Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective: Dr. Tonya Caylor

09/30/22 • 31 min

Dr. Tonya Caylor: Let them be wrong about you. That was a powerful statement that the first time I heard it was like, Oh wow, okay. Because it just, it gave me freedom to let go of the control because I think we get socialized in medicine to really. Perform and we want good grades. We want the a plus with extra credit when the gold Star.

And and that performance based approach really highlights we are caring what other people are thinking, and so it's not that we don't care. It's not like we wanna have a terrible reputation, but it's like giving up control and trusting that if you show up as your best self, your reputation is gonna be fine.

Hello.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hello. Welcome to Beyond adhd, a Physician's Perspective. I am Dr. Deanna Mecado Mage. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural. I used to be hindered by my adhd, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as a person. I was always meant to be both in my work and in my personal life in the past.

Two years, I've come to realize that unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits, I'm excited to.

Hello. Hello. I am so excited today. I have a very special. And you won't believe it. She is in Alaska today. So it was fun getting our time zones to line up. And her name is Dr. Tanya Taylor, and she's a family medicine physician. And I have the pleasure and privilege of meeting her actually last year.

And it was a very cool. It was the Physician's Coaching Summit and we hit it off the very first night over our doors and some wine talking about how Covid has really led us all to come to an awakening that mental health is there and that we would probably all sub functioning, but now we've realized that.

We've put ourselves through unnecessary suffering, and she's actually on a mission to help educate residents and physicians and all the healthcare industry to be able to realize that, they have choices and they can make choices. And so I am so thrilled to have her here today, and she's gonna give us lots of good tips and share with us her journey.

So would you like to give us a little bit more information about you? If I missed. Yeah. Thank you

Dr. Tonya Caylor: so much for having me here, by the way. And I we really did. So I'm Tanya Taylor, family physician, academic physician coach up in Alaska, although I coach remotely throughout the lower 48. That's what, that's the term that we use out here.

And it was a great conversation because you and I, when we first met, realized that we had similar purposes and and you also had a very keen interest on. Academics, trainees who were struggling with ADHD and time blindness and those sort of things. And my passion has always been the residency level, academics and seeing that there were ways that you would be able to help that same population and with your expertise.

And it's an area that I love to coach in. And so it was a great conversation. I and we started like brainstorming. How could the people who follow and listen to me and the residents that I work with gain for those who have a d type tendencies or just time blindness or just want a little bit of a calm in the chaos.

And then me being able to talk to the followers that you have about. Ways to identify areas of unnecessary suffering and really begin to not only, survive, but flourish in their chosen careers. Yeah, that's how we got here. So thank you for having me. Yeah.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So I'm so excited about this particular topic because I, I think that we don't realize that we are just future of habit, right?

And sometimes, We think we have the most efficient systems. . Yeah. But we realize that some of those systems actually might need to be upgraded because some of the underlying beliefs, or they're old software, they need to be updated. And we don't realize that, some of the, because we haven't questioned some of those things like that we ourselves, Adding to the suffering that we were sharing with everybody else.

And we don't realize that, we have choices. So today I think I wanna hear your experience. What have you seen in helping residents is there anything that stands out to you? That, maybe to them is not obvious, but to you, because now you have this expertise and you're able to see it from a detached lens and you're not in it with them per se.

You have the ability to hold space and help them see that maybe some of those things that they're doing are, are not really true, and their brain is telling them that. Yeah, I think that's,

Dr. Tonya Caylor: I kinda, you hit the nail on the head there with that description because not just residents but faculty and all attendings and whether they struggle with a d type tendencies or not.

We do have these habits and we have these ingrained thought patterns. That don't service well. So one of the largest areas of taking back...

Hello.

Two years, I've come to realize that unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits, I'm excited to.

So would you like to give us a little bit more information about you? If I missed. Yeah. Thank you

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So I'm so excited about this particular topic because I, I think that we don't realize that we are just future of habit, right?

You have the ability to hold space and help them see that maybe some of those things that they're doing are, are not really true, and their brain is telling them that. Yeah, I think that's,

We do have these habits and we have these ingrained thought patterns. That don't service well. So one of the largest areas of taking back...

Previous Episode

The 4 A’s That will Change Your Life

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hello? Hello. Welcome to beyond ADHD, a physician's perspective. I am Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my ADHD, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as a person. I was always meant to meet both in my work and in my personal lives.

In the past two years, I've come to realize. That unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits were just as important as learning the new set of skills. Hello.

I am so excited to be with you guys today, but he's been.

Before, I'm actually gonna start a group coaching program in October. It's gonna be on Thursdays at noon central, and it's gonna be for all the healthcare professionals. So that means like the nurses, physical physician assistant. And that means nurse practi.

And pharmacists and dentist, anybody who can benefit from being able to practice medicine in a team setting. And doing such that will free up their time as well as their energy and be able to develop tools and techniques to help them with emotional dysregulation and effective executive function techniques.

I am so thrilled to announce this new group that I'm gonna be happy. So I wanted you to hear about it today. And before that I want invite you free masterclass. That I'm gonna be on September the first at. 30 central PM. So please go over to my website, ADHD, live coach.com to register for that. If you're not able to come live you can obtain it in the replay the next day.

So that way you can still the one hour CME credit by listening to it and the topic.

Masterclass is going to be how there's certain tasks that we all have to do and why not get the in basket to zero without it being a pain in a career. So I hope you're able to come. And if you know anybody in your team who might like an amazing nurse practitioner or physician assistant, Or from this pharmacist, send them my way.

I am so excited to be able to provide this service to them as well. Okay. So today's talk is going to be about the four A's, the four A's that will

Awareness get freedom of time. Okay. And so for me, the awareness acceptance action and alignment are the four A's that I want you to think about. So any time we have to do any tasks, if you can apply these four A's, you're gonna save yourself a lot of time, a lot of headache, a lot of frustration and you can apply really in anything.

To me, I

apply it to my everyday life. Like I take it with a grain of salt. I realize that awareness is the first step. If we didn't know that there was something that could be done better, then obviously we wouldn't be worried about it. And so when you don't know what you don't know, it keeps us.

From growing and learning. And so awareness that what if there is a better way for me is so critical acceptance so the acceptance that things might be boring, that things might be hard that things don't have to be the way they are, might be that thing that you need in order to keep moving forward.

Action. You have to do something. Anything to disrupt the current habits that you have, because if you keep doing the same thing that you've been doing every single day, because our bodies in our mind want to preserve energy and we are in autopilot and don't question little, disrupt the system, then we're gonna keep getting the same result.

If you want to get something different, if you're not liking what you've been obtaining and you want something different, if you're tired of pajama chart, if you're tired of not having enough time for your family, if you're tired of not having enough money in your bank account, you need to take action to change.

Your result so that you don't keep living in the same past present reality. And so how do you do that? you go back to the first three, you have to become aware that something has to change you then have to accept that. Yes, you do have a choice. Yes. You get to decide that you are worth.

Putting in the work to get to whatever version of yourself that you want, and then you take action towards it. And guess what? In order for that to happen, you have to be in alignment. Like your mind has to be in alignment with your heart. I know it sounds weird, but again, if you know why you're doing certain.

Okay. I wanna lose weight because I wanna be able to like, see my daughter graduate. And I feel like if I lose weight, I am gonna be able to prevent a heart attack or I'm gonna live longer. I'm gonna decrease my chances of cancer. Then that tells you like the why you're doing something. And so then when you're doing every action.

Towards that you asked yourself, is this action that I'm about to do? Is it an alignment with the goal that I'm trying to accomplish? Yes or no? If it is a yes, then go for it. If it's a no, then ask yourself okay, do I really need to do X, Y, and Z at this...

Next Episode

Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective: Mel C

Mel C: They would always put my clinical skills in the morning cuz that's when I perform better. So I work with the and I say, Look, this is my problem. This is when I focus best. I struggle to learn at the best of times, but I am very capable as you know. Can you please do this to maximize my learning? If you give me this clinical skills class, that is really important for my learning.

If you put me in the afternoon, I'm just gonna sit there and be a good, go and be quiet. But I'm not gonna take anything in.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hello? Hello. Welcome to Beyond ADHD, a Physician's Perspective. I am Dr. Deanna Mecado Mage. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my adhd, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as the person I was always meant to be, both in my work and in my personal life in the past.

Two years, I've come to realize that unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits, I'm excited to share all these skills.

Well, hello. Hello. I am so excited today to have a very cool guest on our podcast and uh, her name is Melissa Carlin and she is from first Australia. She's actually a third year medical student, so it's so cool for us to correlate our time zone differences. Likely she figured it out for me. That's not my sort of genius.

I would show up at the wrong time , but I am so happy that she's here and I'm gonna let her tell us a little bit about herself and, uh, how we met. Mel C: Hi Diana. Thanks so much for having me on here. This is really interesting. It's really cool. Um, yeah, so where did we meet? We met, I made a, a Facebook group, um, for doctors and medical students with adhd.

Um, and we met on there. Um, I noticed you'd post some, uh, A couple of posts that were quite interesting about some courses and things that you do. Um, and then you, you got in touch with me and that was really cool. So, um, yeah, so I made that group just, uh, I noticed there was a lot of, uh, medical students and doctors with adhd, but they don't tell anybody about it.

They, same with their depression and anxiety. They keep it a big secret. Especially, I don't know what it's like anywhere else in the world, but especially here in Australia, uh, there's still a lot of stigma.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes. You know, that's so important that you created a safe. Place for people to come and join in a community that like-minded people could correlate and relate with each other because like you said, unfortunately there's still a lot of stigma and this is why I do this podcast and this is why now I'm like talking to anybody who would hear me about like changing the way that ADHD is perceived cause like we forget that.

What we're thinking really influences how we show up in, in the world, right? Like, if we're thinking this is the worst thing ever, or we're thinking, Oh, this is fascinating, I wonder like what, what it could help me in or whatever, right? Like it could just make a difference on how you then show up. Um, you know, in 2016, they.

Did a research or they did like a survey of medical students and they asked them, in the us they asked them like, how many had di uh, diagnosis of adhd and like, interestingly enough, like one third of the class had it. Yeah. So like, and, and so I'm pretty sure it's. Under, like reported and under. Absolutely.

And probably likely undertreated, you know, And so

Mel C: we've done this thing in Australia, so wa I think worldwide, uh, at Perth where I am for some reason, it's got the highest rate of a ADHD diagnosis and treatment, highest rate of Dexamphetamine prescription and. I literally saw a post on Facebook yesterday saying that it had risen by 20,000 prescriptions this year, uh, since five years ago.

But they always report it as a bad thing. Yeah. And they always report it, and then you'll see in the comments like, Oh, it's over prescribed all these addicts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Nobody's reporting how much the cholesterol prescriptions have gone up this year. Why do you care about add, Why do you need to post that?

And, and, and, um, rev everybody up in the public who has no idea. But yeah, back, back to what I was saying before, um, Uh, when I started med school. So I've had it since childhood and uh, always got my accommodations and I sat my first exam in first year medical school in, uh, the special accommodations room where I have my isolated exams cuz I'm well aware of my accommodations.

So I sat there, there was one other student, I don't know if they had add. Um, but yeah, so I was there on my own and, and then, That was his first semester. And then at the very end of the year when we sat the last lot of exams, all of a sudden there was 10 extra people there. They all, um, all had d ADHD all their life.

And they finally, I think med school finally had very su...