The Battle of Phoebe & Monica in My Head
The Mind-Blowing Thing I Learned About My Brain Last Week
I’ve been reading
’s incredible book, ADHD For Smart Ass Women: How To Fall In Love With Your Neurodivergent Brain, and it has been an absolute godsend for me. Apparently I’ve been on a roll with finding “lighthouse” books for myself lately—forget fluffy, fun beach reads, I’m going deep these days. A few weeks ago, I published a review of Lyz Lenz’s This American Ex Wife on Midstory Magazine—you can read that here. To say these two books have changed my life is an understatement. But! I digress! (Did someone say something about a squirrel? 😂 Can you tell I forgot to take my afternoon Ritalin today?)Anyhoo, I have been taking my time reading this book so I can thoroughly digest each section. It was Tracy’s podcast that originally guided me to my diagnosis after my Christmas Day meltdown when my friend gently pointed out it might be time for me to finally get evaluated and directed me to her psychiatric nurse practitioner. After our conversation, I went home and listened to an episode of ADHD for Smart Ass Women.
As I feverishly took notes and devoured the episode, I realized that I already knew the answer: I have had ADHD since childhood, and listening to this checklist and thoughtful discourse on how ADHD shows up differently for girls and women, I felt more seen than I ever have. I felt a sense of understanding about myself. Peace. Compassion. Acceptance. All the things I have been looking for for years, in all the wrong places.
After my diagnosis, I immediately ordered the book, and it’s been validating, comforting, and instructive. Because I have been bingeing all things ADHD education the past few months, I feel like I’ve already learned quite a bit. But Otsuka’s book introduced me to two terms I had never heard of: Default Mode Network and Task Positive Network. Yet again, I felt my brain explode in a major “aha” moment. Here’s a little reel Stacey and I made explaining these terms that we individualized with our own 1990s girl twist!
We were so delighted with ourselves for coming up with this little analogy. I could picture Phoebe lounging on a couch inside my mind, strumming her guitar, writing song lyrics, and singing Smelly Cat while Monica races around, cleaning, cooking five things at once, and making a business plan.
My brain prefers Phoebe mode. I love being left to my own mental devices. I have spent decades getting lost inside my own head, writing, daydreaming, creating, tossing around big ideas, meditating, and coming up with bizarre analogies for scientific terms by applying Friends characters to them. 😉 When my brain is in Phoebe mode, it feels natural. It’s resting.
Basically, when our brain is at rest, it wanders, which can be great for creativity and self-reflection (my favorites!) but it comes with a flip side: catastrophizing, hyperactive thoughts, playing out worst case scenarios, and rumination.
In her book, Otsuka writes about rumination, which has been my personal Kryptonite since forever, sabotaging my productivity and confidence with anxiety, self-doubt, and a time-wasting practice that I always described as “confrontational fantasies.”
She explains, “One reason people with ADHD ruminate more than neurotypical people do has to do with a faulty connection between two areas in our brains: the default mode network (DMN) and the task positive network (TPN).”
The antidote for ruminating and hyperactive thoughts? Task positive mode. And it doesn’t have to be a task you hate, like vacuuming or unloading the dishwasher. It means you give your mind something to focus on: exercising, talking to a friend, even a focused breathwork practice can help.
As I thought about all the IFS work (Internal Family Systems, aka “parts work”) I’ve done, dividing parts of myself into categories I labeled as “front yard parts and back yard parts” (thanks for that insight, DMN!), I realized that while I prefer to float in the backyard pool of my thoughts like the Lazy Daydreamer—Phoebe mode—there is a time and place for Monica, the hostess in the front yard who is bringing out the side dishes and making sure everyone has what they need.
I need both Phoebe and Monica inside my mind. And when you have ADHD, it’s easy to get stuck in DMN—Phoebe mode. We need Monica and her TPN to kick our asses off the contemplation couch and guide us into the kitchen or drive us to the gym.
I reflected on the challenges I’ve encountered because of this difficulty to shift between Default Mode Network and Task Positive Network—a struggle to stop the “inside my head” work I’m doing and get back into my body, do tasks I don’t enjoy, or manage my time—I realized something huge about my own career choices.
When I became a mom, I was teaching 10-12 early childhood music classes every week, eventually adding preschool classes. Over the past decade, the schedule balance has tipped towards more writing, publishing, editing, and producing, because that is the stuff that lights me up.
I absolutely love working at home on my laptop—writing, editing, creating—and last year, when I quit teaching the majority of my music classes, I felt relieved at the prospect of having more time at home to work at my own pace on my own time. But I kept one preschool music program per week, and one monthly music program. I also added more voice students. And I’ve realized that despite my urge to stay in my “bedroom office” and do my own creative work, immersing myself in my thoughts for hours, there is something extremely grounding for me about teaching music.
As a music therapist, I know that one of the amazing qualities of participating in a group music experience is that it calls us immediately to the present moment in time. When I am teaching music, whether to an individual student or a class, I have to be focused on what I am doing. I am with the kids, engaged in a structured activity that is time and place oriented; I cannot tune out. I cannot let my brain wander back to the comfort of Phoebe’s default mode.
And as a woman with ADHD, I absolutely need this balance in my life, this pull to focus, to be present, to engage with my students through music. I have to be in my body, in the moment, not wandering around in my own head. And sometimes I am resentful of tasks that force me out of my brain—after all, it is quite an alluring landscape, what with all the daydreams and ideas and mental arguments I’m having with people who are completely unaware. 🙃
Teaching music does two things for me—it brings me out of my mind and into my body, and it transports me into a much-needed Task Positive Network—aka Monica—moment. I have learned that before I transition to teaching music, I need to do something physically grounding—another TPN activity—to pad the transition from being inside my thoughts to focusing on something important like teaching children. Often, I will walk the dogs before class, or start dinner prep before my voice students, knowing that it’s hard for me to transition and difficult to downshift between DMN and TPN.
Having a grasp of the science behind it—thanks to Tracy Otsuka’s book—reminds me that there are reasons why this is hard for me. And the reasons have to do with my neurodivergent brain—it is NOT because I am lazy, crazy, or stupid, as another fantastic book on ADHD points out.
Understanding the “why” of the hurdles makes it so much easier to navigate the “how” of learning how to structure my days and how to layer my career tasks to stay balanced.
I need to respect my tendency to stay inside my head, understanding that my creative, intuitive superpower resides there, but also push myself into a focus mode that keeps me grounded in my body and minimizes rumination and catastrophizing. This is absolutely a work in progress for me.
In the coming weeks, Stacey and I are going to explore the connection between the DMN/TPN challenge as it pertains to some of our biggest struggles with motherhood. We are also working on creating a free community for moms with ADHD to support each other—get on our interest list here! Whether or not you have ADHD, I think it’s fascinating and helpful to understand the way our brains work. The further along I get in this process, the more optimistic I become that I can fall in love with my neurodivergent brain. In fact, I think I may already be there.
XOXO,
Steph
There are TWO Listen To Your Mother shows coming up! THIS Wednesday, April 3rd is LTYM Boulder Comedy Night, featuring a hilarious lineup of moms. I’ll be doing standup with some of my absolute favorite female comics. Grab tickets here.
Tickets are going fast for LTYM Boulder at the Boulder Theater on May 4th! This is our annual storytelling show featuring the amazing writers above. Get your tickets here.
The Mother Plus Podcast went viral on Instagram last week—twice! One of our reels has 7.5 million viewers and climbing! Make sure you’re following us at mother_plus_podcast, and subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date on our episodes about ADHD and moms who feel like they are failing motherhood. We are working on creating a free community for moms with ADHD—if you want to get on the list, sign up here!
I resonated with this so much. And I love the Friends analogy!