Isn’t that every busy mom? Emotional dysregulation and ADHD (Kim Holderness’ story)

Kim felt embarrassed and like a fraud. For years, she assumed her anxiety and emotional ups and downs were simply part of the very real load many busy moms carry.

Kim and Penn Holderness — creators, authors, and the couple behind the Holderness Family — have long been surrounded by ADHD in their life and work. In a quick, sweet cameo, Penn (who also has ADHD) shares how he supports Kim in practical ways, like handling paperwork and day-to-day logistics.

• Listen: ADHD and emotional dysregulation

• Read: 3 surprising skills ADHD affects

• Watch: Are people with ADHD oversensitive?

Laura Key: So I asked her the question: "How does this present in women?" And the answer she gave stopped me in my tracks because I'm like, "Well, that can't be ADHD, because that's my brain." I thought that was every busy mom, I thought that was everybody in perimenopause, I thought that was just anybody with anxiety. And the way she described it, that fit so much better than anything else.

Hi everyone and welcome back to ADHD Aha!, the show where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. ADHD can be sneaky. Even folks who are surrounded by ADHD, have loved ones with ADHD, have a spouse with ADHD, have even written books about ADHD, can go undiagnosed for years.

That was the case for my guest today, Kim Holderness, of the Holderness family. Kim and her husband Penn do it all. They are award-winning podcast hosts, bestselling authors, and they have millions of followers across social media who adore their relatable sketch comedy and music. Kim, welcome to the show. So excited to have you here today. How are you?

Kim Holderness: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Laura: I forgot to mention that you also are the winners of season 33 of The Amazing Race.

Kim: Yes, it's a fun fact I can pull out at a cocktail party, for sure.

Laura: All right, Kim. So you were diagnosed recently.

Kim: Yes, I was diagnosed in September of last year, officially.

Laura: So tell me, what was going on at that time?

Kim: First of all, I just turned 50 last week.

Laura: Happy birthday.

Kim: Thank you. Forty-nine, deep in perimenopause — like, crazy. I've always had really bad PMS, really bad postpartum depression, so it would stand to reason that perimenopause has just been wild. My daughter also had just left for college. So I was just emotionally — there were just such huge swings. And of course, I'm like, "Oh, it's perimenopause." Everybody has told me it's perimenopause.

As a point of background, I've been in therapy my whole adult life. I started going to therapy, you know, the free therapist in college. The diagnosis was always, "Oh, you have anxiety." You have anxiety and OCD. It explained a lot, for sure, but it never truly checked all the boxes. Like, it didn't really fit. It didn't totally make sense. But, I mean, yeah, I felt anxious.

So that summer, we actually had a guest on our podcast. Her name is Dr. Amelia Kelly. She's local to us and she had written books about ADHD, and she really specializes in the treatment of women with ADHD. We had written a book called "ADHD Is Awesome" about how it kind of universally presents. It was a very general presentation because my husband and my son have ADHD. It was a very general presentation of ADHD and it did very well. We learned so much about it.

But it did not include a lot of information specifically about women. So I asked her the question: "Hey, how does this present in women? How does ADHD present differently?" And the answer she gave, it stopped me in my tracks because I'm like, "Well, that can't be ADHD, because that's my brain." Like, that's not ADHD, because that's just anxiety. That's just perimenopause. It went on and on like this, and then you take the lens and you look back at your life, and it was that aha moment.

Laura: What was it specifically about what she said that really resonated with you?

Kim: She equated the hyperactivity — so instead of, yeah, I've always been a fidgeter, I've always had a fidget toy — but she equated the hyperactivity as internal. I just thought those racing thoughts, inability to focus on one thing, having to re-read something eight times to really retain it — I just thought that was everyone.

I thought that was every busy mom, I thought that was everybody in perimenopause, I thought that was just anybody with anxiety. And the way she described it, it just felt so on the nose. That fit so much better than anything else.

Laura: How did it feel different than anxiety? Or what was the interplay between the two?

Kim: The way anxiety was explained to me was this fear of the future, fear for the uncertainty. My anxiety never really felt like that. I — in looking back over moments in my life — I would just get so dysregulated emotionally about pretty simple things.

I mean, big things, of course, yes. My daughter leaving for college, you expect that. In neurotypical people, that's going to be dysregulated. You know, we talk about The Amazing Race. I was so wildly dysregulated that entire time.

Laura: Oh, really?

Kim: Other people were having so much fun. I mean, crazy stories. And I'm like, "Oh, this is just anxiety." And looking back, I'm like, "Oh, that was the emotional dysregulation they're talking about."

Laura: Can you give me an example of that, how it played out?

Kim: I could read, like, you get a clue when you open up on The Amazing Race. And I was reading the words out loud, but nothing stuck in my brain because I was flooding. To the point where there was one episode where I had to do a bungee jump. I read "bungee jump," but it didn't process in my brain until the team next to me said, "bungee jump."

And I'm like, "Wait, there's a bungee jump?" And then when we got back to the hotel room — of course, there's no cameras there — and you're not allowed to leave the hotel room for security reasons, and I'm like, "I'm going to make a run for it. I have my credit card number memorized. What are they going to do?" I was just so — I think dysregulated fit it more than anxiety fit it.

Laura: I mean, to be fair, I think bungee jumping might dysregulate lots of people. But it was how you reacted to it is what you're saying, right?

Kim: It was — I think I had an outsized reaction. And I think a better example is probably, you know, bringing snacks to the sports team. Stuff like that. Like, the organization of it all. Like, having enough drinks and then having enough fruit snacks and if these people are allergic to this — just having, like, the list of it all, triple-checking the list. All of that stuff would set me — I would spiral over something as simple as that.

The diagnosis

Laura: The diagnosis. How did that change how you see yourself?

Kim: So the diagnosis was officially early September, and I was diagnosed with the combined type. I called my husband, who was in the car with my son, and I said, you know, like, "I caught it. I got it." You know, I know you can't catch ADHD, but trying to make light of it.

They were obviously so supportive, and they both were like, "There were signs. We knew. We totally knew."

Laura: Wait, they knew and they didn't say anything?

Kim: They — my son — I will have had a conversation in my head and then I will start mid-sentence, started saying something out loud. I'll be like, "Okay, and then..." And he says, like, I look like I'm buffering because I'm just sitting there and then I start talking out loud. So he goes, "Yeah, Mom, you're always buffering." So they knew. There were signs.

I didn't tell my mom, I didn't tell my best friends, I didn't tell the people I work with. I wasn't ready for it. It had nothing to do with shame. It had everything to do with just feeling like such a fraud because I had co-authored a book about ADHD. I saw so many of those signs in myself. Here I am — like, I have insurance and I have the privilege to get appointments and I have all this stuff — and yet, still, I didn't have a diagnosis. So I was embarrassed. I think any sort of relief I could have felt was sort of overpowered by simply feeling like a fraud.

Laura: Has that come to bear at all? Has — is that mostly in your mind, or are people actually being rude?

Kim: No, everybody has been so deeply kind. If anything, it has proved how hard it is as a woman. Or how easy it is to slip through the cracks. I do not blame any of the therapists or medical professionals I've seen before because the way it presents in my case looks so different than how it presents with my husband or my son. Everybody's different, but you would be like, "Oh, well, that makes sense. That's pretty classically ADHD."

I think the way it presents in most women, it is so easy to miss. So I was able to give myself some grace, just being reminded, like, "No, actually, you're an example of how easy it is to slip through the cracks."

Laura: One thing that you mentioned to me when we chatted last week, Kim, was anxiety felt like it was your fault, and ADHD has kind of shifted your lens on that. Can you talk about that?

Kim: Yeah, as I was able to sit there and really unravel it all, finally after I was able to process that sort of grief and fraudulent feelings, there was a sense of relief in that anxiety always felt like I had — I was creating it.

It felt like if I could meditate more, or cut out sugar, or do more yoga, that I should be able to handle delivering snacks to the tennis team without having this really huge reaction. I should be able to remember everything. I should be able to walk into a store and remember why I was there if I was able to clear my mind and do all these things. Like, anxiety was my fault. I had created it.

Whereas ADHD — you put that lens on it and it's, "Oh, you were born this way." It's not the excuse, but it is an explanation for why your brain might be programmed to do this. And I have to say, especially over the last few months, it does feel like a weight has been lifted.

Laura: I'm so happy to hear that. And it's a little bit different than what I often hear from folks. They feel like ADHD isn't valid, it's not a valid diagnosis, and that they're just lazy and they should just work harder. And, you know, I'm sorry to hear that you feel that way or have felt that way about your anxiety, which also wouldn't be your fault, right?

Kim: Correct. I think this is where I might be more advanced in the ADHD journey than the average bear, is that I know — I knew so much about ADHD. I know that you can't say to my 16-year-old son, "Just try harder." I know that there's an activation issue. So "just trying harder," I knew that was just like an awful thing to have said to an ADHD person.

Laura: From the outside, it seems like you live a pretty high-octane life. You do so much. How? How? I mean, you haven't spoken much yet about your husband Penn, who also has ADHD, and I'm just wondering, are you guys body doubling? How are you doing all this?

Kim: Is that a — what a funny... Well, he is off-camera right there writing a song right now. We are now looking back and seeing how he has supported me in ways that I needed, and that he was supporting me because of my particular brand of ADHD.

So backing up, work-wise, we do a lot. But you are seeing our life three minutes at a time. We can be very prolific creatively, but then I think there's a point where Penn and I, we stop. We don't have eight hours a day of high productivity every single day. I think we have spurts and then we allow ourselves to rest because we consider that part of the creative process. But also, I think our brains require that.

And also we have help. Like, we have help on our team that we work with, we have help around the house. We do not do all of this on our own. But in our home, in our personal life, I — for a long time, I can't sign a contract. I can't do paperwork. I can't fill out camp — like, our kids don't go to camp or never went to camp. They went to camp one time because the paperwork was too overwhelming.

Laura: An absolute nightmare.

Kim: Yeah, I mean, they went one summer and I'm like, "I can never do that again." Getting the kids' physical forms filled out — Penn has always taken that over because I was like, "It causes me physical pain to do paperwork." Like, there were signs, right?

And to the point where I'm not allowed to buy plane tickets anymore because I consistently misspelled my name. I bought them to the wrong city. Bought them on the wrong dates. Like, I have never once successfully purchased plane tickets to the right place with the right person's name or birthday.

Laura: Oh my god, Kim, I'm relating so hard. We took our — we're very fortunate, we took our kids to Disney World for their birthdays just a few weeks ago.

Kim: Nice.

Laura: We get to the airport. It's four in the morning. It was just chaos. We couldn't get in early enough, even though we had gotten there like three hours early. And then we get up to the TSA agent and he's like, "Your name doesn't match what's on your credit card."

Kim: Yes.

Laura: This is every time I fly.

Kim: I did that with Southwest. My name is Kim Holderness, and I had filled out most recently that my name is Kim Holder. And so they couldn't get through. But Penn has ADHD. So he has ADHD, so I asked him because I had made it to Austin somehow, but I couldn't get back because I messed up my — I couldn't find my boarding pass because I'd misspelled it. And so he's in my email, and I was feeling really embarrassed and I was like, "How do you do this? If it's because of my ADHD that this is happened, how are you so good?"

Laura: Yeah, because his instinct is to not do it either, but he really focuses.

Penn Holderness: Not to correct you.

Kim: What happened?

Penn: I do it because it's a personal interest to me.

Kim: Penn is speaking if you can't hear him. Wait, come over here, come over here, say it into the microphone.

Laura: He can make a cameo.

Penn: Okay, so I was trying to explain the interest-based nervous system — that we do well at things if they are challenging, new, or novel, or of personal interest. And it's a personal interest for my wife to like me. And so for that reason, that — like me helping her — jibes with my ADHD more than if I actually had to do it for myself. Sorry to interrupt this interview, but I was right over there and I...

Laura: We needed a cameo. I love it.

Laura: Things that are fodder for the content that you and Penn family create, a lot of them are ADHD challenges. My favorite is always the "It's Gonna Be May" video. Did you realize that when you were making that content, or are you just looking back and thinking about it now?

Kim: No. But again, that is why I thought, and because they related to so many people, that is why I thought everybody was dealing with it. Because we would talk about the overwhelm of, you know, the parent-teacher conferences and the end of school this and that. Like, we would talk about that as overwhelming. And I do think it is.

Laura: It is, yeah.

Kim: For any person, it absolutely is. But again, that is one of the reasons why I thought it was everybody, because anything we talked about, people related to it. But again, looking back, you're like, "Oh, there were signs."

Laura: Yeah, I mean, they are challenging for everybody. They're extra challenging for folks with ADHD. What we're talking about with the "It's Gonna Be May" video is, like, when at the end of the school year, all the things that parents have to do for their kids start piling on. I mean, we're at that point right now as we record. It's coming and I'm gearing up for it, girding my loins. And thankfully I have a lot of friends who they just know me and they just — they're like, "Hey, by the way, the bake sale is tomorrow." Or like, "There's a half-day on Thursday." And I'm like, "Really? Why?"

Kim: So we have a foreign exchange student for two and a half weeks. So I have a group of moms, I'm like, "Could you just in the morning, if you were to think of it — not to put more mental load on you — but if there's like a packed lunch situation, could you hit me up just as like a cue?" And they are so — I love having organized friends. It's such a hack. They have been so helpful of the, "Okay, remember, send in money for this today." I'm like, "Yeah."

Laura: I think earlier on in the interview I mentioned body doubling. Is that a term that you and Penn ever use when you're working on things together?

Kim: Yes. So we work in different places in the house, which is helpful because we both get distracted. So we're up here and I'm in his office right now, which is why he was here writing a song. So we do separate during the workday.

But there are moments when we will go down to the kitchen table if we're both just in writing mode, and just need to be — you know, we set a timer and we'll say, "Okay, let's go for 25 minutes and like see what happens." Again, like we've always done this — of, you know, we're setting an alarm for 30 minutes and seeing what we can get done housework-wise, giving ourselves a 10-minute break to, you know, play a game, play some music, and then getting back for 30 minutes. Like, we do stuff in chunks. And it only works if we're all doing it.

Because I did realize that my husband, my son, are very — they want to be helpful. They don't want to leave their stuff all around, but if we were all doing it together, they were very — and we made it a contest, we made it a game — they were more likely to engage.

Laura: So how did Penn react when he found out you had ADHD? I know he was like, "I knew it," but was there anything else to his reaction that's notable for you?

Kim: He was so deeply kind. I think because my reaction was, "Oh no, if people find out they're going to hate me because I'm such a fraud." But he was — I've said this — if anybody gets diagnosed with ADHD, they have to call Penn Holderness because he's going to make them feel so good about their brain.

And he immediately was my hype squad, which was, "Look at what you've done with your life having ADHD, and yet you still have accomplished X, Y, Z, even with all these things working against you. Look at what you've done. Now that you know, look what you're going to do." He was just — yeah, he's all-time hype man.

Laura: That's wonderful. Oh, I'm so happy that you guys have each other.

Kim: I know, he's pretty great.

Laura: Is he listening to you right now?

Kim: He just came back in.

Laura: Oh, he heard a compliment, so he was like, "I'm going to come back in."

Kim: He's hot, too. Now he's not listening to me.

Laura: So what are you guys working on right now? Anything that you want to share or plug?

Kim: We have a second children's book coming out in September and it's all about how to get it done and have fun. We are hopefully working on a young readers' edition of "ADHD Is Awesome." I think making it accessible to maybe the 10- to 12-year-olds I think will be huge.

Laura: Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And your first children's book was called "All You Can Be with ADHD."

Kim: Yeah.

Laura: Kim, is there anything else that you want to share before we hop off?

Kim: This has been great and I love the work you're doing and the work Understood is doing. And it's — it is interesting to do the deep dive and go back to listen before I was listening as somebody who was trying to be an ally and an advocate of people with ADHD, and now I'm listening as someone who has it and it's a whole new world. So thank you for what you do.

Laura: Well, thank you for listening. We're happy to have you in the club, Kim. You're not a fraud. You definitely have ADHD and I mean that as a compliment. All right, thanks again, Kim. It's been great chatting with you.

Kim: You as well.

Laura: Thanks for listening. As always, if you want to share your own aha moment, email us at ADHDaha@understood.org or send a message to our voicemail inbox. You'll find a link in the show notes along with resources and links to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

ADHD Aha! is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine!

Jessamine Molli: Hi everyone!

Laura: And edited by Alyssa Shea. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive producers are Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.