
Jessica Stern: Wondermind is the first mental fitness company out there, which basically means that it is a company devoted towards helping people practice strategies, utilize skills that they have and tools that they have in a regular fashion so that they maintain the health of their mind.
So basically, what happened with the inception of the company is Selena and her mom Mandy were sort of looking at the world around them and said, you know, we have fitness companies that are focused on our bodies in which we practice exercises and all kinds of stretches and things like that to maintain the physical well-being of our bodies. Why don't we apply that concept to our minds? And the idea is that we put out information content out there, started doing events recently where we help people feel empowered to understand how their mind works and how to utilize strategies and skill sets to practice. Maybe it's more positive thinking or increasing social engagement with people that are healthy for you, boundaries, all kinds of things like that. So taking skills, taking tools, taking exercises and implementing them into your life in a regular way and whatever is sustainable for you and whatever aligns with your particular values.
William: That's awesome because I love the idea of being more proactive with our mental health because when we are in crisis, we do need help then, but it's so much harder to get the help we need.
I know I've gone through a number of depressive episodes in my life and it's been like, that's when I need therapy, but it's like, because of depression, I don't want to get therapy.
Jessica Stern: Yeah. And I think that's exactly what we want to be able to empower people to do is to be proactive about it. Now, every human out there is going to have either a tough day or a tough month or a tough season of their life. And so they might need to amp up the strategies and the resources that they're using in that particular time.
But whatever we can do to build a really strong toolkit to have on the regular can be really helpful. And for some people, something we preach a lot as mental health professionals is to consider seeking treatment when you need it. Now, therapy is wonderful and I do a lot of therapy and I'm thinking that for some people, it's not sufficient. For some people, it's not accessible either. Or exactly like you're saying, sometimes there are times in our life where it's really hard to engage with the things that we know that we need, but there's a little bit of friction between where we are and that particular resource or strategy. So whatever we can do to grab onto the lowest hanging fruit in those moments and slowly start to increase our engagement with our resources can be valuable and just building it up so that we have a variety of different techniques available to us.
William: Yeah, I think that's critical for people to be able to have access to that because it's hard to do when you need it, especially with my audience with ADHD. It's not a disorder of not knowing what to do. It's a disorder of not knowing how to do those that's like make those things happen.
So then there's also this podcast baggage drop, which I was also really excited to hear was like 10 minutes long, which I was like, that fits right in with what my audience loves. Because when I'm not doing interviews, I'm doing 10 to 15 minute episodes because it's hard to keep up for an hour on those big episodes on things.
Jessica Stern: So that's exactly why we did it that way. So baggage drop is a sort of limited series that we started and season one came out this past May, May 2023. And essentially what we did is we created a 12 session podcast that was oriented towards helping people build habits in their life. And there are 12 sessions, so three for every four weeks that we did it.
And you can go back, they're evergreen, you can go back and listen to them as many times as you need. And each session teaches a little bit of a different skill or a different concept or theme and gives you something to think about for the next episode. And then there are small, very manageable exercises that you can utilize if you want to help you build any habits or goals that you want to set. And we have worksheets that correspond with each week.
And again, they're very, very manageable. So we wanted this to be something that people can implement and not feel overwhelmed by. We want to do the opposite of overwhelm people. We want to reduce overwhelm. And so that's exactly the way that we designed it for that particular reason.
William: That's awesome. Was there a particular focus for this first season?
Jessica Stern: Yeah. So the focus for this particular season was about building habits. And then in future seasons, we're going to look at other types of things, other fun concepts and themes. But this particular season was about building habits.
William: I also like the idea of doing podcasts and seasons because it's for me particularly, like, you know, it's kind of as a doing content creation can be kind of a grind or just doing weekend, week out. And I've been good about being like, OK, I need to take time off and just throw up some previous episodes that people seem to resonate with. But the idea of doing like seasonal work, I think, is important for all content creators to start looking at doing because I see so many of the people I like following going into burnout because they can't keep up with it.
Jessica Stern: I think that's spot on. It's hard to especially when something is open ended like a podcast for a lot of people, they can feel fairly uninspired or they can feel like they run out of ideas or just really run out of stamina. And so if you can create it such that it's close ended chapters or in this case, seasons, then it gives you an opportunity to sort of close up shop, walk away from it a little bit, regain some inspiration.
If you need to also reduce a little bit so that way you have more time and energy to go on to the next season. And that exactly like you're saying can really reduce some of the burnout. And I think this concept can be applied to so many different types of people, not just podcasters. I'm sure there are people in your audience who are listening who might be able to implement this concept to other areas of their life.
William: A lot of the times we think of like burnout being like, oh, I just need to go on a vacation and then I'll be cured. But it's as soon as you come back, then what I've always found is like, oh, OK, now I have the work that I didn't do on vacation, plus the new work I need to do and I have more work and I'm going back to the same system that led me to burnout the first time.
Jessica Stern: Yep, which is I think so frustrating for a lot of people because they're hoping reasonably, they're hoping that that vacation will be the thing that they need to come out of whatever state of burnout that they're in. But really, it just was a distraction, like a temporary distraction. Now, vacations are crucial.
Definitely important. Like, please, if you're listening out there, go take your vacation, you deserve it. But exactly like you're saying that the vacation is frequently not going to fix the burnout, it's that you need to look at the system that you're in and figure out what's actually leading to the burnout. So instead of trimming. the plants, you want to pull the weeds, right? You want to look at what is actually propagating that burnout and go from the ground up.
William: Yeah. For me, what I've found a lot is also these expectations I've put on myself about how much needs to get done, especially with my ADHD is like, I want to do all the things, I want to do them all the time, and I'll write a to-do list and it's five pages long, and I'm like, I'm going to do all of this next week. And I'm like, I need to do one to two things on that list per day at most.
Jessica Stern: Yeah. And I think that leads to a good combination of values and prioritization. And this is a lot of the work that I do with the folks with ADHD that I treat. And it's interesting because I actually recently came out with a digital workbook for ADHD that's available on my website. And actually, this is the first time I'm announcing this.
So you get the first dibs, but I'm actually going to be releasing an online course about how to manage your ADHD and things like that. And one of my favorite things to talk about is how to figure out what your values are and to sort through those. And then exactly like you're saying, how to figure out what your priorities are and to readjust. Because I think one of the things that I hear people say is one of the bigger struggles is that they don't know how to prioritize. They have like 75 things on their list that all seem really important and they all need to get done.
And some things have been hanging out on that list for a long period of time. And then people will say, I don't know where to start. Like how do I even figure out how to prioritize? So I think exactly like you're saying, if you can figure out first of all, what's important to you. And then also readjust your sense of urgency. Because I think what happens is a lot of the times, especially in today's day and age, we feel like everything is urgent and everything is time sensitive.
And then if everything is time sensitive, then nothing is time sensitive. And so to be able to re-engage that and create a little bit more of a spectrum of urgency gives us an opportunity to think a little bit more critically about how we want to prioritize things.
William: I love the point about urgency too, because when I was thinking about urgency over this year, I was like, oh, I am using that urgency to create the dopamine to do everything I need to do, which means that when I try and do non-urgent tasks, I'm missing a piece of what I need to get started. And so that makes it much harder to get started on things that are the important but not urgent stuff. Totally.
Jessica Stern: And we know that that's probably one of the bigger struggles of ADHD. And this is true for folks without ADHD too, but is especially true for ADHD. Especially when a task is boring or uninteresting, that you definitely don't want to do the task or it's so much less likely that you want to do the task. Sometimes you have to do it.
You don't have a choice. And so how do you hack that type of scenario such that you can get it done, even if it's not fun, or even it feels like something that's dreadful or whatever, it might then do it so that way you can move on with the rest of your task list?
William: Yeah, because while urgency is a great way to create that drive to do things, it was like, oh, I need to move away from doing that because it's going to just perpetuate the cycle of relying on urgency. I loved what you're saying too about looking at the values first for prioritization because often, yeah, it's hard to prioritize when we don't know what's important because we don't know what we value the most. If you do like value-based prioritization, you're like, oh, yeah, I know who I am.
I know what I want and this task aligns with what I want. Certainly, there are things that we have to do that won't align with our values, but when you break it down, it's like, oh yeah, okay, I want to be a good standing member of my community. So then, yeah, then I sign, okay, that means I do pay my taxes on time. Like, okay, well, okay, that fits with my values, then I guess that's something I want to be doing.
Jessica Stern: I think that's exactly it. I'm so glad you said that because if something remains on our task list and we think that it's not values aligned, but it's still on our list, there's usually a reason it's on our list.
And usually, it's because it is in support of another value. So let's say you have to do something for your job that is really boring, you don't want to do it, it feels like it's going to be a drag, but you got to do it, right? If you didn't have to do it, you'd probably take it off your to-do list, but it's still there, which means that it needs to be done. If you really dig deep, the reason that you want to do it or the reason that you should do it or need to do it is maybe because you want to be ready for promotion or maybe you just don't want to get fired, right?
Maybe it's that simple. And so it can be in support of some of these other things, which is it supports my value of maintaining solid employment, let's say, or something like that. And so figuring out what it is at the core of it and how it can actually support maybe a different value. Like maybe let's say there's a home task that you need to do, there's some sort of chore that you really don't want to do, but let's say your partner has asked you to do it and your partner's taking a different task and you've split up the tasks evenly and equitably. Let's say you still don't want to do that task, right?
But it is important to you to satisfy your partner and to create equity in your relationship, then maybe doing that task that you're dreading is actually supporting a different value that's important to you. And in that case, it's worthwhile doing.
William: Yeah, just reframing how we're viewing the task and then being like, okay, this is something that's important for me to do. And that can make a lot of difference. You know, when I like go, oh, I value having a clean house and I know it's hard, what are the small things I can do, like making sure that the dishes get done every night or something, then that makes it easier to be like, oh, this is aligning with what I want. And that could also be like, okay, well, maybe it's not that I want a clean house, but I know that when things aren't a complete mess, it's easier for me to focus because there's not so much visual distraction going on.
Exactly. I think these are really good ideas for people to be thinking about. And then as we get back to kind of like the burnout idea, like I view myself as valuing having health and wellness and energy. And so that means, okay, I need to do less. I need to stay away from the idea of doing too much. There's always more to do. I'm never going to like run out of things to do.
Jessica Stern: No, that's so true. Like we're always going to have more things that are going to pop up.
William: And I imagine if I did get to that end of the to do list, I'd be like, well, time to find new stuff to do. Yeah. Well, now I can finally pick up those hobbies I've been putting off.
Jessica Stern: And the funny thing is a lot of people, including a lot of people that ADHD actually don't do well with idle time anyway. And so if they're going to have that idle time, that time that theoretically, by some stretch of the imagination, wouldn't have any task lists on our list to do, people are going to try and find something else to fill it with because they don't like just sitting around.
I mean, some people do, I shouldn't say nobody does. But oftentimes, if we have probably long periods of quiet, or if we don't have goals that we're working towards, we might try and find a way to fill that. And hopefully what we're doing is we're filling it with values aligned things and not just fluff that's going to actually just make us burnt out all over again.
William: I talk a lot about how with ADHD, the laziness doesn't exist. Because I'm looking at like, oh, lazy is like when you're choosing not to do things because you don't want to do them. But with ADHD, we want to do all these things. We just have trouble making it happen.
Jessica Stern: I so resonate with that. And something I talk a lot about is that laziness is usually due to other things like feeling overwhelmed, potentially feeling anxious about something, not knowing where to start. Like let's say you have a really big project you need to do, but you don't know where to start. A lot of people say I feel frozen.
I like, I just don't know where to start. That can be another form of a procrastination that looks like laziness, but isn't laziness. So there are a lot of reasons that we can quote unquote look lazy when actually it's really much more substantial than that.
William: Yeah, or it could just be that we're getting burnt out. Do we need the rest? And we're responding to that like, oh, I need to take the time to let my body catch up. Absolutely.
Jessica Stern: It's crucial. It's crucial. We need to.
William: Yeah, I recently took some time off to visit some friends and go to my high school 20 reunion. And like, I did a lot less there than I was expecting to do. But like when I came back, I was like, I feel amazing compared to how I did like the week before, just because it was one of my first like accidental actual vacations in a long time. That's amazing. Didn't hurt that it was in Hawaii.
No, never does. It's like, oh, nice and chill. So when I was also looking through your bio and like what you focused on, one of the things that really interested me was so we had things like trauma, PSD, anxiety, depression, substance use, and then it's also ADHD. And I'm just like, those are all like one category in my brain now because of the comorbidities and how much they overlap.
Jessica Stern: It's funny that you say that because oftentimes when people ask me what my specialties are, and I'll say that they'll be like, oh, that's so many different things. And my response is actually very similar to what you just said. And I'll say actually, there is a lot of overlap. Like, it's not like it's just a bunch of random diagnoses.
There's actually a tremendous amount of overlap. We know that most people with ADHD also have depression and or anxiety. There's also a lot of overlap between ADHD and PTSD. And so they frequently ride together.
William: Yeah, I've recently written some stuff about trauma in my life and the number of people that like responded to that being, oh my God, I had no idea that there was this relationship between trauma and ADHD. And I'm like, yeah, which is interesting because I'm like, oh, I think it's for me, the idea is that the trauma exacerbates the symptoms of ADHD because it can look like it's like, oh, this is causing ADHD, but it's, you know, a genetic disorder. So that's not exactly right either.
Jessica Stern: Yeah, it really can exacerbate ADHD. And for people who experience trauma as children, what can be tricky is deciphering the difference between where the ADHD line starts and where the trauma line starts. Because ADHD is typically starting to manifest in children. And so when the trauma also happens in childhood, they're sort of happening, they're developing at the same time.
And that can be really tricky to decipher. And because there is a lot of overlap, we know that, for instance, difficulties with attention is present in both post-traumatic stress disorder and obviously ADHD. And so they can really feed off of one another. And what I'll oftentimes see people say is that if their PTSD is a little bit heightened at any given time in a particular season of their life, or if they're feeling particularly triggered by something, that their ADHD symptoms can flare up a little bit more, even if it's largely well-regulated or managed.
William: Yeah, which is just so interesting to think about, like, yeah, how the overlaps do cause flare ups and all these other things. Because even with all therapy and coaching stuff I've done, I'm like, I'm always going to have ADHD. It's not going to go away. But I'm going to be able to manage better, have better coping strategies. And even if it's all there, I'll still be able to function.
Jessica Stern: Yeah, exactly. It's all about management. It's all about developing that toolkit that we were talking about before to help you manage. And some of the most successful people I know have ADHD. And I think there's this awful myth, and I think probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast have experienced this either personally or have seen it, where people will feel like if they have ADHD, they can't be successful. Or maybe as kids, they were told that they wouldn't be successful because they would be all over the place and they wouldn't be able to focus on a particular journey or whatever it might be. And we know that to be wildly untrue.
We know that people who have ADHD can actually really thrive. And it's just about learning how to manage some of those things that might potentially require a little bit of compensation, maybe a little bit of attention management and some other things and organizational and task management and all that kind of stuff. But if you really have that in a good lockdown, then you can really do a lot. And I think also it's just about being flexible and knowing that different seasons of your life are going to require different tools and techniques. And so those might vary over the course of time and that's okay.
William: Yeah, you need to have the support systems in place and realize that your needs are going to be seasonal as well. Like exercise is such an important thing for ADHD. And that's going to be a very seasonal thing about like, I live in Washington state and right now I have sunlight all the time. I can get outside and exercise really easily.
In the winter, it gets dark at 4pm. And I'm like, okay, well, guess I'm gonna have to do something inside. So being flexible is important. This is dichotomy of ADHD where we're like, we want to do all the things. We feel like we're very flexible, but with our routines and habits, it's like you break the habit and it's like done.
Jessica Stern: That's true. I very strongly believe that for meaningful management of ADHD, there needs to be a healthy balance between spontaneity and routine. So we know that people with ADHD tend to really enjoy and really love spontaneity. And at the same time, also find that spontaneity might feel great, but actually they need routine structure in order to actually get through some of the important tasks or habits that they need to accomplish. And so if you can find a way to manage both and to balance both, like allowing your mind to feed on the dopamine of the spontaneity while also having meaningful structure and routine in place, that can take you far.
William: What are the biggest keys for that for a lot of people is having supportive community that you can fall back on when you need those things. Yeah. I think that's something that falls out in a lot of conversations is that how important community is for maintaining your mental health and for you maintaining your systems.
Jessica Stern: Having people in your life who understand what you might need is important. So for instance, in the fall, I'm going to be starting a new group for couples where one or both members of the couple actually have ADHD. And the idea is to help people's partners understand what it's like to have ADHD so that way the relationship can really thrive in the context of ADHD.
And I think that really gets at your point too, which is that sort of community and social support network is really crucial for helping people figure out how they can utilize the people around them.
William: One of the things I do with my kids who are both diagnosed at this point is that like, I'm like, okay, they're trying their best right now, but we need to figure out something different so that we can like, okay, we're going to start off with the assumption that they're trying their best. And then we're going to be like, okay, how can I help them get to what they want to do to keep their room clean or whatever? Because a lot of times, they're like my daughter's room right now, which is just like a complete disaster. And I'm like, it's not her fault. It's our organization system for her clothes and her toys.
That's not good. And if we can figure out a system that will work for her, this isn't going to be as big of an issue. Yeah, totally. I think that's great.
I have two children, three siblings, and a spouse who all have ADHD at this point. So they all get it. You know, I'll be texting with my older sister and be like, what? And they'll like disappear for days. And I'm like, oh, this isn't personal. This is just, they forgot about text existing, you know, and giving them benefit of that and be like, hey, just want to check back in about this. Yeah. So is there anything you wanted to leave the audience with?
Jessica Stern: I would say, I think to this point that we're talking about is be flexible and to test out your systems and to audit your life and your structures semi regularly in a non-judgmental way. So if you find that you're going through different phases of your life and you need different things, just to kind of check in with yourself and say, is my task management working for me? Are my boundaries working for me? Am I able to manage all of the different responsibilities that I have? Do I need to say yes more?
Do I need to say no more? So checking in with yourself to see what's working and what's not working. And this is something I talk a lot about in the first three episodes of Baggage Drop is asking yourself what's working and what's not working. And I think this is really important for ADHD because sometimes people are operating on autopilot. And so being able to pause and just regularly check in a little bit more often can be helpful. So that way, if you need to shift gears a little bit, you can do that in a way that is a little bit more intentional.
William: If people want to find out more about you, where might they be able to find you? Yeah.
Jessica Stern: So you can find me on my website, which is drjessicabstern.com. So Jessica B. Stern, S-T-E-R-N, dot com.
You can also find me on Instagram, and my handle is drjessicabstern as well. Awesome.
William: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jessica Stern: Of course. Thanks so much for having me. This was great.