COACHING CHATTER + guest Janine VanStee

In this episode Julie Legg interviews Janine VanStee, an ADHD Life Coach and podcast host of ADHD Eaves Drop (Michigan, USA). Janine was diagnosed with ADHD at 50, after years of misdiagnoses including depression, anxiety, and OCD. So who’s up for some coaching chatter?

With 30 years of experience in special education, Janine has dedicated her work to helping others navigate their ADHD traits. Janine’s journey highlights the power of self-awareness, structure, and support in thriving with ADHD. By implementing small, ADHD-friendly changes, it’s possible to navigate challenges more effectively and with self-compassion.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Late Diagnosis: Like many women, Janine was misdiagnosed multiple times before receiving an accurate ADHD diagnosis. The “domino effect” is common in families, where one diagnosis often leads to others.
Retrospective Signs of ADHD: Janine recalls early signs such as excessive talking, hyperactivity, impulsive decision-making, and rejection sensitivity (RSD). She also struggled with people-pleasing and being a “chameleon” in social settings to fit in.
Self-Awareness & Acceptance: Accept that ADHD is not a flaw, but a different way of thinking that requires tailored strategies. Practice self-compassion—acknowledge emotions without judgment. Speak up about necessary accommodations at work or in social settings. Educate loved ones about ADHD to foster understanding and support.

LINKS

TRANSCRIPT

JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Welcome to ADHDifference. In in this episode, I chat with Janine VanStee from Michigan. She’s an ADHD Life Coach, diagnosed herself at 50. She has had 30 years’ experience in special education and she’s driven to make a difference in the lives of those struggling with their ADHD traits. Through her lived experience, insights as a coach and podcast host, she shares common challenges that many ADHDers can relate to. Welcome Janine. Thanks so much for joining us today.

JANINE: Absolutely. I’m so excited to be here. Any chance I get to talk about ADHD I get excited.

JULIE: Fabulous, fabulous. Look we’ll start straight off … you were diagnosed at 50. I was diagnosed at 52 so a lot of similarities there. And you had a long career in special education. So what led to your diagnosis?

JANINE: Well, so I had been misdiagnosed several times prior to getting there. I’d been diagnosed with depression, and then with anxiety, and then OCD you know, all the things before you know they finally look at you and say “You may have ADHD.” But in the process of all that I just… and my son had gotten diagnosed with ADHD and I had always suspected my daughter had ADHD. I’d actually taken her in several times to be tested. But also, she had received depression, anxiety, all those fun you know diagnosis because girls don’t have ADHD, you know. And so after my son went in and got his diagnosis and… we actually have a family psychiatrist at this point because my entire family, it just felt like dominoes you know. I worked with her and she’s like “Well I think you have ADHD too.” Sure enough, I do. Then I said if anybody has ADHD it’s my husband. So sure enough he does as well. And my daughter finally was the last one to get the diagnosis out of all of us and she was the first one when she was like 9 years old that I took to get tested for ADHD. So yeah, to make a long story short, it was… it’s one of those common stories where you know, the domino effect happens and everybody figures it out. I remember being pretty frustrated because I’d been teaching special education for like 30 years and hadn’t seen it in myself. But when you’re looking at other people and trying to see what’s going on with them it’s not the same as the way you look at yourself. And once I really started to turn that back on myself, I was like “Oh oh yeah, I see that for sure.”

JULIE: And were there any other clues retrospectively now since being diagnosed, to look back in your youth to think “Ah those signs were there?”

JANINE: Oh they were all there. All there. Like you know, Janine’s a lovely student but she talks too much. She has a difficult time sitting still. I was one of the few girls who you know, actually had the hyperactivity component too. And the way it showed is in my talking. I talked a lot, still do. And so that was one big way and then oh just the poor impulsive decision making. I did so many things that I shouldn’t have done in my high school and college and well, you know, just all those years where people are making bad decisions to begin with. But mine just always seemed to be you know, just overboard, bad decisions. So that those yeah, it was a lot of bad decisions, a lot of difficulty you know maintaining my physical character, but also a lot of RSD you know, rejection sensitivity. And very much a people pleaser. I was a chameleon, you know. I was a master masker. Yeah I could mask like there’s none other. And you know, so it’s not surprising that people didn’t know I had ADHD back then but I still look back and think “How could they have not known that something was going on here?”

JULIE: It certainly is awareness, isn’t it. Once we understand ADHD in ourselves, we can see it all around us, can’t we. It’s a bit like a radar, ADHD radar.

JANINE: Well and one of the things that I really noticed after my diagnosis, and after my husband’s diagnosis, is we have come to the cusp of divorce so many times. You have two ADHD people living together undiagnosed, and we were just too stubborn to ever say, you know, quit. But after we got our diagnoses, and we started our medication, and we started to really understand how this was affecting us, it changed our marriage. And I’m happier now that I’ve ever been in our marriage. So that was another huge difference just the understanding of where certain behaviours are coming from.

JULIE: Absolutely. I also am married to an ADHDer, also we met undiagnosed. And so we had our diagnoses about the same time, so very similar definitely. Lots of energy, lots of fabulous connection, until it’s not, you know. It could be the two extremes just like the spectrum I guess of ADHD itself. You have explored several career paths, you talked about 30 years in special education. And what led you to become an ADHD coach?

JANINE: Well, I think it was a pretty natural progression for me because I’ve taught every disability area, every age group from 3 years old to 26 years old with special education needs, and when I retired, I had been in central office administration for several years and at that point I completely lost touch with the kids. And lost touch with you know, like the working one-on-one with people and helping people in a one-on-one situation. And I wanted to do more of that where I could see the person, and see the results that we’re getting. And I really decided to work with college and older because in high school and elementary, you have a lot of supports right? You have a lot of things that they can do to support you and then suddenly they say “Go be an adult.” And so that’s where my passion came in is like I want to be a resource for people who are now all of a sudden adults. And so I do work with college students. I work with adults of all ages. But really you know, that adulting becomes very difficult, very quickly. So I’ve always been a helper. That’s what I wanted to do is help and I still do.

JULIE: Fabulous. And you know, I’ve heard too with those entering college, or university in New Zealand as we refer to it, the structure of school life when you’re younger it’s there and you eat your lunch at a certain time, and the bell goes and you go to class. But once hitting university you’ve got a lot of things to juggle. You’ve got to multitask, and prioritize your lectures, and your study, and there’s deadlines. And it’s very, very different. On top of this, flatting or you know, sort of college lifestyle when you’re socializing as well. There’s a lot to juggle and I think it trips many people up at that age.

JANINE: Yeah, well you think about the fact that you know, your frontal lobe isn’t completely developed you know, in a normal person until like age 30 or you know, 25 to 30. With us with ADHD we’re delayed even a little bit more, so that age gap especially as you enter college is more significant than it appears because of the development of the frontal lobe, so.

JULIE: With regards to your ADHD coaching, what are some common struggles that your clients deal with and how do you help them get… navigate through those challenges? Are you able to share some of those with me?

JANINE: Oh, I think like so one of the biggest challenges I see is the emotional regulation, difficulty handling and regulating their own emotions. But I would say even deeper than that is not having a self-worth that comes from within. There is a lot of seeking approval externally and a lot of not so nice talk internally. And I… it’s a theme I see over and over and over again with my clients where you know, we have to work on shifting where does our worth come from. And why does the outside world matter as much as it does? And a part of that I think is the RSD, is the masking you know, there’s people pleasing, all of those things that come in with the ADHD. And then suddenly you know, we start looking at oh, I actually just have worth of my own. And that’s probably the biggest one that I work with people on. It, you know, we have all kinds of other little strategies we’re working on in the process but it always seems to come around to, why does it matter what other people think?

JULIE: It’s tricky isn’t it. Because especially being diagnosed as an adult, you’ve spent so much of your life navigating life and you know, these little trip hazards that we have and some impulsive decisions. We’re really good observers, aren’t we. We kind of know if someone’s raising an eyebrow and maybe that’s a look of disapproval, and what have we done, and what can we do to readjust ourselves. And so this self-narrative versus the external narrative is very interesting and I can see that it’s a very hard one to crack. [Oh it is.] It takes a brave… well bravery, doesn’t it, to actually going I am me and I am enough. And sort of pushing away some negativity from the outside world. Hmmm, interesting. Are you able to …

JANINE: Oh, I was just going to tell you one of my favourite clients stories is about just that thing, where I asked her during her last session you know, what she was taking away. And she said “that I’m enough” and she said “I’ve had it tattooed on my arm for 4 years but do you think I ever believed it?” And she says “but now I do. I am enough.” And it just… that was oh made my heart sing.

JULIE: Absolutely. Do you have any other success stories within your coaching that you could share with us?

JANINE: Oh yeah, I mean that is one of my favourites. I had another client that I just loved working with. So fascinating because she truly believed that you know, she wasn’t going to be able to keep her job because she wasn’t able to you know, function the way she wanted to be able to function. And she ended up getting put on a correction program at work, and they hired me as a coach for her. So sometimes corporations will hire coaches and have them work with their people. And so we worked together for 10 weeks and at the end of the time she… I asked her you know what, what are some of the things that… what are some of the beliefs that you had that you kind of put to bed that you don’t believe anymore? And she said “That I can’t communicate with my boss. Because I can communicate with my boss effectively.” That made a huge difference in her job life, in her work life, and opened up all kinds of things for her at work. So that’s one of my favourite success stories. And then I just have like a funny one I’ll just tell you. I have a gentleman that I worked with and he created all these beautiful spreadsheets, right. He was all about organization. All of his peers loved his spreadsheets. Spreadsheets, spreadsheets. And he had all these great tools and he looks at me and goes “And not a damn one of them works for me.” We can’t… we finally determined that for him, he really needed paper and pencil. He… that’s not the way his brain worked but he was thinking “This is working for all my neurotypical peers. They all love my organizational tools but they’re not working for me.” And we had to go back to checklists and paper. And so, it’s funny how you think because this is working for everyone else, it should work for me. And then you realize it’s just so simple. I just need to put a pencil in my hand.

JULIE: It’s interesting, isn’t it with strategies and they’re just so personal. And I think even in a book on strategies that there would be a handful that actually potentially could work for one individual, and the others just will not. And maybe it’s that perseverance of trying them, and trying them in different situations before completely giving up. I am definitely a calendar kind of a girl. I… if it’s in the calendar it’s there, it’s concrete, it will happen. If it’s not it won’t. So I do rely on visuals and notes for me, yeah otherwise I get a bit time blinded and things go a bit chaotic. And how do you stay on track? What are some personal strategies that you use that work for you?

JANINE: I you know, when I retired from education, I said I’m never going to live by a calendar again because I’d always lived by a calendar. But by golly, I live by a calendar again because it’s just really… somehow that’s what works for me. And then I have developed a tool that I use for myself quite a bit called ‘the true to you to-do list.’ And I have… I use that strategy a lot to get things done. And it’s just a list that’s based on a little bit different tweaks when you’re thinking about when you make your list. Instead of thinking about how much time it’s going to take, thinking about how much effort, and how much mental strength and effort it’s going to take you to do it. And then ranking those as to how much effort it’s going to take, not how much time it’s going to take. And evening those out and making sure that you have your dopamine levels staying up during that because you know, they can dip. And so, checking in with your dopamine and having piggyback activities and all kinds of stuff like that. So that’s one of my favourite tools that I use myself. And like I said, the calendar. And I have very understanding people around me who help me with reminders and those types of things. And honestly communication, I use communication a lot. I will say to somebody “I lost track of what you were saying.” And being just being honest with that or saying “You know, I’m late again. I apologize.” You know, and just being communicative and I think that that is one of the things that is kind of forgotten, is that other people when they understand your struggles a little bit more, if they’re people who love you and care about you, they’re going to do nothing but support you. So finding your support.

JULIE: Absolutely. A little story just to share on that, I was actually being interviewed for a newspaper and there was a Skype… sorry a Zoom call, similar to this, and I was asked the question and I went full on and I lost my way. And I knew that I was heading down a little rabbit hole and so I stopped and said “Look it’s one of those moments, could you repeat the question please?” And the reply came back from a journalist “I’m really sorry I forgot what the question was too.” I thought, you know, the… and we both laughed. You know it … but you know when you’re talking to other ADHDers or someone who really understands ADHD it’s easy to be kinder on ourselves and understand some of those moments that we’ll come across. Whether it’s zoning out in a meeting, or a conversation, or just being distracted by you know all these things that we do. Now you also are a podcast host. [I am.] Yeah, so tell me about ADHD Eaves Drop.

JANINE: So ADHD Eaves Drop came about because I literally found myself in conversations with people all over the world every week. Because of the ADHD life coaching class I was taking and that just kind of like evolved into… I had people that I spoke to in Canada, and Ireland, in the UK, and the Caribbean, and you know all over the place. And we had such great conversations and I was like we should really share these conversations and put these conversations out there for other people because they might get hope from them. And so, the whole basis of my podcast is: if you were sitting in a coffee shop next to our table, what would you hear us talking about? And so that’s why I call it the Eaves Drop. If you’re eaves dropping on our conversation, what would you hear? And so my podcast is about having good conversations that inform, that encourage, that make people feel less alone. And so that’s how I had the ADHD Eaves Drop come about.

JULIE: Oh that’s fabulous and I think that you know, for ADHDers often reading isn’t the go-to as far as… for many, not for all, but for many, concentrating on chapters and losing their way. And so podcasts are really good and audiobooks, so that’s a fabulous way we can multitask. We can hear what we need to hear and meanwhile be stimming, or doing the dishes or you know, it’s great.

JANINE: I don’t know about you but when I listen to a podcast, I usually put it on 1.25 or 1.5 and speed it up and listen to it faster. So I like the idea of being able to speed up the podcast and hearing it faster, that way you can listen to more of us in the afternoon, right. You get more episodes in, right.

JULIE: Yeah, absolutely. So I was going to ask you know, as an ADHD coach, what words of advice would you give anyone really struggling with some of their ADHD traits because it can really get… it can really get us down at times when we don’t feel we can manage ourselves.

JANINE: Well and I feel like that kind of plays into ADHD difference, because the one thing that I would say that I wish that everybody with ADHD had, was the knowledge that we are not… we’re not broken. We’re… our brains work differently but they work very similarly to you know like a good 5 to 7% of the population, it’s just that they work very differently than the other part of the population. So being able to give ourselves that grace and be able to say “I’m different and my brain works differently and so I do things differently and that doesn’t make me good, it doesn’t make me bad, it makes me who I am and I’m worthy. And so therefore you know, being able to just give them that acceptance and that grace for themselves. And I will tell you the same thing I tell my clients all the time, if you say something to yourself and it seems harsh, ask yourself: would I say this to my 9-year-old self? Would I say this to my 15-year-old self? Get a picture of your younger self and ask, would I say this to this kid? And if you wouldn’t, think about what you’re saying to yourself because you’re hearing every word of it.

JULIE: And we do, yeah. We are quite mean to ourselves aren’t we. [Yeah very much so.] Why do you think… why do you think that is?

JANINE: I think part of it is because being outside of the norm, whether you’ve been diagnosed or not diagnosed, we all know that I think a common thread is “I felt different. I felt different. I never felt the same as everybody else. I always felt a little bit different.” And when you feel different you start to be critical of yourself because why am I not the same? Why am I not the same? And then you also hear it from other kids or adults you know, why can’t you sit still or you know, you talk too much, or blah blah blah. You hear these things and then after a while you just start saying them to yourself because you’re like, I can’t stop talking. I must just be stupid, right. I must just be dumb because I can’t stop myself from talking. Or I’m a bad person because I’m impulsive and so… I don’t know where I was going with that but yeah.

JULIE: No, just why we’re being mean on ourselves and I think I think a common one too is about guilt and shame as well. Particularly as we get older it’s easy to highlight all of the things that went wrong, all the incidents or accidents that we had along the way, rather than a highlight reel of positive things. So there’s a fine line between celebration and damnation, I guess.

JANINE: Yeah, well I like to… I’d like to talk about assumed. So, like a lot of times people have an assume negative, you know like where they assume everything is critical or negative. And then you have other people are able to assume the positive and so everything that comes their way you know just seems cheery. You will find that a lot of ADHD folks tend to be the assume the negative folks and a lot of that goes with you know, just our whole lives coming up but you know, they assume the negative. That is a really hard thing to fight in life is to try to assume positive.

JULIE: Yeah, we’ve just got to keep at it, don’t we. We absolutely do. But I… what I’m so excited about is that with podcasts like ADHDifference and ADHD Eaves Drop, we’re beginning to just continue the conversation. I’d love to hear about this the ADHD situation in the states at the moment but I think what we’re experiencing in New Zealand is there’s been skyrocketing diagnoses, and it’s in the news, but I love to dig deep to really help explain what ADHD is. Because it’s more than just a list of bullet points, these are the traits that you’ll experience. [Yeah.] And the more we can have that conversation, the more people feel less alone that they’re trying to go through some life choices. And it’s almost like the what now? You’re diagnosed now what do I…what do I do now? [Oh yeah.] Do I have to reinvent myself, you know. Yeah.

JANINE: Yeah, in the United States we are having you know, we have had a definite uptick in diagnosis. I think it’s just a recognition of more people being out there that have it, and in being able to recognize it a little bit easier. I mean up until what, 20 years ago, girls weren’t even considered a candidate for ADHD. And you couldn’t have autism and ADHD at the same time, right. So you had one or the other, and so there’s like so many just technical issues with those diagnoses. Yes they’re going to go up. But now we understand it more and we can recognize it better also. So yeah, there is definitely an uptick. It used to be “Oh every kid’s getting an ADHD diagnosis.” And now it’s like “Every adult is getting an ADHD diagnosis.” And it’s like yeah, because our kids figured it out.

JULIE: Also it would be great if you could explain to our listeners the difference between an ADHD coach and a therapist. So, when is… when is someone likely to call you?

JANINE: So I like to say the biggest difference between coaching and therapy is that therapy coach deals with the past and how to deal with your past and your past traumas, and coaching deals with the present and the future. We don’t go into those past traumas and dig them up. Now they may be a part of a belief that’s holding you back and we may address it, but we’re not going to pick apart, that’s I trying to say, your past and your childhood to do the work that we’re doing. We’re going to be like more “You have ADHD, now what?” And you don’t get a user’s guide, so we’re going to figure it out together. So we’re the now what?

JULIE: Wonderful and how can people contact you? Do you do online consultations or coaching, or is it one-on-one? How does it work in Michigan?

JANINE: So you can contact me through my website which is JVanStee ADHD Life Coaching or my email which is jvansteeadhdlifecoaching@gmail.com. I try to keep things a common thread right because we ADHDers, we don’t get into that you know all the different things. And then I book a 45-minute session right off the bat for free. I don’t figure 15 minutes is enough time for us to chat and get to know each other. I like to get some chatting going on, get some questions answered, and then give you a lightning session so that you get a feel for what coaching is going to be like. So my first session is 45 minutes and it’s free. So, you can just sign up online. When there are traumas in your past that are holding you back to the point where you’re not able to focus on or concentrate on other things, you really need to deal with those things first before you have the strength to do the personal work that goes into coaching. And I’ve had a lot of people tell me coaching can be harder than therapy in a lot of ways because we’re looking inside you to get the answers and sometimes they’re hard to find, right. So, I will definitely though if somebody is getting deep into something that is more of a therapy past realm, I will suggest that they you know, see a therapist instead or as well as. Because it doesn’t have to be either or, there’s the multimodal approach where you’ve got the therapy, you’ve got the coach, you’ve got you know, all the… your accommodations and all those things, and so it doesn’t have to be one thing and not another thing.

JULIE: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much Janine. And for our listeners, we’ll have all of your details in the show notes. So, the website and also your podcast information. [Awesome.] It’s been absolutely lovely chatting to you today, thank you Janine. And we will hopefully talk again sometime soon. [Absolutely.]