Episode 321: ADHD Sleep Expert: How to Work With Your Neurodivergent Nocturnal Patterns

Living Well with ADHD
Written By Kate Moryoussef

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This week's episode: How often do you feel completely exhausted all day, yet when you get yourself to bed early, your brain switches on, and you're unable to sleep?

You do everything you're told to: no screens, no caffeine, a cool dark room, yet your brain is still filled with thoughts, to-do lists and the things you said 5 years ago.

But the reality is, for ADHD brains, sleep isn't a habit problem... It's a neurological problem. And the standard advice around skeeo hygiene and behaviour was never built with us in mind.

This week on The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast, I'm joined by ADHD sleep expert, Heather Darwall-Smith, a psychotherapist specialising in sleep, with a particular focus on adults with ADHD.

Heather was herself diagnosed with ADHD late in life, and that lived experience sits alongside her clinical expertise in everything she does. Her new book, The ADHD Sleep Book: A Compassionate Guide for the Wired and Overtired Brain, is the first book dedicated specifically to ADHD and sleep.

In this episode, we explore:

  • Why 75% of people with ADHD experience chronic sleep problems

  • Chronotypes, body clocks, and ADHD sleep disorders explained

  • Heather's late ADHD diagnosis: from panic attacks and bipolar misdiagnosis to clarity

  • How the ADHD stress response causes hyperarousal and disrupted sleep at night

  • ADHD medication timing and sleep: why getting both right is so complex

  • How family sleep beliefs and intergenerational patterns affect ADHD rest

  • Phone addiction, sleep, and navigating different sleep needs as a couple

  • The hidden link between ADHD, binge eating, and sleep apnea

  • Why perfectionism and insomnia feed each other in the ADHD brain

  • Hormones, perimenopause, and ADHD, sleep, and when to get your bloods checked

Heather brings a unique blend of neuroscience, psychology, personal experience and genuine compassion to a topic that so many of us have struggled with in silence. If you have ever felt like you're the only one who can't sleep or just need to try harder, this episode is for you.

The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live Event Recording is here!

My first-ever ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live event sold out, and now the full experience is available to you wherever you are, whenever it feels right.

Alongside three neuro-affirming experts, we spent four hours exploring the questions that matter most to women diagnosed late. Get lifetime access here!

Inside the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live Recording, you'll find:

  • Kate Moryoussef on post-diagnosis growth and her gentle framework for what comes next

  • Dr Hannah Cullen on the neuroscience of ADHD and why your brain works the way it does

  • Hannah Miller on reconnecting with purpose through a neurodivergent lens

  • Adele Wimsett myth-busting on hormones, HRT, progesterone and perimenopause

Understand yourself more deeply, feel less alone, and finally access the expert knowledge you deserve. Because every woman with ADHD deserves access to the knowledge, expertise and understanding that for too long simply hasn't been available to us.

To get lifetime access for £44, click here.

Links and Resources:

Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed women with ADHD find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.

Kate Moryoussef https://www.adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk
Next

Episode 320: Sustainable ADHD Success: Creating an Aligned Career According to your Energy and Natural Rhythms