Why So Many Moms with ADHD Can’t Sleep—Diane Macedo’s ‘Sleep Fix’ Method

Are sleepless nights and racing thoughts keeping you awake? Emmy Award-winning ABC News anchor and bestselling author Diane Macedo joins Brooke to share her personal journey of late ADHD diagnosis and her transformative "Sleep Fix" method. Diane reveals how ADHD intensifies sleep challenges, why common sleep hygiene advice can backfire, and practical solutions designed specifically to support ADHD brains.

Diane shares candidly about her ADHD diagnosis journey, motherhood, and how restructuring everyday habits—like fridge organization—significantly improved her daily life. Whether you're struggling with insomnia, overwhelmed by household responsibilities, or simply looking for ADHD-friendly life hacks, this episode provides insights and actionable strategies to help reclaim your rest and rediscover joy in your routines.

Episode Highlights:

[0:42] Introduction to Diane Macedo and Her Background
[3:37] Diane’s Personal Experience with ADHD
[7:21] Impact of ADHD on Daily Life and Relationships
[14:27] Diagnosis and Coping Mechanisms
[28:07] Sleep Fix Method and Its Application
[45:09] ADHD and Sleep Interconnection
[47:46] Practical Tips for Improving Sleep
[56:17] Impact of ADHD on Daily Life and Relationships

Connect with Diane:

• diane@sleepfixmethod.com
• @dianermacedo & @sleepfixmethod

Thank you for tuning into "SuccessFULL with ADHD." If this episode has impacted you, remember to rate, follow, share, and review our podcast. Your support helps us reach and help more individuals navigating their journeys with ADHD.

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Transcript

Diane Macedo 00:00

One of the keys to insomnia is when you spend enough time frustrated and awake in bed, your

brain starts to associate bed with being the place where you go to be awake and frustrated.

This is something called conditioned arousal, and it's why people will often experience being

drowsy and dozing off on the couch, and then the second you go to bed, you're suddenly all

revved up and wide awake and you can't sleep. It's likely because of conditioned arousal. You

have spent so much time awake in bed that your brain has this autopilot feature, and your

brain has learned that bed is a stressful place where we need to be alert. So instead of cueing

your sleep response, your brain is cueing your fight or flight response. So by retraining your

brain that this constructive worry time is where we do this kind of processing. Your brain starts

to learn, oh, this is where we worry and think about all of this stuff, not when my head hits the

pillow.

B

Brooke Schnittman 00:49

Welcome to successful with ADHD. I'm Brooke schnittman. Let's get started. Hi everyone, and

welcome back to another episode of successful with ADHD today, I have ADHD sleep fix, three

time Emmy award winning journalist and ABC News Anchor Diane Macedo, and I'm gonna

definitely get more into her bio. She has a very long history of accomplishments that are

worthy of noting, but today, what we're interested in diving deep into is her recent ADHD

diagnosis and her sleep fix method that helps practical, proven, surprising solutions for

insomnia, snoring, shift work and more. And I know that we hear so much about the complexity

of ADHD and how sleep is impacted by our ADHD symptoms and vice versa. So without further

ado, very warm. Welcome to Diane. Appreciate you being on Oh, thanks so much for having

me. It's great to be here. Absolutely and just a little bit more about her. She's currently the

morning anchor for ABC News Live. ABC News 24/7 streaming news channel, and she's also

anchoring the Emmy award winning show, ABC News Live first. She's a breaking news anchor

and correspondent for ABC News appearing on Good Morning America, World News Tonight,

Nightline, world news now, and America this morning. And she also wrote a book on her sleep

fix method. She's a best selling author, and she went public, as I mentioned, with her ADHDD

S

D

diagnosis, and she is in an ongoing series about the inside ADHD, where she goes behind the

scenes with real people talking about their stories on navigating life with ADHD, and also

doctors and professionals and their perspective as well. She also graduated from Boston

College with a double major in communications and political science, and can speak multiple

languages, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and she lives in New York City with her husband and

two children. Okay, now I'm done.

Diane Macedo 03:14

Thank you.

Speaker 1 03:16

So I asked Diane to be on our show because she's went public, and it's so important that ADHD

awareness gets out there. And we know Since 2020 that a lot more people have been able to

recognize more symptoms of their mental health from the pandemic and understanding more

about themselves and people coming out on social media, but it's really important that public

figures come out too and can normalize a lot of what other people with ADHD are feeling so

Diane, you struck a chord with me. I know that you had recently come out with a video on your

Instagram about how you were able to manage a lot of your symptoms before becoming a

mom. And now that I look back, I realize they were there, but they weren't interfering with my

life in such a dramatic way. So it was always hard for me to keep track of appointments, but it

was easy for me if I realized at the last minute to just run out the door and still make it, you

know, if, if a little bit late, you know, still enough to make the appointment or whatnot, when

you have two kids at home, you can't do that, right? You need to plan ahead for things. It's

harder to recover if something falls through the cracks, and if I forgot something, then I forgot

something. You know, I was, I was always annoyed with myself over these things, but I had

more bandwidth to deal with them. I remember when I went on maternity leave right after I had

my son,

Diane Macedo 04:49

and I just felt like I was in a fog, and I felt so overloaded trying to remember. I remember I was

making formula. I tried desperately to breastfeed, and I beat myself up over that, because. Is I

had all these complications and I couldn't do it, and then, amidst a feeling all that guilt, I was

making formula while also thinking about the other million things that one has to think about

when you're new mom, and balancing all of the needs of the newborn. And the number of times

I went to make these formula bottles and realized that I had no idea how many scoops I'd put

in. And for those who haven't been there, formula has to be exact, one scoop too many, one

scoop too few, and you can have really serious repercussions on the baby. So this isn't

something where you could say, you know, if I had to know how many scoops of iced tea mix I

put in my water, that wouldn't matter. It'll be a little sweeter, it'll be a little weak, no big deal.

But this had serious medical so the number of formula bottles I had to throw away, and formula

is so expensive, by the way, for anyone who's never had to buy it, and just Yeah, and I would

say, okay, stop pay attention. You're scooping the formula. Stop thinking about anything else.

And even then, sometimes I couldn't stay focused enough on the scoops. My mind would go to

something else that I would worry about, and the next hand, I would look down and say, Oh,how many scoops did I put in? So between that and trying to remember which doctor's

appointment comes when, and all the micro decisions that I was taking really seriously, and

trying to figure out, you know, what we had to do and when we had to do it, and whatnot. It all

which felt like the world was crumbling down on me and trying to maintain a neat house, which

is really important to me, and it also really difficult for me, and has been since I was a kid. You

know, my bedroom always looked like a tornado, even though I really wanted it to be neat and

clean. And now that I was home all the time. It felt like my house was the same at a time when

I wanted so badly to be the perfect mother and to have this beautiful, neat kept home for my

beautiful baby, to be able to bask in and instead, I just felt like everything around me was on

fire. All I saw was all these tasks that I hadn't yet done and all of these things I was trying to

balance in my head. And yeah, it just was incredibly overwhelming to me. And at the time, I

just thought, you know, this is what maternity leave is like. This is what it's like to care for a

newborn. How many new moms talk about how difficult that stage is? And now, when I look

back, I say, Oh, that was, you know, just a peak manifestation of my ADHD, and one of the

coping mechanisms that I that I was referring to when I I had that moment in the psychologist's

office is I realize now that my brain has learned that I will forget, and so I have compensated for

that by just doing things right away. So if I'm in the middle of a room and I see that there is this

cup that, oh yeah, I need to refill my water cup, I have learned, let me just go do that right now.

I don't consciously think about that, but I think I've just learned let me do that right now. I'll

forget. But then when I get to the kitchen and I go to refill the water cup, when I get to the

kitchen, I see something else that I left out on the counter that needs to be done. And so I'll

grab that thing and go to fill out that document that I still have to fill out and mail. But then

when I go to get the stamp to mail it, I'll see something else that needs to be done, and so on.

And I'm chasing my tail all day. And I think when I was single and only had myself to worry

about, I could do that. I could just do the thing right away, and sometimes, or most of the time,

do it to completion and then be reminded of something else, and move on that way, and sort of

just free wheel it that way. But now, not only does my brain interrupt itself, but I have two

children who are constantly interrupting me, and a husband, and this is not to bash my

husband because he's wonderful and a very active parent and a very active partner, but it's

just natural when you have multiple people in a household who all use the same stuff, they are

constantly interrupting you, saying either, you know, look at this or listen to this thing that

happened to me. Or what do you want to do about x? Or where is the blank? Yes. And like

many women, I am generally the one in my house who is in charge of where everything goes

and is at all times. And so I I think that's where my coping mechanisms really started to break

down, because I no longer just had to manage my brain's own natural interruptions, because

it's always going in multiple directions at the same time, but now I have other people also

interrupting me during that process, and that became too much for me to handle and continue

to feel like I was thriving. Yeah, I think that's so common with an adult ADHD diagnosis,

especially for a woman, being able to just, you know, strap on your boots and do it, and now

you're the frontal lobe for literally, your entire family, right? Like you're taking on this huge

load. It became too much, and the shame is 100% real. And. And I think that it's just so much

that we take on as women to begin with, like you said, Oh, is this just being a mom, or is this

also having ADHD? I think that was the hard part for me, because I was reading so much stuff

about what it's like to be a new mom and the disproportionate distribution of labor among

households, and that really resonated with me. And I realized I was managing way too much

and doing all this invisible labor, you know. And I was able, thankfully, through some great

reading materials, like the book fair play, like the comic you would have asked, relay it to my

husband and explain to him things that I hadn't even realized. You know, listen, when you

reach for the diaper and you change our baby's diaper, and you think, what a great job I did

changing a diaper, that's great. But what you don't realize is the reason you can just reach your

right hand right down and grab a diaper is because I put them there. I am constantly keepingB

track of when we are low on diapers. And then when I was setting up the room, I decided the

diaper should go there, because this is where we're going to change the baby. And so that's

where the diaper should be. And then when you go to grab a wipe, the reason they are right

next to the diaper is very easy to grab. Same thing, because I'm constantly replacing them, and

I decided thoughtfully that they should go there. And same for all of the other diaper supplies.

Same for when you go to dress them, for, you know, for bedtime and whatnot, all of these

things. Every object in our home is there because of the thought that I put into it. And, you

know, we have this conversation a lot, and had it a lot, and thankfully, he gets it and got it, and

we made adjustments in our household because of it. But these were things that I didn't even

realize. And so I just thought, I'm having all these experiences because I'm juggling the

massive responsibility that is being a new mother, and that just comes with a lot of cognitive

tasks, and I'm trying to do too much. And so I completely It wasn't even on my radar that I

could possibly have ADHD. And as it turns out, what I was experiencing was a combination of

those two things. And the only reason I was finally able to have that light bulb moment of Wait,

this is ADHD. Was one Instagram I started scrolling reels because I had released my book The

Sleep fix, and so I wanted to start posting more about it to get the message out of what I was

trying to convey in terms of how to fix your sleep. And in the process, I started getting served

more and more videos about adult ADHD, and they all resonated, and I all found them really

funny. But again, I just thought, well, everyone's brain works this way, and then eventually I

started seeing things that resonated with me that I had never heard anybody talk about before,

like time blindness and the light bulb went off. But the other part of it, and I don't think I've

talked about this publicly yet, is that my husband and I had implemented changes in our

household to try to address that uneven distribution of labor in our house. And up until that

point, it was so easy for me to just dismiss everything that I was feeling as well. Of course, I'm

drowning. Of course, I always feel overwhelmed. Of course, I have trouble focusing. I am doing

everything. And then once we kind of split things up differently, and he took over, you know, a

good portion of the household labor, not only the physical test, but also the mental tasks of

actually executing on those things and managing them and the conception of them and so on.

It created more space and more bandwidth for me. And so once that happened, and then I

realized I was still experiencing all of these symptoms, and started thinking about how I'd had

them since childhood, that allowed me to connect the dots. But I genuinely think if we hadn't

sorted out that part of the equation, the fact that I was managing everything in my household, I

don't think I ever would have discovered that I had ADHD, because all of my symptoms could

have been explained by just the overwhelming responsibility that I was carrying at the time.

Wow, that's pretty amazing, and I want to recognize the fact that so many people you know are

drowning. As a mom, so for you to be able to delegate in that moment and ask for your

partner's help and him take that load on right, take part of that load on. It cleared up the space

for you to even start thinking about, what is what is this like? Let me figure this out. And to be

clear, that was a months, if not years, long process. It wasn't like we had one conversation and

he just said, Oh, I totally get it all right. Well, then give me a new, you know, not even give me

a new list, because that wouldn't help but, you know, it was an ongoing process for both of us.

But thankfully, we got there, and it was probably, I don't know, a good two years into that, if

not more that. Then I started thinking, I think I might have ADHD and kind of going down.

Brooke Schnittman 15:00

Until finally I got a diagnosis, yeah, no, being interdependent between two people is really hard,

right? We're independent, like you have a very independent job, he probably has a very

independent life, and then mixing the two together is takes work. So I appreciate you sharingD

that so you got the diagnosis, and you became aware that this, in fact, is ADHD. So now that

you have that awareness,

Diane Macedo 15:31

what's changed for you? So much. So I got, first got diagnosed two years ago by a nurse

practitioner who I found on Zach doc. I mean, I've sort of been diagnosed three times. Now, this

all came about because mine believed the first two well. So my No, no, I did, but my, one of my

best and closest friends is a psychologist based in California, and so she came to visit me when

I started having this, you know, light bulb moment via Instagram. And so in a conversation with

her, I just randomly said, Oh yeah, I've been meaning also signature ADHD. I interrupted her in

the middle of something completely unrelated, to say, Oh yeah, I've been meaning to ask you,

and I keep forgetting, do I have ADHD? And so she just said, what? And so I explained to her

why I was asking the question, and she started asking me a series of questions. Long story

short, at the end of that conversation, she said it really does sound like ADHD. And she

explained all the different ways that it can be misdiagnosed and confused for other things, but

based on all the follow ups and all the different parameters, she said, now it definitely sounds

like ADHD. So literally, the next day, I made an appointment for an evaluation, and thankfully,

at that time, I was able to get one pretty quickly. And so I was kind of informally diagnosed by

her, formally diagnosed a few days later, and that was where this process started. And so what

for anyone who watched the first installment of my series inside ADHD and the piece that I did

for Good Morning America, what you saw on camera was a confirmation. Because I wanted to

make sure that this diagnosis is right, because there's so many people who call it into question

that I wanted to be 100% sure that this diagnosis is correct before I go out and start talking

publicly about what it's like with ADHD. So I wanted to just stop my eyes and Cross my T's. And

so we went to the Halliwell Center, which is one of the most renowned clinics probably in the

world for ADHD, and that was where I got evaluated and diagnosed on camera. And she

confirmed that I am absolutely ADHD. I was 91 percentile for inattentive symptoms and

borderline for hyperactivity symptoms. So I combined type ADHD, but mostly inattentive. So

two years ago, after getting that diagnosis, was a light bulb moment for both me and my

husband, because it was able to explain so many things that I had done. So for me, it was huge,

because I was able to look back all the way to childhood and suddenly forgive myself for stuff

that I had attributed to lack of effort, moral failing. And this is the part that I try to explain to

people. You know, if you have trouble seeing, trouble reading, trouble running, people assume

you need help, but if you frequently forget to return items, people think you're inconsiderate. If

you forget to do certain tasks, people think you're lazy if you have trouble keeping your room

clean, people think you're a slob. And there's just all these negative connotations that come

with the difficulties that come with ADHD, or at least the form of it that I have. And so I had, I

think, formed, all of these immediate, negative self talk reactions to certain things, you know,

the amount of times throughout a day, I started recognizing that I chastise myself for things.

Oh, you idiot. Oh, why'd you do? Oh, you know. And I started realizing one the negative

repercussions that that was having without me realizing and yeah, I started forgiving myself for

things. I learned to give myself more grace, and I think more than anything, I learned to start

troubleshooting. Because for me, it's, you know, the gift is the curse I have. This brain that is an

ideas factory. You need troubleshooting. I'm your girl. The problem is, my brain is so good at

that that when it comes time to execute on boring tasks, or what I consider to be boring, my

brain's still busy spitting out new and great ideas. And so the ability to finish a task while you're

also listening to your brain screaming at you that you should be doing this other great idea is

the hard part, but in getting this diagnosis, I was able to turn that around, because now that I

knew what the problem was, my brain immediately went into problem solving mode. So forexample, I would let vegetables go bad in the fridge all the time. Vegetables, leftovers,

whatever, anything that can spoil would spoil in my fridge. And I'm someone who loves to cook.

So this was really frustrating for me, because I do a lot of grocery shopping. I love a fridge full

of food, and. Love to cook, and so to do all that, and put in all that effort, and then realize that

you forgot about that thing in the back of the fridge again or in the drawer, and it's spoiled,

ugh. It's awful. So I realized that the reason I was forgetting was because I couldn't see the

things. And people with ADHD often have object permanence, so out of sight, out of mind. And

so I thought, Okay, well, how do I fix this? And then I saw some, I think was a Tiktok video from

Casey Davis. I think her handle is domestic blisters on Tiktok. And she said that she started

putting her produce in the door and her condiments in the drawer. And I thought, Yes, but I

needed to step it up a notch. And so I bought these glass containers, you know, like a like glad

where plastic wear type thing only their glass, because I prefer to cook with glass. And this way

I can bake with them too. They can go straight in the oven, straight in the microwave, straight

in the dishwasher, et cetera. And I took bookends and I lined them up along my refrigerator

door. And these glass containers stand upright, so if you open my refrigerator door now it looks

like a bookshelf, and you can easily see all of the produce, all of my leftovers, anything that's

going to spoil, is filed away in that, you know, little bookshelf, essentially. So now when I go to

cook, I know exactly what I'm looking at when I go to grocery shop. I know exactly what we

already have and what we need to supplement so that it can use the products that are going to

spoil and those glass containers go back into their slots, even when they're clean, so that now

is also where they get stored. I no longer have to go to the cabinet to grab the thing, futz

around with whatever else is in the cabinet. I just open the fridge. I go straight to that spot.

Easy peasy. That one change has made such a difference in just the amount of joy I get when I

open my fridge. First of all, and I think those little moments of joy versus frustration count a lot,

especially if you have a lot of friction in your life because of ADHD, you're constantly upset,

even in these little micro ways. And so shifting that into little moments of joy, I think, make a

big difference. I don't waste as much food. I don't spend as much on groceries. I feel good

about myself because of those things and exciting and new, like you're getting that 100% hit

because you're rewarding yourself with this beautiful door that you've created that's totally fine

all your food. Yes, I love it. It's esthetically, my brain likes nice esthetics, but it's also just so

functional for me and my family. And I realized in that process that these little moments of

friction, for example, that might, for someone else, just be a two second detour, right? What's

the big deal? Just go in the cabinet and grab the glass container from there. Yes, if that's all

you're going to do, you're right. That only takes an extra, you know, five seconds of time. But

for me, I have a tendency to, I will open the cabinet and go to get the glass container and

realize that they're not organized the way that I like, or they're not there, and I have to go find

it or whatever. And then the next thing I know, I'm reorganizing this entire cabinet while the

fridge is still open and the food is still spoiling, and now I haven't made dinner and whatnot. So

these little detours for me can turn into a cascade of events because of how inattentive and

distractible I can be. So for me, eliminating even a small step in a process can make a huge

difference, because they stay on task. And so that one thing not only changed the game for me

in that area of my life, my husband got it. So he's then turned in just super enthusiasts. You

know, he was someone who resisted organization as much as possible and thought that I was

just being, you know, trying to be a drill sergeant in my own home. And now he thinks it's

brilliant how I've troubleshot all these things. So if you walk into my house, Tom will probably

turn to you and say, hey, check out what Diane did with the fridge like he's become my

cheerleader in all of these little things that I've done around the house, which means he also

cooperates with the system and does it too, which is great, but it also that other second piece

allowed me to start troubleshooting so many other things where I thought, Where is there an

extra step where I'm getting derailed, and is there something small I can do to take that extra

step out of the equation, and it's changed so many I have so many little life hacks now that thatI also sometimes feature on my show in a segment called Macedo methods, where, you know, I

have LIFE HACKS around packing now, which is like my kryptonite. The way that I organize my

makeup is different because I was forgetting steps in my skincare routine, and I realized if I put

everything in a sequence of the way that I use them, I will just go through in the flow of

movement and remember all the steps and stop forgetting to put on, you know, my primer

before I put on my foundation, or whatever it is, which may sound stupid, but when it's

something that you do every single day, those Little things having a moment of frustration

almost every morning, versus a moment of joy, where you just think, Huh, look at how nicely

My makeup is organized, and you get to do it all fluently. It makes a huge difference in your

day to day, 100% the planning to plan everywhere in your life, and being okay with that,

because that does require some.

25:00

Um,

D

Diane Macedo 25:01

stopping and metacognition and thinking about what you want to do differently. So instead of

being reactive to life, as many of us, ADHD ers are, right, like Dr Barclay said, where, like, we

just follow things with our nose, you know, whatever comes in front of us, yep, that's it. That's

it. That's it. Now you're actually being proactive, and, like you said, creating less friction, so life

is easier. And I love that you know you're making that okay, and you're not shaming yourself,

and you're leveling the playing field, you're making life a lot easier and joyful, which I think is

huge, totally. And it it impacts how you view yourself, and it also impacts those around you

directly in your orbit. You know, one of the things my husband, I used to argue about all the

time was I would leave the milk out, and he would constantly ask me to put it back. But of

course, it was in the middle of me doing five different things for our kids. And so I would snap

back that, I'm busy doing all these other things. Can't you just put the milk back? And he'd be

like, Listen, I'm not being unreasonable. Just milk will spoil if you leave it out. And so he took it

as every time I left the milk out, it was because I didn't care, and I was dismissing the you

know, this is one of very few requests that he makes of me. And so he saw it as a slap in the

face every time he saw the milk carton on the counter. And I saw it as, you know, just a

complete lack of understanding of where I was that he walked into a room with, you know,

1000 things going on, and the one thing he chose to focus on was the milk. And then we'd get

into and now he realizes, Oh, you left the milk out because you have short term memory

problems, and you completely forgot about that milk the second you poured it for our kids. And

you were probably pouring that milk for our kids in the middle of doing, you know, five other

things that you were trying to get done. So he is more sympathetic to me and more just sort of

helpful in that line. And I also now that I'm aware of why these things are happening. I'm not

entirely sure why this happens, but I don't leave the milk out anymore. It's like, as soon as I

realized that it was a short term memory issue and not just oh, I'm that's what I do, because I'm

juggling a lot, I somehow that registered somewhere where now, as soon as I'm putting the

milk down, I am able to trigger some mental note that says, No, don't put it down. Put it away.

Well, our executive functions are completely tied to emotions, right? That are midbrain, so the

fact that you and your husband are speaking more collaboratively, and there's more love and

there's more joy and more understanding probably gives you more space to understand the

importance of putting the milk away, where before your brain was distracted? Yeah, I thinkS

D

also, as I'm saying it, I realized that one other thing that I've learned is to rely on my memory

for nothing. And so anytime I have told myself, I will remember to do that later, I now know

better. Before I had this diagnosis in my head, I was telling myself, I'll put the milk back in a

second. Let me just do this other thing. And so I think now that I know that I cannot rely on my

memory to remember to put the milk back in a second, I've stopped doing that, and I just say,

no, let that thing. I'm about to do weight, and let me go ahead and put the milk back. So I think

that's also been a huge help,

Speaker 1 28:20

especially with inattentive ADHD, we can only think about that one thing, right? And that's

literally the thing that you have to keep telling yourself until you get it done. And as soon as

there's an interruption or something else that happens, that one thing gets forgotten and you

feel so shameful. So I love the Ohio method for that. You know, you only look at it once. Do it if

it's less than two minutes. Get it done. So let's get into your sleep fix method. So I would love to

know as two women speaking to each other, and a lot of women out there who have lots of

hormonal stuff, ADHD, managing so much frontal load. Talk about your sleep fix method and

how this is helpful for everyone, and what you would also recommend for women, specifically.

The background here is I struggled for years with insomnia, even before I had kids, and I would

go to bed, and I would try to sleep, and I would stare at the ceiling and get frustrated and have

this whole conversation in my head about how doomed I was going to be the next day because

I wasn't getting my, you know, recommended eight hours at the time. I wasn't even getting

five. I went to all of these, you know, experts and whatnot, and the feedback I got was because

I was working strange news hours. I was on an overnight shift at the time, I had just come off

an early morning shift and so on that, you know, I was going to have to quit my job if I wanted

to sleep well again. And I just thought, no, that's not, that's not going to happen. That's there

has to be a better answer, right? Like, police, firefighters, Doc.

Diane Macedo 30:00

Doctors, etc. Lots of people have to work strange hours, and the solution can't be that just none

of those people can sleep. And so I started doing a lot more digging. I started reading a lot

about sleep, and strangely, my sleep got worse, because I started reading all these books

about how important sleep was and how all of these repercussions if you don't get eight hours,

and all the things you're supposed to do, sleep hygiene, etc. Quick, caffeine. Stop doing this. No

more screens in the evening. So then I turned into more anxiety. So I started doing all the

things, and my sleep got worse and worse and worse. And I just thought, What the heck is

happening to me? I finally just said, forget it. I stopped reading, you know, the best sellers, and

I stopped reading all the popular articles out there, and I instead started going to sleep

medicine textbooks. And I bought a few books that were written by actual sleep clinicians. And I

realized at the time I was doing a piece on this for ABC. I was the overnight anchor at the time,

and so I told them, Listen, I'm going to set out to fix my sleep. Do you want me to cover it? So

cover it? And they said, Yes, please. And so I had set out to work with a sleep physician who

tested me for sleep apnea. I had no signs of sleep apnea, and then I was supposed to go back

and do some other tests that was going to analyze my sleep cycles. And then from there, we

were going to move on to what we knew at that point was an insomnia diagnosis, and I was

going to start CBTI, which is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. That's the gold standard

treatment for insomnia that, for whatever reason, most positions just don't know, don't tellB

D

people about. But because I was doing it for TV, I wanted to do everything by the book. So

rather than jump right into CBT, I wanted him to do the sleep cycle test because I thought it

would make for good television, and I wanted people to see that part of the process. But to be

prepared, I went ahead and I started reading about CBTI so that when I started I would know

exactly what I was getting into. I would know the right questions to ask, etc. And in the process,

I ended up fixing my sleep because it opened up this Pandora's box of interest for me, and I

dove so deep into it, and I started implementing some of these really straightforward methods,

rethinking the way I was looking at the problem entirely. And by the time he did that test, I was

then getting six and a half hours of high quality sleep in the middle of the day, because I was

still working in overnight shift, and I just thought, what? Why isn't anybody talking about this

stuff like I have spent seven years of terrible sleep doing all of the things everybody talks about

doing. And in the end, the answer was, in many cases, the opposite of all of that. And so fast

forward, a few years later, I ended up writing my book, because I started talking to a lot of

clinicians who actually treat insomnia sleep experts, and they were saying, Yeah, this is what

we see in our clinic all the time, and we've been trying to shout it from the rooftops, and just

nobody will listen. And so I decided to be a megaphone in many ways, for that community. And

in the process, I interviewed experts from all over the world, all different areas of sleep science,

and I ended up putting it together like one big puzzle, because there were some areas where

this side wasn't necessarily seeing this angle of this side, and so on and so. With my inch deep

but a mild wide knowledge of this, I was able to put together some pieces where even the sleep

experts, who were so wonderful to work with me, said, Hey, I learned this from your book. I

didn't even know that, and I've been a practicing clinician for, you know, years or decades. So it

was a really great experience, not only because it fixed my sleep, but being able to boil down

all this science into really easy to understand and funny stories and whatnot. The book is an

easy read, and it's really prescriptive. So literally, the number of people, I cannot tell you who

said, you know, I was taking Ambien for years, and I can finally, for the first time, sleep without

medication, thanks to your book. And you know, I have this woman, Pam, who writes me Ever

so often with a new update on the count of how long it's been since she took her last ambient

pill, and it's years at this point. Wow. So it was, it was something where I really it was me

paying it forward, because I just felt like this stuff was so easy, so practical, and just the

mindset shift changed so much for me that I need to get this message out there, and needed to

break it down into a really easy method that people feel like they can implement, either with

the help of their doctor, or, in some cases, that they can do on their own, provided, obviously

their doctor says that it's it's safe for them to do it. It was a real game changer for me, and so

I'm just hoping to do that for others. And now that I know I have ADHD, I'm like, wait a minute,

that means these methods also work on people who have ADHD related insomnia, because I

didn't even know I had it, and obviously they worked on me. And so now I'm kind of delving into

that area of things to see how it's all connected, and see if there's a way that I can maybe do

something that's even more specific for the ADHD community. Because I know so many people

think, Oh, well, that's why I can't sleep, because I have ADHD. And they just think they have to

live like that, and they absolutely do not. So.

Brooke Schnittman 35:00

Yeah, so we know Yes, ADHD and sleep is completely interwoven with anxiety and thinking

about the next day and restless leg syndrome and circadian rhythm and right

Diane Macedo 35:17and our meds, all of the things give us some tools, because we know that, and people aren't

going to like what I'm about to say, but we know that a lot of the things that work for us will

also work for neurotypicals, right? It's just that we need them like more in in most cases, right?

Just like we experience the same emotions, but we just experience it more. So for the things

that you have recommended to the general population, what would you say? Like the biggest

like your your patients, that not your patients, but your readers, who are no longer taking

ambient to go to sleep, what have they done differently? Right? And to be clear one, I'm not a

medical professional. This is not medical advice, and I do not advise if you've been taking

sleeping pills to just suddenly stop. That is a conversation to have with your doctor, and

preferably with a sleep clinician. But I do think it's interesting, because, yes, those of us with

ADHD often need these modalities even more, but I think sometimes making a slight shift in

how they're implemented can make all the difference. So for example, one of the big things you

will hear, both for ADHD and for sleep, is to use meditation and mindfulness as a tool to kind of

quiet the brain and quiet the mind and whatnot. First of all, quieting the mind is not a

requirement of falling asleep, nobody. I love the quote, you never stop thinking unless you're

dead. So the idea that everyone else who sleeps well just shuts off their brain and goes to sleep

and doesn't have any thoughts is a myth. And when we hold ourselves to that, we then get in

our own heads. Because you think, God, I have to stop thinking. Stop thinking. Stop that. Stop

quiet. Stop thinking. And that obviously has the opposite effect. You just get more and more

agitated, and your mind races more and more. And for me, meditation kind of had that effect. I

would do these meditations, and I would just get in my head about how bad I was meditation.

And so, you know, focus on the breath, focus on the breath. And I would focus on the breath for

about two seconds, and then I would start thinking about that thing I forgot to do, and I have to

do, and I have to remember, and I have to go here, and then I have to stop idiot. Wait, focus on

the breath, back to the breath, back to the breath. And two seconds later, I was off on some

other tangent, and then again, reprimanding myself for not being able to just focus on the

breath. And so for me, that experience of doing this thing that's supposed to be a calming

exercise and works as a calming exercise for other people. For me, was actually having the

opposite effect. It was making me even more agitated. And so I would do this, follow this

meditation app, and then I would try to go to sleep, and I would fall asleep even later than I

normally did, because now I'm going to bed stressed that not only am I a crappy sleeper, I'm

also a crappy meditator, so I think it's really important to one final thing that works for you, as

cliche as that may sound, and for me, it ended up being this writing exercise that's in clinical

terms. It's called constructive worry. I like to call it a brain dump, or I call I have a worksheet for

it called the racing mind reset, and I sit down a little bit before bed, or I actually would do it in

bed often, because that's when I remembered too. So that was another ADHD adjustment I had

to make, because often they'll tell you, don't do it in bed, but I would forget. And then I'd get to

bed, I'd be like, Oh God, I didn't do my thing. So rather than get in my head and yell at myself

for that, I just started keeping the notebook in my nightstand, and I would sit up in bed on top

of the covers, bed still made. And I would just do it right then, because my brain is smart

enough to know the difference between I'm sitting on my covers and whatever, and I'm doing

this thing, versus I'm in my pajamas. I've already brushed my teeth, I'm under the covers.

Lights out, right? One is sleep time and the other is work time. So and I would do this practice.

And it's you just take a piece of paper, notebook, whatever, divide it down the center, and on

the left hand side, you just write everything that is on your mind, the kind of stuff that either

wakes you up in the middle of the night or that you sit around thinking about when you're

trying to go to sleep. And then on the right hand side, you write down the very next step to

resolving that issue, you don't need the ultimate solution. You just need the very next step. And

this was huge for me for a number of reasons. One is that so much many of us are Go, go, go

all day, and anytime we're stuck waiting at a traffic light or waiting for an elevator or whatever

it is driving to work, we no longer just sit and think about and re evaluate our day, which is acompletely normal thing for the brain to do. We occupy yourselves on our phone by doing

something else. So often, the only chance our brain gets to process our day and our thoughts

and feelings is when we finally put the phone down and close our. Eyes and our head hits the

pillow. So by kind of doing this exercise at this time, you are alleviating the need for your brain

to do all that processing when you're in bed. Also, one of the keys to insomnia is when you

spend enough time frustrated and awake in bed, your brain starts to associate bed with being

the place where you go to be awake and frustrated. So this is something called conditioned

arousal, and that's why people will often experience being drowsy and dozing off on the couch,

and then the second you go to bed, you're suddenly all revved up and wide awake, and you

can't sleep, and you're and you think, why I was just falling asleep on the couch. It's likely

because of conditioned arousal. You have spent so much time awake in bed that your brain has

this autopilot feature for anything that's a pattern in our life, and your brain has learned that

bed is a stressful place where we need to be alert. So instead of queuing your sleep response

when you get in bed, your brain is cueing your fight or flight response, and now your cortisol is

through the roof and you can't fall asleep. So by retraining your brain that this constructive

worry time is where we do this kind of processing. Your brain starts to learn, oh, this is where

we worry and think about all of this stuff, not when my head hits the pillow. And then what

you'll often find is you have repetitive thoughts in bed, and that's just a memory thing. If you

someone gave you a phone number that you couldn't write down, you would repeat the

number to yourself over and over again. It's a natural way that humans remember things. So

when we are trying to balance something in your head, and for ADHD, you're going to be more

prone to this, because we're so prone to forgetting things, if you have an attentive ADHD that

we often will continue to repeat things over and over in our minds, which is just your brain

trying to remind you to deal with that thing. It thinks it's being helpful. And so by writing all of

this stuff down, you alleviate the need for your brain to continuously give you that reminder.

And then finally, you actually rewire your brain, and you can speak to this better than than I

can. But by moving your brain patterns, instead of ruminating on problems to focusing on the

solution because you're again, you're focusing on that next step to doing it. It changes the way

you start to process your problems. And so the coolest thing about this is that you generally

only have to do it for about two to three weeks, and then your brain starts doing it

automatically. And for me, I noticed a difference, not only at bedtime, but just throughout my

day, I started encountering difficulties and immediately thinking, Okay, what's the next step to

resolving this issue? Instead of just oh my god, I can't believe this is happening, and I can't

believe I have to do this, and what am I going to do about that? And just ruminating on the

problem, I started just immediately shifting to solutions. And I think the next step portion of this

is important for people with ADHD, and I think that's why this had such a big impact for me,

because we have a tendency to get overwhelmed, because we just see the gigantic task before

us, right? It's problem, and then the next step is solution, and the step, the path between the

two, can seem so large and like such a big undertaking, that you get stuck in your tracks,

because you don't even know where to start. And so by rather than focusing on what the

ultimate solution to the problem is, but rather just the next step. It could just be call Brooke,

because she knows more about that issue than I will call Brooke tomorrow. I'll write that in my

notebook. Look this up on this website, because I know they'll have more information, like the

tiniest little thing, you end up going to bed with this feeling of like, okay, I can do that, even if I

don't know what the ultimate solution is to this problem. I know that I can take two seconds and

call Brooke tomorrow and ask her what she thinks, and that will move me along in the process.

And so it gives you this feeling of, okay, I've done everything I can do about these things today

and tomorrow. I have a plan that is doable for what I can do about them tomorrow. And now,

just recently, we came up with an addition. So I used to pick three things and advise people to

pick three things that they will actually do tomorrow, so that can help you create a productive

to do list, instead of having hundreds of things on your list, which I'm sure many of us canrelate to. And now I even take it a step further, and I pick what my one thing is going to be for

the following day. So ideally, I still have my three things, and I still have my full to do list and

whatnot, but rather than going to bed with this feeling of not enoughness, which I always had,

because my brain, again, is an ideas factory, so I now know I will never be able to keep up with

all of the ideas that my brain has, and that used to always make me feel like I hadn't done

enough that day. Now, at night I do my exercise, or sometimes I don't even do the full writing

exercise, but I will think to myself, What is the one thing that I need to get done tomorrow that

if I do tomorrow is a success, and I can now go to bed and sleep more easily because I got my

thing done, and everything else that I got done was a bonus, rather than going to bed with this

feeling of like but, but I should save a little later and do these other things, because I still have

so much left to do on this endless to do list. Yes, I love that the one thing right? Obviously,

there's a book about that, but I also talk about that 1% action even during the day. You. Right

like so do it at night, that first step, but when you're creating goals and actions, we get into this

chaotic state again, and we get into survival panic mode. If we could just think of that next step

after a brain dump, like you were saying, then we can get momentum, and that momentum is

going to give us clarity and confidence to keep going a lot easier. Even if it's so easy to you and

your brain right where it's like underwhelming, it ends up reducing your anxiety and creating a

lot more space for you to continue to do the thing that used to be so hard to do 100% often,

once you get started, you get that momentum going, and then, and then you're flying. And I

think that's the part that a lot of people who don't have ADHD don't realize, is that it can be I

know there's a lot of debate over using this word, but I feel for me, it can be a superpower in

many cases, because once I get going, one the ideas that I come up with are really great. And I

think ADHD is a large reason that I'm so good at my job as a news anchor, because I can think

of questions to ask that others may not have thought of, or angles on a story that others don't

see, and so on, in terms of the ideas, they can flow so well. And I think really outside the box,

compared to, you know, a lot of people in my orbit. But then also, once I get going on a project,

I can sometimes accomplish what should be, you know, 10 hours of work in one hour. You

know, the downside is that there's the opposite. You know, you get exhausted sometimes from

that, and then you try to set out on what should be a really simple task, and you just think, like,

Gosh, why can't I get these expenses done? And why is this taking me so long? And why do I

keep losing focus every time I try to do this, yeah, and then it becomes an all or nothing

mentality. Well, because I couldn't do our my taxes for a year, I'm just a failure, right? And I

can't do anything. So now it's going to be two years later, and I still haven't done my taxes. I'm

just saying hypothetically, this happens for us, right? And you're like, if I just Okay, I just need

to gather the grocery receipts. Let me just gather those or whatever. You know, I just need to

call you accountant and ask them what the first step is to do, or whatever it is. It then becomes

that much more digestible. And so I think we often hear that as an ADHD tip, but it really works

well in this context of doing this brain dump before bed, too, because it it for me, it has been a

huge game changer, both in terms of sleep. And I realized now, in doing all this stuff to fix my

insomnia, I was also doing stuff to help me manage my ADHD. It's amazing. That's literally step

one of my 12 step process to brain dump and do one thing. I don't care what it is, but just take

one step. That's all that matters. I love that. So the the other flip side to this is the is we all

have a physical sleep drive, which is like hunger. So if you snack all day, you're not gonna be

that hungry for dinner. You might sit down, you have a little bit of your dinner, but then you

don't have a full meal, and then maybe you, know, wake up in the middle of the night and

you're hungry or whatever, sleep drive works the exact same way. So you talked about

circadian rhythm. That's one part of our sleep system. Our sleep drive is the other part of our

system. And so what we will often do is we will listen to advice, like, if you're having trouble

sleeping, just go to bed earlier so you can get more sleep, or to sleep in later so you can get

more sleep, or to have a nap so that you can make up for that sleep loss. But it actually ends

up having the opposite effect, because it's like you're telling someone, you know, I think wethink of sleep as if it's of insomnia, as if it's like sleep starvation, but it's more like when you

don't have an appetite for sleep, right? If someone doesn't have an appetite at dinner, you're

not going to be like, oh, you know what would help? Just have a snack. You know, that's that's

not gonna that's not gonna help. And so it's the same idea. So what we will often do is we'll

sleep in nap, go to bed earlier because we're so worried about not getting enough hours, and

we end up weakening our sleep drive, which just makes it harder to sleep against the following

night. And you end up in this spiral, because, on the one hand, all the agitation that's coming

from those thoughts and worries that you have is revving up your wake drive, and now you're

also lowering your sleep drive by doing all these things that you think are helping and that

everyone always says to do, but they're actually hurting you so often. Part of the solution when

you have insomnia, which is, you're going to bed, you're trying to sleep, you can't fall asleep,

right? Different than not spending enough time in bed, the solution is actually to spend less

time in bed, to go to bed later, which, if you're an ADHD or probably sounds like, yeah, that I

can do. I'm really good at that, right? But you keep waking up at the same time every morning,

and you stick to that, and you stop worrying about but I'm not getting the eight hours or

whatnot, because we don't all need it. Everyone has a different amount of food to feel full.

Everyone has a different amount of sleep they need to meet their sleep need. And eventually,

by doing that and sticking to that pattern, you build up that sleep drive enough that by the time

you go to bed, your sleep drive is high enough, even if your thoughts aren't completely quiet,

because obviously they're never going to be your sleep drive is enough to overpower that. And

then you start to build up sleep confidence. And now, instead of. Worrying before bed, which

that worry, in and of itself, the worry about not sleeping, will cause insomnia. Once you feel

confident that you know when you go to bed you're going to fall asleep, it becomes more and

more likely that it happens. And instead of being in this terrible cycle of sleeplessness where it

gets worse and worse, you start to move that momentum in the opposite direction and

accountability. And I see you're wearing your aura ring. So having that accountability in seeing

what you're doing, are you looking at your aura ring at all? No, because sleep is not something

we do. Sleep is something that happens to us. And once you try to force it to happen, it actually

has the opposite impact. And so people were getting so in their heads, trying to sleep or trying

to sleep, well, trying to get some percentage of REM sleep and deep sleep and whatnot that

they started actually to see their sleep decline. And so the reason I like the ring is that it's not

shouting all these bells and whistles and notifications and glowing on my wrist. It's just there.

And when I want to go back and reference something out of curiosity or look for a pattern, I can

go ahead and do that, so don't become so obsessed with the outcome. Yeah, and even if you

don't, most of the information that it's going to give you is not going to be helpful information.

You're much better off just keeping a sleep diary. And I have a list of suggested things to keep

track of in your sleep diary, because that basic information that I give you that's actually the

kind of stuff that is useful for both you or your sleep doctor, if you are seeing a sleep you know,

a sleep provider to come up with a plan to actually help your sleep because it will help you

pinpoint what the root causes are of your sleep problems, as opposed to a fitness tracker,

which is going to throw a ton of data at you that isn't really going to make a whole lot of sense.

You know, one of my friends called me up and started talking about his percentage of REM

sleep and deep sleep and how it went. And I was just like, how is this helping you? What are

you doing with that? Do you even know what that means? No, not really. Okay, so is it? Has it

been helping you since you've been looking at it? No, I'm actually sleeping worse and worse the

more I look at it. I was like, great. Take it off. Your risk. Put it away. Just keep track of these five

things, and let's talk again in two weeks. Awesome. Well, lots of really good information. And

for someone who has a disability and is such a public face and voice, right, it just goes to show

how many people still out there are not being diagnosed with ADHD. So even though it's rising

the people who are aware and the diagnoses, there's still a lot of people out there that don't

know. So hopefully this episode brought some awareness to people out there. And if you areB

having trouble with your sleep, go get the sleep fix method. We'll put the link in the chat as

well. And Diane, what's one thing that you want to leave our audience with? I always ask

people at the end, and usually there's more than one thing that they care, and that's okay, too.

I'm gonna leave with the word disability, because I don't think it is. I think there are aspects of

it that feel that way, and particularly because of the way we are expected to live. But I actually

think it's just our brains are different. And I think to the point you just made, I suspect the

number is much higher than we think it is. And in sleep, I'll bring it back to that people have

different circadian rhythms. They're called corona types. When you talk about something being

someone being a morning person, someone being a night owl, someone being, you know,

somewhere in between, we use those phrases as if they're choices, but they're not. Those are

biologically dictated. Some people are biologically programmed to wake up early and go to

sleep early, and some people are biologically programmed to go to bed late and wake up late.

These things that were maybe considered disabilities or negative traits or whatever you want

are actually just features of the way human beings survive in a different kind of community.

And I think the more again, this is not based on science, this is not based on journalism. This is

just based on me and my hunch. I think we're going to start discovering that ADHD is just a

different way that the brain thinks in order to suit different needs of our society and and maybe

it's that, you know, we are more visionary leaders and less good at things like cleaning our

room, you know. But almost every single some, every person who I know, who I've talked to

about, their ADHD lacks in some area where they feel they are expected to perform in a certain

way, but then they soar tremendously in some other area that maybe people just think is

normal, right? I did well in school. I had lots of you know, I mean, you talked about my

accomplishments, this brain has served me very well. And I'm not saying that to be egotistical,

but I think everything that came really easy to me was really easy to dismiss, because I just

thought, Well, yeah, you know, I get good grades because I'm smart, and I do this because

whatever, and I'm a good athlete because I'm coordinated. You don't think of those things. You

only focus on the parts you're bad at. And you say, Why am I so bad at this? I'm a failure, and

so I think that I'd like to see the conversation shift a little bit, particularly in how we talk to

ourselves, about ourselves, to also talk about what this thing does for us, the way that our brain

works, and how beautiful it is in certain areas, and maybe forgive ourselves for the areas where

it's not so great. And.

Brooke Schnittman 55:00

Either find new ways of doing that thing that works with your brain, or if you have the means to

lean on other people to maybe support you in those areas so you can shine in your zone of

genius, I love that. Well. Thank you again for your time, and I'm sure today's episode is going to

resonate with so many people out there, especially those who are parents, late, diagnosed

having sleeping problems. Where can people find you, besides the news, if they're looking for

your tips? So I am on Instagram, and all most social media at Diane are Macedo specifically for

sleep stuff. It's sleep fix method. So at sleep fix method on all social media, and that's where I

post specifically just about sleep, also sleep fix method.com. I have an online course you can

take. I have a book, and I also do live events and live speeches, where I go into companies and

I teach people how to sleep, how to deal with their sleep problems, even if they have funky

schedules, or kids or all the other inevitable things that life will throw our way. Okay, so I don't

know when you actually sleep for someone who does all of these things, but apparently she

knows what she's doing. So everyone. Go follow Diane Macedo on Instagram, on Tiktok. Go visit

her website, or course, all of that, she's normalizing a lot of this for you and making you feel

less alone and more joy with the positive aspects of your ADHD. So thank you again for your

time. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of successful withADHD. I hope it helps you on your journey, and if you need any additional support for you or a

loved one with ADHD, feel free to reach out to us at coaching with brooke.com, and all social

media platforms at coaching with Brooke, and remember, it's Brooke with an E. Thanks again

for listening. See you next time you