Unmasking ADHD: A Life Coach's Journey to Empowering Physicians with Michael Carlini

Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. Hey guys this is Dr Mike boang welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD this is a podcast for physic and Healthcare entrepreneurs as you know from time to time we like to Spotlight coaches and Consultants who are making a difference in the medical community and we certainly have one who is and and this is certainly a topic that I have not seen covered so I'm really excited to hear about from him and his expertise and Sharing with this uh we're going to be talking about ADHD and what we have who we have here today is a certified life coach specializing in supporting medical professionals with ADHD leveraging his own personal experience with ADHD and his Clos family of healthcare professionals uh this gentleman brings a unique understanding and perspective to his clients he recognizes the immense pressure faced by those working in the demanding medical field and how ADHD can further complicate challenges like time management focus and Work life balance through personalized coaching he equips medical professionals with practical strategies to overcome these obstacles build strong and meaningful relationships and create a fulfilling life Beyond medicine his mission is not only to help his client survive but to thrive both personally and professionally like to bring to the program Michael Carini Michael how are you doing today doing great how are you Mike great and If I didn't mention Michael is the founder of Carini coaching which focuses on ADHD um uh ADHD for medical treat for medical professional so Michael let's let's talk about it uh you mentioned in the bio uh that you have personally have uh you know have dealt with ADHD as well as um uh with your family talk a little bit more about that well which one would you like me to start with because I can talk about my personal experience um definitely Let's start with there yeah so I was actually diagnosed at a pretty young age um I I presented as the stereotypical boy who was a little bit hyperactive but did well enough in class so um basically once my parents started to hear about that they had already kind of seen ADHD and my cousins and so when it came up it wasn't a surprise started me on medication that kind of started my journey in terms of uh having ADHD and and Like receiving treatment and having intervention so that's really where it started um and honestly throughout my life the goal was actually to avoid really looking at it and understanding it because it was it felt like it was going to be too painful to really dive into what is wrong with me um eventually As I Grew Older actually entered into coaching I realized that if I can lean into this and Understand myself a lot better I can feel a lot more confident in who I am and find ways that I can truly perform to the level that I want to um so that's my general experience I understand that there's a lot of stigma that's felt in being open or disclosing your ADHD within the workplace um as a teacher it was one of those things that when I disclosed that my uh department head really didn't uh understand it nor did he think It was an asset to the school so um yeah it it was pretty painful to to be open and honest about it but uh in reality it actually helped me to be more successful within that environment so you mentioned you ADHD you suffered it as a child um how was it first brought up was it from the teachers was it from your own parents or family members I think it it's Unique in that once you know what it looks like you Start to be able to spot it pretty much uh anywhere it's showing up and so I my parents definitely recognized it early but they were more or less probably waiting for teachers to say hey your your son is like having some difficulties sitting still or um kind of controlling that impulse to just answer the questions before being called on and you mentioned you were on medications did you also have a coach or or any other type of ways to treat this Besides a drugs yeah absolutely so I actually started working with a coach in college and um Casey Dixon she she now focuses primarily on working with lawyers uh with ADHD and the inter intervention that I received from her really helped me to say okay well what is this actually doing like what is ADHD actually doing in terms of like how is it impacting my academic success and it went so much further than I'm having difficulty with focusing and It went more into like having difficulties with activating for tasks on time um having difficulties with organization and prior prioritization um so that's really what opened my eyes in terms of understanding myself my ADHD and then really like well how do I approach these challenges in a way that is friendly for my brain you also uh mentioned you became a teacher and then you said it affected your career uh um can can you can you talk a little bit more about That if you're able to so as I'll be as vulnerable as as uh I can be about this because I think that's really important um I think so many people with ADHD have these very challenging experiences and the the reaction to that is generally to hide it and feel like I can't share this with anybody else so um as a teacher I I taught biology I actually have a degree in biology and I decided late in my um degree that I really enjoyed teaching I was a ta uh for a lot of biology classes in undergraduate and I just decided this is actually really exciting and engaging and I really want to inspire the next generation of of students to really fall in love with nature um and biology in general so following that I I pretty much pursued a uh teaching career um because of course I want to make lives better for the next Generation Um and yeah so getting into that environment being a teacher it requires you to do a lot a lot a lot of work and a lot of it not uh super well compensated for but um yeah it it was particularly challenging because it required me to do a lot of organization um prioritization and giving direct feedback to a lot of a lot of students so Um the way it impacted me is that my one of my biggest strengths is actually being able to be creative and create lessons that were truly engaging so for example um with the human anatomy and physiology class that I was teaching to seniors we used an uino to create um a heart rate sensor um so they had to learn how to program it um put it all together and really uh explain how it works so Really great at that Innovative lab creation but that means that I also feel like okay well if I'm capable of doing this level of work this level of engaging lesson planning I should be doing that all the time but in reality you know trying to do that for all of my classes every week uh just too much right so it led to this kind of cycle of uh high performance burn out which led to a little bit of a crash and Then recovery and then keep on going like that but those periods of burnout meant that sometimes things would get rated a little bit later than was expected um and so that eventually caught the attention of of uh the administration um what I was really what heard since leaving this AC like this teaching environment is that a lot of teachers actually get great mentorship and support in terms of like navigating those first two or three years but In general I wasn't given any of that so it was it made it even harder on me to to find some success in that environment um but yeah I hope that answer your question um yeah yeah and I appreciate thank you for being trans arent uh in in your journey so is that what led to you um you know um as a way of with your condition with the ADHD did that lead to uh helping others with this condition yeah I I really felt like the people that I was impacting the most were those who had ADHD um I had a lot of students who came to me some of them were my direct students that I was teaching but some of them were just students within the school who heard that I was very open about my ADHD and um was this high school or college or this was high school yeah this was a high school and They came to me asking me for some support and generally speaking I just gave them some strategies and tools as well as really just discussed with them or and their parents what options there are out there to to get support and uh you you were you were uh uh they knew about your condition yeah I was very open about it and I really felt like I felt like it was important to be open about it just because um I think there's A lot of misunderstanding around what ADHD is and is it a parent is it a like lack of parenting uh or lack of discipline is it being overdiagnosed underdiagnosed yeah so I felt like it was really important for me to to be open about that and um as a result I saw several students go from you know having to go to summer school you know failing classes to turning it around um and having being on Dean's List um so It was really just that experience and how fulfilling it was to see these students turn it around made me go actually I think the reason why I got into teaching is more this work which I'm doing for 5% of my workday rather than the other stuff that I'm doing which is grading classroom management and all the other um tasks so after three years of teaching I just decided this is way more fulfilling than uh my current job and so I left teaching and started a um coaching certification program uh that was focused on working with students with ADHD um but yeah that's that's basically what led me into it and obviously further down the road now I'm ending up with working with medical professionals with ADHD and I can explain that if you'd love if you'd like as a doctor I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but Then I found physician coaches.com in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of Life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help with my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile and a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physician coaches.com help from professional colleagues is just a click away I'd love to but Since you brought it up I do want to kind uh just a minute or two talk about the myths of ADHD because there are some misconceptions out there where oh he's you know we're we're say oh well I've got too many things and maybe I have ADD or even as an entrepreneur we talk about entrepreneur ad add or ADHD and maybe it's a bit flippant I maybe it's not so so Let's talk about it you said one of the myths was uh lack of parenting or bad bad parenting can can you uh discuss more about that I think yeah I think the the assumption is that uh we see behavioral challenges occurring with a lot of uh kids with ADHD and it's usually a result of like impulse control um yeah impulsivity uh hyperactivity right so When we look at that behavior from a neurotypical lens of just like what is normal human behavior and how do people normally act in terms of like intentionality um we go okay well this person or this child has decided to do this and this must be a result of the parent not appropriately reinforcing the appropriate behavior um so in reality what it what you would hear if you were to talk to that same child is they knew what the right Thing was to do but it wasn't until after they had already behaved in whatever way that they realized oh oops that's not I didn't mean to do that and so yeah you get this massive misunderstanding from people who just don't understand that there isn't that moment of pausing and considering what the consequence is in that situation um so that's something that you'll see a lot more with children but With adults with ADHD that impulsivity hyperactivity tends to show up in different ways it's more of the impulsivity of thought it's going from one thought to the next to the next to the next and then not realizing that they've drifted away from whatever the original and important thought was until I don't know 10 or 15 minutes down the the line or much longer yeah great great thanks for sharing so You mentioned you had been been working with with students you know just off the cuff uh you know sharing that and then you decide hey maybe I can maybe I can this can lead into something more substantial maybe into a career and specifically health professional so tell me about that what what what led you draw uh you got your coaching certification what led you to draw to to that group in particular yeah so I'll just tell you I working with high school and college students during the pandemic was uh uh painful I'll just say that yeah it was just like you know the the previous experience of like having like iners interaction with with these students and being able to like actually physically see their backpack and and actually have that real one-on-one connection uh it disappeared and so it was a lot of like I'll keep poking and prying and Hoping that they the student would be open to sharing how things are truly going um so that on top of really when you deal with a high school or college student the parent is the primary driver for why the student has gotten into coaching and so I was trying to balance the satisfaction and happiness of the student and that coaching process and the happy happiness and satisfaction of the parent and In reality those things are kind of in opposition most of the time right like the student might be happy um that the parents off of their uh case but the parent might not be happy because the student is now having that opportunity to fail and experiment um and they were hoping for things to get turned around with no no trip up so all that to say is after a while of doing that and Having a couple of adult coaching clients um interspersed uh in my like client load I realized what I was really enjoying with was working with adults um and then I had two doctors that I was coaching uh in a 2022 and I realized oh wow this is actually really engaging I feel incredibly passionate about supporting these doctors because all of both of them were amazing at what they did and do um but They just really were struggling with balancing the work uh and then life right so they were really great at showing up for patients they were by all means considered great doctors but they felt incredibly burnt out um and they felt but they a lot of them were way behind on documentation and uh image reading so yeah it it really made me go this is really interesting and I I know that I have a lot of connection to this um I think if I could really help these doctors with ADHD find balance and success it will mean that their patients are much better off and the doctor's much better off in the long term so and hopefully that means that they stay within field of medicine for longer uh rather than potentially deciding to leave as a result of how unhealthy that uh career was for them or is for them So yeah yeah it's something burnout is is is definitely something that is prevalent in in in medicine uh but yeah I think that's an interesting point uh that perhaps you know for those who have ADHD or maybe they they don't know it it could be a factor and before the call we you you shared a statistic with me that that was really revealing about uh clinicians or Healthcare professionals and and and ADHD can you uh can you speak to that yeah I'll definitely have to fact check this for like specif specificity sake but um yeah what I would say is uh ADHD is not widely recognized within medicine right so of the studies that I've looked at uh there was one from University of Michigan that looked at ADHD the prevalence of ADHD in medical Learners um and What they found was about. 3% of all the medical Learners studied reported that they had a diagnosis of ADHD and what I found interesting about that is if we looked at uh careers kind of like similar in level of achievement so let's say lawyers um the national Bar Association did a study of all lawyers or not all lawyers but a large subset of lawyers and about 13% uh reported that they had a diagnosis of ADHD so We know that ADHD impacts people regardless of IQ and achievement uh so it doesn't really make sense that we would see it at such a low prevalence level um within medicine and I think that's a lot more to do with the stigma as well as the lack of understanding around like what does ADHD actually look like in people that never had behavioral issues um and really performed well uh throughout their entire academic career um so yeah yeah and Um just soring it out I I think that number is is probably under represented uh in addition to uh the factors that you had mentioned I also think uh Physicians being on medications you know that for ADHD uh this stigma with ritland and these types of medications uh they're not going to take it uh because you know in fear of being uh you know under treatment uh being on a medication like that I I definitely can tell you that Physicians would Not uh uh would probably not be on those type of medications if they can or at least hide it so they're probably not representing it they're might not exposing it absolutely yeah the hiding it is definitely true I think there's also a lot of fear and a lack of information out there about what is it how does it impact your career um so people are concerned about liability insurance um and how it might impact your ability to practice and Will it drive up the cost of that it shouldn't right like the Americans with Disability Act should protect you but of course everything's on a case-by Case basis so I think most people in the lack of understanding of the legal implications of having a diagnosis and disclosing that diagnosis to their workplace opt to like play it safe right I'll just hide this I I just won't even talk about this or bring this up in the workplace um so That fear or that inability to really be open about what what challenges they're facing often means that they're working extra hard to compensate and and really keep up with their peers well Michael again this has been a very Illuminating conversation and uh if if you're just joined in you know we're talking with Michael Carini founder of Carini coaching uh he is a expert on uh and a consultant and he uh works with Healthcare professionals who may be dealing with ADHD and You can find out more information on his website Carini coaching.com we'll have a link here in the show notes so for those listening here who perhaps have been diagnosed with ADHD uh or feel they may have some traits of a ADHD they want to reach out to you they can go to your website can you tell them you know how does that how does that work for when you're when you're deing with prospective client and and and Maybe share some of your your methods and strategies uh for someone who might be interested yeah so of course they can go to my website um and then they can schedule a consultation with me um consultation free if it means that they want to schedule maybe like two consultations with me if they felt like they really enjoyed the first conversation but they really just wanted to get to know a little bit more or do a little bit of a trial coaching Session um I'm very much open to that right so because it's of course a big investment as well as I'm asking for someone to be incredibly vulnerable with me in terms of embarking on this journey to understand their ADHD as well as um start to make changes right like change is hard especially behavioral change so once they decide that they want to work with me we're really diving into creating that coaching relationship so I'm using a mix of the icf's principles of of partner and contract creating a contract or an agreement with with our clients um and from there we're really just starting to dive into how is ADHD showing up so more often than not people are coming to me and saying it's really really difficult for me to get my work done during the day uh because there the constant interruptions um and just generally uh very like hectic environment so What I do with my clients is basically ask them like well what type of interruptions are happening and how have you set the expectations with the with the people that are interrupting um so in some examples I would say emergency medicine H there's not really much of an opportunity to be like uh we can delay that um but for GI for example so my wife is a a transplant hepatologist for the most part um she has the ability to delay until She has completed whatever work but her nurses the schedulers other the the residents and fellows they just need to know like hey I'm going to be working on X from this time to this time if you have any questions just hold hold off right so what I'm doing with them is really like helping them to see what opportunities are there in terms of setting boundaries how how they can form those relationships in a way that actually serves them without having to Ever say the diagnosis of ADHD they they can everybody can have difficulties with multitasking so why not just say I have difficulties with M multitasking and getting work done efficiently when being interrupted that doesn't no one's going to go ding ding ding this is ADHD they're just going to go well this person knows themselves pretty well and they're asking for this time and space to actually do their work so That would be an example of how I'm supporting them or strategies that I might employ um others would be making them aware of uh assist of Technology um I guess dragon has now come out with like an AI note uh or note taking uh software and then epic has their own uh note AI note taking process as well so really we're starting to see how the decrease in uh Demand on the executive function of trying to sort through all of the Information that a patient's brought into that uh patient interaction and it's doing all that summarization uh so it's not having to be a burden on your working memory to go okay well what the patient talked about going to a baseball game that's obviously not important but it's still my brain is obviously still holding on to that so instead of having to sort through that it's already sorted through for them um so Yeah it it really is just about helping them to find ways to be better supported within their environment without necessarily having to do any dis disclosure right great well again Michael I want to thank you for your time definitely Shining Light on a subject that's not talked about a lot this was Michael Carini founder of carlen coaching and you can go to Carini coaching.com to book a free consultation uh and see if this is right For you thanks again Michael thank you everything that you're doing yeah thank you so much thank and thank you for listening as always as an entrepreneur or as a physici we're going to have her ups and downs do something a little each day keep you closer to your goals finding a Mentor finding a coach is that is that what what you need and keep