ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/signup_____What if the intensity you’ve chased in relationships wasn’t love, but dopamine?Amanda McCracken is an award winning journalist, endurance athlete, and intimacy researcher who was diagnosed with ADHD at 36, long after she had built a successful career. From the outside, her life looked accomplished and disciplined. Inside, she struggled with distraction, emotional intensity, anxiety, and a lifelong pattern of romantic fixation. In this episode, Amanda shares how ADHD showed up quietly in her life, from trichotillomania and overthinking to using extreme exercise as a form of self regulation, long before she had language for what was actually happening.The conversation centers on limerence, a psychological state of intense romantic longing marked by obsession, idealization, and emotional highs and lows. Amanda explains how limerence thrives on uncertainty, making it especially powerful for ADHD brains that crave novelty and fast dopamine. Tracy and Amanda explore how rejection sensitivity, perfectionism, and trauma can blur the line between desire and self worth, and why many women mistake intensity for connection. Amanda also shares how chasing emotionally unavailable partners became an organizing force in her life, and how that pattern kept her stuck in fantasy instead of intimacy. She also had to confront a deeper truth: real intimacy feels quieter than fantasy. Today, Amanda is married to a securely attached partner and is the author of When Longing Becomes Your Lover, a deeply personal exploration of limerence, ADHD, and what it takes to receive love instead of chasing it.Resources:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-mccracken-4716373 Website: https://www.amandajmccracken.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.mccracken.39 Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message If this podcast helps you understand your ADHD brain, Shift helps you train it. Practice mindset work in just 10 minutes a day. Learn more at tracyotsuka.com/shift Instead of Struggling to figure out what to do next? ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem. That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/aok-academy Learn more by connecting with Tracy through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or visit adhdforsmartwomen.com.Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/book2 Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/signup_____Some ADHD stories come from authors, psychologists, and researchers. This one comes from a 23-year-old ER nurse who learned early that the brain she has is exactly the one she needs.Nina Padilla spent ten years trying to get someone to take her ADHD symptoms seriously. From age thirteen through twenty-one, she told her pediatrician every year, “I think I have ADHD,” and every year she heard the same dismissal: good grades and good behavior meant she couldn’t possibly have it. It wasn't until her last semester of nursing school, during a three-day panic attack, that she finally found a therapist who listened. At 23, she was formally diagnosed with combined-type ADHD and started on Adderall.Today Nina works in the pediatric emergency room at the same hospital where she fell in love with the chaos during her final clinical rotation. She calls herself an energizer bunny, moving so fast that a pediatrician once told her, "Nina, don't fix whatever's going on up there." That was the moment she realized her ADHD wasn't a disability. It was her superpower.In this conversation, Tracy and Nina talk about growing up emotional and misunderstood, finding your people early, seeking rejection on purpose to heal rejection sensitivity, and why the ER is the perfect place for an ADHD brain that never gets bored.For any listener in their twenties who feels unsure about the future, Nina offers the clarity so many of us need at that age: follow what interests you, work with the brain you have, and stop chasing a version of “productive” that does nothing but make you miserable.Resources:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nina_izabellaSend a Message: Your Name | Email | Message If this podcast helps you understand your ADHD brain, Shift helps you train it. Practice mindset work in just 10 minutes a day. Learn more at tracyotsuka.com/shift Instead of Struggling to figure out what to do next? ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem. That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/aok-academy Learn more by connecting with Tracy through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or visit adhdforsmartwomen.com.Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/book2 Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/signup_____Gratitude is talked about a lot, but for us with ADHD brains it isn’t just a feel-good idea. It is a physiological strategy that changes how the brain functions.In this episode, Tracy breaks down why gratitude is not optional for ADHD. It starts with dopamine. ADHD brains rely on positive emotion to initiate action, sustain focus, and regulate emotion. Gratitude spikes dopamine, boosts serotonin, improves sleep, and builds the emotional foundation that makes everything else feel more doable. Tracy explains how this loop works and why even trying to think of something to be grateful for is enough to start shifting your brain chemistry.She also shares personal stories, including the impact of a daily gratitude practice, the “positive emotion dossier” she developed for A-OK, and the profound lessons she learned from a woman with ADHD living with metastatic cancer who embodied gratitude in the hardest circumstances. Tracy walks through the five levels of gratitude, the ADHD habit of scanning for what’s wrong, and how gratitude helps interrupt the spiral.This episode is both practical and encouraging, giving listeners a clear understanding of how gratitude improves executive function, stabilizes mood, strengthens habits, and helps ADHD brains filter out noise. Tracy also explores how gratitude intersects with trauma and how emotional healing can lead to post-traumatic growth. If you’ve ever wondered why gratitude matters or how to build a practice that actually works for your brain, this episode offers tools you can use immediately.Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message If this podcast helps you understand your ADHD brain, Shift helps you train it. Practice mindset work in just 10 minutes a day. Learn more at tracyotsuka.com/shift Instead of Struggling to figure out what to do next? ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem. That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/aok-academy Learn more by connecting with Tracy through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or visit adhdforsmartwomen.com.Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/book2 Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/signup_____Dr. Gilly Kahn spent years studying psychology before realizing how much of her own emotional world had been shaped by ADHD.Dr. Gilly earned a Master’s in Experimental Psychology, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and built a full clinical practice before receiving her ADHD diagnosis in her early thirties. Looking back, the signs had been there all along: migraines that never made sense, intense emotional reactions, shifting hormones, and a lifelong habit of masking so well that even she missed the patterns. Like many of us, she excelled in school and in her career, which kept her symptoms invisible until they could no longer be explained away.Now based in Atlanta, Dr. Gilly specializes in neurodiversity and emotion regulation, helping women understand the parts of ADHD that rarely get named. In this conversation, she and Tracy explore why women are so often misdiagnosed, how migraines and PMDD intersect with dopamine and estrogen, and why emotional dysregulation is often the hardest part for women who appear “put together” on the outside. Dr. Gilly also breaks down the science behind sleep, memory, and hormones, and explains why trauma is often confused with ADHD in clinical settings.Her new book, Allow Me to Interrupt, brings clarity to the experiences so many women have carried silently for years and focuses on the emotional patterns that shape women’s ADHD, from hormonal shifts to migraines to the pressure to stay composed even when everything feels overwhelming.Resources:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilly-kahn-m-a-ph-d-1996892b4  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drgillykahn Website: https://www.drgillykahn.comArticle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAg0EnN_nwN1cVTM3P9cyD1wFspLg71m/view?usp=sharingSend a Message: Your Name | Email | Message If this podcast helps you understand your ADHD brain, Shift helps you train it. Practice mindset work in just 10 minutes a day. Learn more at tracyotsuka.com/shift Instead of Struggling to figure out what to do next? ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem. That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/aok-academy Learn more by connecting with Tracy through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or visit adhdforsmartwomen.com.Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/book2 Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/signup_____When Susanne Schotanus was fifteen, she spent two years in weekly psychiatric appointments before someone finally said she had ADHD. No one explained what it meant or how to work with it. She simply left with a label that didn’t change much of anything. Years later, as a university student struggling to finish assignments she deeply loved, she realized she was still battling the same invisible barrier. That rediscovery set her on a new path that would eventually change how thousands of people think about writing.Susanne became the first person in the world to call herself an ADHD writing coach for adults. Since founding her practice, she’s helped hundreds of writers finally finish what they start, find joy in their process, and rebuild trust in their creative voice. Her work sits at the intersection of ADHD research and the craft of writing, a space where emotion, structure, and imagination can finally coexist without friction.In this episode, Susanne and Tracy talk about why consistency is a myth for ADHD writers, how perfectionism and shame shape creative blocks, and what it takes to repair a “toxic relationship” with writing. Susanne also shares how acceptance and play restore joy to the process, how writing can be healing when approached with care, and why ADHD creativity isn’t broken. She reminds us that ADHD storytelling is not messy or broken. It is multidimensional, intuitive, and deeply human.Resources:Website: https://passionatewritercoaching.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanne-schotanus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionatewritercoaching Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message If this podcast helps you understand your ADHD brain, Shift helps you train it. Practice mindset work in just 10 minutes a day. Learn more at tracyotsuka.com/shift Instead of Struggling to figure out what to do next? ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem. That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/aok-academy Learn more by connecting with Tracy through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or visit adhdforsmartwomen.com.Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/book2 Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com