Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective: Radical Acceptance Towards Holistic Approach in Life with Dr. Katrice Brooks (Family & Lifestyle Medicine Doc)

Dr. Katrice Brooks: Give yourself, grace, this is a journey and we're on the journey. We're all trying to be better and you're even wanting to be better. You're on that journey. So give yourself grace and radically accept yourself, build community and other people. That's, you know, mirroring body, doubling, delegating, optimize your habits.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hi, welcome to Beyond ADHD, A Physician's Perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a Family Medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers who are three and four years of age.

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovering ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts backlog, a graveyard of unfinished projects, and a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes. The last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back like I have.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Well, hello? Hello. I am so excited today to have one of my friends Dr. Katrice Brooks. She is a double board certified Family and Lifestyle Medicine Physician, and she has more than 10 years of experience. So you need to talk to her because she does the whole holistic approach. Okay. She makes sure that she helps her patients get the care that they need.

She's the one who stays there and listens what she listens. She spends times with them, she answers all the questions. She's so passionate about health equity, improving their quality of life by reducing medicines and of course helping the patient make decisions. And so it's so important that you listen to today's topic, because she's gonna talk about how ADHD has been one of her superpowers to help transform her patients' lives.

One of her newest adventures has been having her own clinic. And so we're here to talk about how an ADHD entrepreneur can have all the things and how that can create a big impact in not only her personal life, but in the lives of her community. And everybody who works with her has this amazing transformation as well.

So Dr. Brooks, please let us know where you are and tell us a little bit about your clinic or what it's like to have ADHD and, start this amazing using adventure.

Dr. Katrice Brooks: All right. Hi, Dr. Mercado. I'm so excited to be on here. Just talking with your audience, super, super excited. You are amazing, and you're doing amazing things.

So I'm really so honored as well. My life basically changed when I began to accept my brain and to start working with it rather than working against it. When I stopped trying to, be like everybody else. And I started trying to help and support myself and that journey of supporting myself and radical acceptance, has helped me to radically accept my patients and to help them rather than to try to put everybody a square peg into a round hole, trying to fit everybody into these boxes. It helped me to see kind of the individualistic needs of people and meet them where they are and help them get where they're going. So I really kind of transform my approach to my patients. So I really do think of it as a superpower. And I have lived with this my entire life and not. Realizing kind of what it is. And I do wanna say that I'm self-diagnosed ADHD or self-diagnosed neuro divergent, and I might be, you know, just on the spectrum or a product of complex trauma, but my brain, you know, just doesn't work like, most other people, or my brain works like my brain.

I can't even say like other people, but my brain works like my brain. And I found that what everyone else did and the rewards that they were getting in their brain, I didn't get the same thing. So I had to create paths for myself. And it's been a journey because as you know, I'm sure as your patients know is taken me. I've taken lots of hits because of it too.

Like it is now my superpower, but this journey to entrepreneurship was because it was almost my Achilles heel, you know, I know you, you actually have a course where you've given talks on recognizing ADHD in your coworkers. And I wish some, one of my coworkers would've recognized it in me. You know, I like most other physicians who struggle with ADHD my entire career with those 10 years of experience working for big medicine.

Almost the whole time since hitting the ground, I struggled to close my charts. I would have periods where I did it. Great. And then I would, it would fall apart and I would do it great. And I would fall apart. And you know, the, the talk in the office would be like, Dr. Brooks is such a great doctor because, you know, ADHD does allow me, that's my superpower.

I'm able to...