"I was in mental AGONY. I tried to throw myself out a car" - Denise Welch dissects late ADHD diagnosis

I would make myself vomit because the 10 seconds of making myself sick would take away from the pain and... National treasure. Denise Welch. Denise is an English actress, television personality, writer and broadcaster. Now she is opening up about her ADHD. I was diagnosed and they offered me the medication. So I took the tablet and then an hour later I wanted to drink in a cigarette for the first time in 11 years.

I made some huge mistakes in my life because of alcohol and drugs. What I do wonder is did ADHD play a part in my postnatal depression and in my drinking drug abuse? What I've always thought was it was me self-medicating, but now they are finding links in postnatal depression and ADHD. What people don't understand about mental health issues and mental illness and depression is that when people take the ultimate way out, which is sadly, I'm taking their own life. It's not that they want to die, it's that they want to stop the pain.

This episode is dedicated to anyone who cleans, not because their home is a mess, but because their mind is a mess.

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Give it a go. Why not? It might just help. Anyway, back to the episode. Denise, thank you so much for joining us. Alex, you're welcome with you. As always, before we get into the meat of the interview, Denise, I want to reveal your ADHD item, which is underneath this cloth on the table. Yeah.

Now, for people who... It's a DVD of Real Housewives, and we're going to talk about why that's your ADHD item a little later on. Okay, cool. But first, in these, we've got a tradition where we ask every guest the same question, so I'll ask you that question now. What was your earliest memory of feeling different? Yeah, that... Quite interesting, because I think that with

With my ADHD, and maybe other particularly women have said this, the hyper-ness was not really a thing in my childhood. So when we talk about ADHD and we think of the naughty boys, particularly boys jumping on tables and being told off and everything, I never felt the female equivalent of that.

I remember wondering why my boredom threshold was so low, which I realized now is probably just attention, you know, deficit, obviously. And I was always aware of that, that I didn't find necessarily the same things interesting as other people. But I can never honestly say that

I felt as bad as to feel that I was completely and utterly different in my thought processes because I know that there's obviously an ADHD scale and a spectrum for that. And so I think that I never felt completely different. Maybe I masked as they call it now. I was always somebody that tried to fit in.

I always somebody that wanted to people, please, I wanted to feel, and that's really something that I struggle with to this day. I'm glad that I feel like I'm quite a nice person, but it's troubled me over the years of why my desire is so great to not upset even the bin man.

You know, when my husband will say, why are you upset? And I say, well, because the bin man shouted at me and he says, why do you really give a fuck that the bin man said that you put the bin in the wrong place? And because I just don't want the bin man to think that I'm not a very nice person. So I've always felt different in that respect. My sensitivity gene is so huge.

So different in some ways, but not different than I ever thought it was a problem. When did you get your ADHD diagnosis? Well, I got it. By default, sort of, a couple of years ago, Nadia Sawala had been for some time sure that she and her daughters

were ADHD, but undiagnosed, and she talked about it a lot, and everybody would go, oh God, if anyone's ADHD is you, the girls would say. So our producer is married to someone who's very, very high up in the ADHD world, Henry Shelford.

And he very, very, you know, an authority on this subject. Anyway, they are snarred here. If they organized a diagnostic process for her, would she be happy for it to be filmed as an item on the show? And she said, yeah, for sure. So they got ADHD 360. I know.

to, she went long and she did the, you know, the thing that you do, over a period of a couple of days. And when, and she was indeed, as were her daughters diagnosed with it, however, they then told me that when they had approached ADHD 360 and said, one of our loose ladies thinks she may be ADHD. Remember, there's 24 of us all together. They went, is it Denise?

I went, oh, OK, well, out of all of us. And they said, yes, that's what they said. And the girls then proceeded to say, oh, come on, Dan, come on, Dan. And I hadn't really. I'll tell you why, Alex, because depression has always been my illness, which

This is me digressing a bit, but I've had clinical depression since Matthew was born in 1989, so 35 years, less so the less five years, which we may not go on to. And it's like a new life has happened to me in my 60s because of that. But that has always been my illness. So everything, slightly different about me, everything to do with my thought processes, the way that I

The way that my life runs is always to do with clinical depression, endogenous clinical depression, as opposed to reactive clinical depression, which is, of course, what it says on the tin. That's based on trauma or life events that cause you to go into a depression, whereas mine is more scary because it's endogenous. So it just happens in the middle of a conversation, or when I'm on a train, or when I'm in an incredibly wonderful moment in my life,

And I suddenly feel a metallic taste in my mouth and a tingling in my palms. And I know that that heralds a horrible episode of depression, of which there is no control. So I never thought of having another thing. So that was always my thing. And anyway,

I met the people when they came along to the, when we, when we did the episode where we covered Nadia's diagnosis and I met the people from ADHD 360. And of course, I was going to be having a diagnosis. And of course,

It was kind of off the, you know, off the chart as it as it were. What I was fascinated about was the thing that we discussed previously is like many, many people thinking that because I wasn't hyperactive in childhood.

It had never been something that it, so I never felt I was masking anything. I have a friend who has twin daughters and one of the daughters lives a very pain-free life and the other daughter is on the spectrum ADHD and it's awful because her masking is so

intensely amazing that at school they have no idea of her home behavior. She is on the top of the academic list. She is a friendly and amazing mixer at school and comes back.

and shows violent tendencies from the minute she walks in the door, and is having a terrible time, and so are they. She's got the most wonderful parents to deal with this. So I am now aware of what they call masking, but that was never, I never felt I was masking anything. So it's an interesting new adventure that I'm on, and I also don't medicate, which I tried.

So two years ago, I was diagnosed and they offered me the medication and suggested that I took it. And I said to Lincoln, my husband,

I don't feel the need to take medication for ADHD. I don't really want to change who I am. I accept that I interrupt people. And sometimes that's just because they're so boring, not because I've got ADHD. But yes, you know, they're all these little sort of like hearted things. And Lincoln said to me, if someone else was diagnosed with something,

And they were told or advised to take the medication. You would tell them they should because I'm a huge advocate for antidepressant medication when prescribed for the right reasons by the right people. And so I said, OK. And I remember it was January 2023. And my son, Matty, was playing at the O2. It was a big, big night.

And I was taking several people along and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so this medication arrives. And I honestly thought because the way that it had been described to me in some ways was that my head would be clearer. I would be much more focused. I wouldn't be trying to multitask a million things. I'm a woman and we do multitask, but my head wouldn't be scrambled in so many ways.

Suddenly, domesticity and the ability to do my taxes would happen to be overnight. So I thought, I'm going to take this tablet. By the time I leave our London apartment, I'm going to have vacuumed everywhere and I'm going to have thought right. For once, I really want to settle down to that bulk of tax affairs that I've ignored since I was 18 years old. So I took the tablet and an hour later, nothing had happened and I was joking about still not feeling the need to do my taxes. And then an hour later, I

wanted to drink in a cigarette for the first time in 11 years. And it was horrendous. I would have affected me. Had I not been so

many years into, and so secure and capable of managing my sobriety, it would have been a very, very, very dangerous tipping point for me, very dangerous. And so one of the things that I am always glad of the opportunity to tell people is that ADHD medication changes so many people's lives for the better, but there are some people who it is not good for, and I was absolutely one of them.

It was really, you know, quite frightening. And I made a decision that literally the day after to not take it, my sobriety is just too important to me to ever risk that. Of course, I then start googling as we are told not to, but we do about everything and realize that that's incredibly common and has cause lapses in many, many people who aren't strong enough in their sobriety by then.

So it's something that I think should be pointed out more before you are prescribed it, and people can make a more informed decision. But having said that, I talk to so many people whose lives are a million times better being because of it. So it's horses for courses. Yeah, for someone who the risk is so high, if you have a drink, and you don't know how that day's night's going to end, it can be fatal.

I realized when I was at Matty Show, and we were in a box at the show, I like a non-alcoholic beer. I'm not triggered by non-alcoholic beer. I get sick of sparkling water. I like a non-alcoholic beer. Now, over the years, they're so much better, aren't they? They're non-alcoholic drinks. I realized that whereas normally, if I'd gone to an event like that, I probably would have had maybe a couple of non-alcoholic beers and then gone on to coffee or water. I realized I'd had eight, and that's what I was obviously doing.

Whereas I never use non-alcoholic beer for the beery taste or whatever. It's just because it's a nice alternative, you know, in the especially on holiday in the sunshine. It's nice to have a cold beer of sorts.

But it was terrifying. And another thing that Lincoln said to me, especially because he'd been the one who had encouraged me to try it, he said the next day, I never want you to take that again. And I said, I've made the decision. And I said, why do you say that? And he said, because your energy was like when you used to drink. And we both gave up together alcohol. We both had issues with alcohol. So it wasn't him pointing a finger. He just felt the old energy in me coming back.

That's spoiling for a fight energy that would happen with alcohol. And him and I don't do that, you know. So that was interesting. His observation of me was, this is scary. Because I didn't say anything. When I felt this happening, I thought, I'm not going to say to Lincoln, fuck, I've taken this tablet and it's making me want to drink. Everybody was going out for this fabulous night. So I was concealing how I was feeling. You think your perspective of ADHD has changed?

Post diagnosis to pre diagnosis. What has made me question is and again i don't do that. Oh i did that in nineteen seventy three because i was obviously ADHD i slept with that person because i've got ADHD you know.

I made some huge mistakes in my life because of alcohol and drugs, and I've had to come to terms with them. What I do wonder is did ADHD play a part in my postnatal depression and in my drinking drug abuse? Because to me, what I've always thought was it was me self-medicating clinical depression, but now they are finding links in postnatal depression and ADHD.

But when I had a baby, there was nothing really in me that I would have said, I'll go and see if I've got ADHD, particularly.

They're finding the links, obviously, where they know the links with an inability with numbers and maths with a lot of people, which has always been something that's terrified me. I'm just about to be a patron of natural numeracy because it's something that has really

blighted parts of my life, not because I ever wanted a career in accountancy or in economics of any degree, but just day to day ability to not be able to add up properly and have the English and drama side of your mind working. If I'd really wanted to pursue languages, I possibly would have been quite good.

but the maths side and the just day to day, not being able to work in a pub when I was 18, because I couldn't, we didn't have electronic tools. So if people are going through Whiskey's four vodka and tonics and two gins and you're trying to work it out in the background, you're sacked. There's something called dyscalculia. I think I've pronounced that correctly. I think you have. So that comes up time and time again. I don't know if I have that or not, because again, I don't want to just give myself, oh, she's got that as well.

But, you know, I am aware now that with the things that I read, that there are links to all of these things. So many people with ADHD are alcoholics.

I've been addicted to most things in my life apart from physical fitness, which I desperately try to get addicted to the gym and it just doesn't happen. Do you think there's a link between acting and your potentially dopamine-seeking ADHD brain? Yeah, probably do. And I think my dad, now looking back, I think my dad, the most wonderful person in my life, was probably

Now that I look for the signs and I know more about it, I see signs in that. Yeah, I do think that it would attract the creative people. I was just so

It was the boringness of everything. And I just, you know, you can put it down to not having very interesting, very interesting teachers, but just things just wouldn't go in because I had zero interest. And my mind was just constantly on other things. So when my mind was open to being in the school play when I was 15 by a madrama teacher, and it had never occurred to me to go down that route, I wasn't sort of, I really need this, you know, from being seven.

I was always the star of what I could never understand was that when I was maybe seven and my mum would have a girl's night, why she would want me to go to bed, how that party would not be enhanced by my presence was alien to me, completely alien.

Um, which, you know, could be down to arrogance. I just, it was incomprehensible to me that, that I wouldn't add to what, to what was, was going on. So I think certainly, um, the attention seeking side, side of things. How do you think ADHD would be was is viewed by your parents or.

viewed by the time you grew up. Again, again, I use depression as a serious condition, you know, that I had. I was incredibly lucky that I had the parents and the family that I did, because from the moment I became ill, which was five days after having Matty, no one in my family

I'm talking about my immediate family, of my sister, my mom, and my dad, and, you know, my husband at the time, Tim, the boy's dad. Nobody ever doubted that what I had was a very, very serious illness, whereas the thousands of people that I have talked to, mentored, spoken to, been spoken to, about depression.

the amount of people who were told to snap out of it. Well, my first autobiography was called pulling myself together, because if I had a pound for everybody that said to me, pull myself together, snap out of it, whatever you got to be depressed about, I'd be a trillionaire. And that was, you know, and interestingly enough, it was my granny's generation that was the least supportive understanding of

the illness and I think that definitely would have happened. So when I went to, so I tried to show myself out of a car to stop the pain. I had a long, a wonderful pregnancy.

A wonderful pregnancy. I was the typical blooming woman in pregnancy. My skin was great. My hair was great. I was happy. I had a husband who I loved. We had some money in the bank and we were having a much wanted child. So socially, practically, everything was in place.

And I was the last person that you would have thought would have had postnatal depression. So when subsequently the psychologist on different talk shows I would do or chats I would do would say, we would have been able to detect it. I would say with the greatest of respect for your profession, which I have in buckets, you wouldn't have known. You couldn't have known.

I had not had one day of psychiatric illness before I had my child. I had a long labor and 42 hours without pain relief, which they deemed was this natural.

right on hospital, which I didn't know was a natural childbirth hospital when I went there. But I would have happily been hit over the head with a, you know, spike mallet given the opportunity, but it wasn't available to me. But nevertheless, the baby came out, you know, all trendy on the floor, blah, blah, blah. I didn't have any second stage. So I was second stage seven hours, which I shouldn't have been allowed to go to, to the point that Tim

Said, are you sure you haven't kept your fucking tights on? What I couldn't get this baby. But anyway, blah, blah, blah, wonderful. First few days, wonderful. Took him home on the fifth day and things went downhill from there.

And I wasn't anxious. I wasn't worried. And I had the first of a panic attack. And it was terrifying. And the whole lactation process stopped. So I had full breastfeeding.

big bazookas as you would have and overnight they went to spaniel's ears and this community midwife came around and said because there was no consistency in my care with going privately so this community midwife came around and she said very very supportively poor that is that is not right that would mostly only happen if a spouse or a parent dies at this point.

Well, that's not really what you want to hear. You want to hear. Don't worry. This happens to lots of people. It's not the end of the world. You're going to have to bolt the feed in. That didn't happen. So this is where my family kicked in. And my mum took unpaid leave from work and stayed with me. So because there was nowhere to go for help for this condition.

The point that I'm weighing on about here is that when my mom took me to my GP who I'd never met before, I was almost catatonic. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I didn't know what was happening. I was apparently on the verge of a purple psychosis where you lose all sense of reality, but I was in and out of lucidity.

And I couldn't hardly talk and we got to the doctors with me having on the way down I vaguely remember this. The taxi stopped and I opened open the door to just to create something that would take away from the pain in my head.

And we got to the doctor, and my mum was kind of talking for me because I was really monosyllabic. And the doctor, who was probably a woman of about my age, now, went forward and said, well, I had five children, dear, and I just didn't have time to get depressed. That's what she said to me.

And I realized that my granny's generation, I love my granny very much, but they would all say, oh, come, what if you got to be depressed about? We had a mangle in the backyard. We had one outfit for the kids, one bottle. You know, you've got nothing you youngens, but then they would nearly always say, oh, granny, what happened to Auntie Vera? Oh, she

But Auntie Vera was just put away. She was put into the type of mental institution that my mom used to work in, where they were rocking in the corner. And my mom would say to me, there will be women like that. My mom was on a very high grade ward in what we used to call, you know, mental hospitals, and what we used to call them. And my mom said, there will be people in here who are institutionalized, who were put in because of undiagnosed postnatal depression or subsequently menopause.

But nobody knew nobody talked about it at the time and ADHD would undoubtedly have been laughed at by most most people I think

But I just wish it was something, I don't know quite how it would have changed things for me, but it's great for me that we are talking about it now. You've said that you feel better in your 60s than in your 40s. How did you feel in your 40s? Drunk. To be fair. I'm over drunk.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I've managed to bring up two amazing children, you know, two wonderful young men who are both excelling in their chosen careers. With Matty, I don't talk about Matty very much. She's got his own life and, you know, you do something like this and the papers pick up what they want to pick up. But

Matty was more affected by my addictions than say Louis was. Louis was nine when Lincoln and I got sober. He's never loaned his stepdad anything other than sober. He doesn't really remember some of the days. And also, I wasn't someone as some of the press have made out over the years. I wasn't going into the cupboard under the sink to get the cleaning stuff out and swigging a bottle of vodka in the morning and staggering around the house. That wasn't me. I was a binge alcoholic.

And I didn't do cocaine until I was 38 years old. So if I'd been somebody that was into doing drugs, I would have been doing them at 21 when some of my friends were playing with them. I had zero interest in drugs, zero nada. I was happy with just a few glasses of wine or a few vodka's. But when I was 38, my depression reached its height.

I did cocaine because someone offered it to me and said, this will make you feel normal and it did initially. One line of cocaine brought me back to a normal state for a time, but then it became something I couldn't go out without.

Alcohol, less so for me, cane is where the moral compass slips in your life. It is the worst drug in the world for me. It is a drug that lies to you. It's a disgrace. It changes your personality. And, you know, there are behaviours on it.

that I can't even believe that was the same person. So when I say my 60s are better, something happened in 2019 whereby I had my last serious breakdown that we used to call it a nervous breakdown. It is now called an episode. However you want to term it, I had several over a 30-year period, some

always than others. And I had a really bad endogenous episode in 2019 from nowhere. And because I had been a mental health ambassador pretty much from a year after I had it, even though my

My well-knownness or whatever status you call it was in its infancy then. It was still enough to get, you know, that the local paper picks it up and then you do those kind of talk shows. And people were saying to me at the time, in the 90s, you don't want to be talking about that. People are thinking, your magic will never work. And I said, I don't give a flying fuck. If someone doesn't employ me because I'm talking about depression, I don't want to work for that person.

People said, do you ever lost jobs because of it? I said, well, I don't know the reason why I maybe didn't get a job. But if it was because I was open about mental illness, then I was glad that I didn't work for that person. And then, so 2019, because whenever I talked about it publicly and Loose Women's given me a marvelous platform to talk about mental health issues and many other issues, but that's kind of my issue that I sort of talk about and sobriety.

So I'd had this episode, but whenever I talked about it was always in the past tense. So, you know, the last episode I had when this happened, but obviously they're watching someone who is currently well talking about when they were poorly. So when this episode started to happen, I was driving up North with a friend of mine and her two kids. We'd been laughing and joking in the car and we got to the angel of the North and I felt the signs. And

This is where my masking has come in because you don't want to ruin other people's time that they're having because of your illness. So the masking is intense, but the whole color has gone out of your life within 30 seconds. It's like technicality to black and white, and you care about nothing. And I think that what people don't understand about mental health issues and mental illness and depression

is that when people take the ultimate way out, which is sadly taking their own life, it's not that they want to die, it's that they want to stop the pain. And you will do anything to stop the pain, because it's often described as sadness. Depression is the furthest thing from sadness.

Sadness is an emotion that you are meant to feel when you are sad. So when my mom and dad died, you know, 12 years apart, but I was emotionally traumatized and sad like you would be when your beloved parents die. That's meant to happen. It would be odd if it didn't happen. It's not like that. Depression robs you of every single emotion that you have, so you feel nothing. And anyway, something compelled me to pick up my phone

If my kids had been there, if Lincoln had been there, they would have told me not to. But I did. And I said, I am going to chronicle this episode, however long it takes. And I did. Not only, I'd pick it up in the morning, you know, and after three days, Lincoln came and got me and took me home and I went to bed.

and I was in bed for about four days. And when I woke up, is it gone viral?

you know, to the point that I was a bong on News at 10. I'd never been a bong on News at 10 for anything lovely before, but, and I remember being totally blindsided by it because I talked about it for so many years, but it was obviously the thing of seeing somebody go through it rather than just, this is what I had leading to, or what have you got to be depressed about? You've got a lovely job, you've got this, you've got that.

As a result of that, they asked me to do a book which I did, the unwelcome visitor, which is what I call my thing. Something happened to me physically. After that episode,

It was like, whatever happened to me, hormonally when I got postnatal depression, seemed to end with what might have been the end of menopause. This is me being amateur doctor, amateur psychologist, amateur, whatever, because I know something's happened that wasn't anything that I've done. And I haven't had another episode since. And I realized that for after six months, I realized

that at the moment I'm free of this constant narrative in my head, which for 30 years I had woken up and without even thinking about it subconsciously it would be.

Right. How do I feel? OK, what have I got on today? OK, what if I got my thing? What if I got my thing? Oh, my God, I've said I'd go to that with Lincoln. It would ruin his thing if I get my thing. Oh, my God, the weather's dark. It's really black. Look at the weather map. See if it's going to brighten up that day because dark weather is a thing. And this was before I'd even pulled the curtains open, you know? And I'm free of that for the first time.

So I don't know. I don't know what that's been, but that's why I'm enjoying this time of my life. I don't think it's ever gone away, Alex. I think that it stays somewhere over there. I would never, ever say, I don't have that anymore. You said earlier that cocaine changes you? Do you think it does change you? Or do you think it brings out an amplified version? Well, I don't know.

Dear God, you know, fucking hell. If that's an amplified face of who I am, I don't know.

an amplified version that could, but normally be. Well, the trouble is most people I know, whether they have ADHD, whether they have any other mental health issues, you know, they must have something going on to become addicted to cocaine, I suppose, but every single person who has been on cocaine, their moral compass is on the bottom. They make decisions that they would never, ever, ever, ever do or, or, you know, I,

I'm so grateful to having met my husband and, you know, the only thing we can thank alcohol for is that we met in a nightclub at six in the morning that didn't open until four a.m. So only the hardcore were there. And, you know, so that had we, our lives were so completely different and running in dip, you know, there was no way really we were going to come together.

had it not been through the madness as we call it, we just wouldn't have. So that's the only reason that we came together and we are together despite every single thing being thrown at us. The press had a target on my back, which I don't blame. I think that I make no excuses for my lifestyle choices, but there are reasons for lifestyle choices.

It started by me trying to self-medicate and then took me down some dark roads. What do you think it is about the invisible disease of mental health and anxiety that is so difficult for other people to understand and therefore very tricky for the person who's suffering with it? Yeah. Well, I think that it's interesting. My husband said to me when he had witnessed my first ever episode,

He said, I've learned so much from you because I would definitely have been the kind of person that would have said, what has she got to be depressed about? You cannot explain, Alex, you know this, what goes on in our heads to people who've never experienced that. And I'm very lucky, as I'm sure you are, that I have friends around me who will say,

God, that must be fucking awful. I cannot comprehend what you mean because to most people, it's like when I'm doing a play and I am nervous, right? That's normal. You're going to shit yourself before you go on stage. You're going to stand backstage on your first night and think, no one forced me to do this. No one may be say yes to this play.

And now I'm doing a two-hander, me and Matthew Kelly, standing backstage, only the two of us are going to talk for two hours, and we're both no spring chickens. It's your fault, right? So normal nerves and that are completely going to happen in my chosen profession. But what I would explain to people, I would say that

I've been seriously ill going on stage before and people would say, we've all had a bit of stage fright. And do you know what? I just go, yeah, I know because I don't blame them for not understanding what nerves tipping into anxiety is the difference of that.

of healthy nerves thinking, what am I doing this for? Oh my God. Oh my God. I can't remember what I'm going to say. I don't know what I'm saying back to. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. All of those things are completely normal, but no one knows except people with this condition. What that's like when it tips into anxiety where literally I can't breathe. I can feel the old unwelcome visitor rising up. My mind goes blank.

This is not just, oh my God, I know it will come to me when I get on. This is like, I know nothing. I know all I can think about is managing this condition and this illness and its fear. It does make me think when that's happened on more than one occasion.

Why I ever go, yep, I'll do that. Again, I don't know. Do you ever commit? You know, it's funny because people say, I always say I'm the most opposite of an adrenaline junkie. So I'm not a sports person. I'm not an extreme sports person. When you see these things on Instagram that we all see of extreme things, people jumping off things, people climbing these mountains, it's like, why? When you can stay at home and watch Netflix and just, why on earth would you do that?

But I am an adrenaline junkie because I put myself through those situations where those people would probably never stand on stage knowing they're going to walk out in front of a thousand people and having had three days rehearsal. Like when I did the Queen in the Diana story, I told you off air last year, we had three days rehearsal to put a full scale musical on. And I was playing the Queen and singing, which is not my, which is not my wheelhouse, you know?

With three and a half thousand people at Hammersmith Apollo, why would you do that? Why would you do that?

But I did. And of course I enjoyed it when it was over and you get in all the parts on the back. But sometimes people don't know what you go through to get there and why you continue to do it. I mean, apart from the fact that the obvious reasons of it's what I do and I have to make money, I have to earn money, of course. I think it can be very isolating when you feel like you don't have that tribe around you or that group of people that do get what you're going through. It can be very lonely.

Do you think there is a link between being neurodiverse and the feeling of loneliness? Yeah, I do think that now. Yeah, I do.

And I'm aware that I'm aware now that most people don't think in the same way as me and how many times I have been lonely within a room or a company of actors because no one else. And I'll kind of step out and look on at their experience that everyone else is having, except me, but that's where my masking would step into overdrive.

of pretending that I was the same as everyone else, you know, but dying inside. The amount of times, and I hope this never happens when people blame me. And this sounds really... You know how you have to self-edit these days of how will something be picked up? The amount of times I have sat in a dressing room wishing that someone would come in and say, the theatre's on fire, we have to evacuate.

praying that that would happen, that it would be out of my hands and very sad for the theatre and obviously didn't want anyone to be hurt, but that the show could not go on. Because all of my life, the show has gone on when it didn't have to. And when you get asked that question, what would you say to your younger self? Mine is always, I get emotional with this, I don't know why.

is that the show doesn't always have to go on. Sorry, I don't know why that's just affected me, but I just feel sorry for the person that sometimes did make the show go on. Having to make sure I had drugs to get me through a situation because I couldn't cope without them, but then I couldn't cope with them. Making people believe that

Because me being ill or even me being an addict has never affected my work. My masking was so good. But when I think that some people would call in work because their eyelash fell off and the show would go on, I just wish that I hadn't put myself through so much.

Really? I mean, listen, part of me is I'm an old turn. I mean, I left drama school in 1979. I've been around a long time. I'm there for the days when we did an apprenticeship. You did 40 weeks to get your equity card. Then you did another 40 weeks to get your full equity card. We didn't just come in off through these TV shows and stuff. Listen, I'm a reality whore. So I'm not dissing reality shows. But there is a way into our industry now that I wish it could go back to that there had to be sometimes

apprenticeship served and because I feel my profession has been infiltrated a lot and because of celebrity and fame and listen some people end up being great at these things they do but many are there for the wrong reasons and I think because I've got that so I do have a show must go on attitude built into me from those days you know if you had

if you had a severe bad back pain, if you had flu, you'd go on. But there were times when, you know, in Coronation Street, when I had two serious mental breakdowns, and going in there and using physical illnesses to not say what I had. Because although publicly, I would be a mental health advocate,

I would still know that people didn't really understand. So if you don't turn up to go to work on a TV show, there are 200 people who can't work that day, especially in something that works like a soap opera. You're not doing a film where you're filming maybe a minute a day. You're doing the equivalent of two movies in a week with very little rehearsal. And so you go to work and you turn up. But the times that I was

There was the times that I was dying, you know, I can remember waking up in the morning to go to work one day at Coronation Street and my depression was in an all-time high. And I knew that if I said, I've got depression, they'd go,

She got depression. We're all depressed about something. That would be the attitude. And I would kind of understand it because, but I would wake up in the morning and I would make myself vomit because the 10 seconds of again, the 10 seconds of making myself sick would take away from the pain.

I'm really surprised that I'm emotional about this. I really am. Yeah, but I was having a serious mental breakdown, you know, and I would go to work and I would go up in the green room and pretend that I was asleep, you know, in between bits and stuff.

Yeah, because I didn't want to tell anybody what was actually going on. And then, of course, when people know that you drink, they will always put anything down to that.

So I would say that I had physical things wrong with me. I'd say, I'm okay. I've just got severe gastroenteritis, so I've got this or I've got that because people understand what that is. They understand physical things. It's like I've said before, you would never say to someone, you know, some people can have something as serious as cancer, but they don't look like they have. My mother didn't look like she had cancer for 20 years until the very end. She was incredible. She lived with cancer.

But if you knew that person I can say, you wouldn't say, well, I know what you've got, but you look all right. You know, you don't look that bad. So why don't you get up, put a pair of trainers on and get yourself out for a bloody good run. That'll make you feel better. But that's what they would say to me. When I was curled up fitly, this is not the people close to me. This is people who didn't understand or adhere secondhand what they'd said.

Why doesn't she just get up? You know, I remember Tim saying in the early days that he would go to the pub and they'd say, I was a Mrs. N, you know, oh, man, take it to the Metro Center and buy your new frock. That'll cheer her up. That's people's attitude. And they say it's good to talk.

Sometimes it's not because people don't understand. I have a very privileged life in that I have a soapbox. I have a voice that's listened to. It's not by a lot of people. I'm very marmite, but it is listened to by a lot of people. But if you're Keith from accounts and you go to work and say, I'm suffering from anxiety and depression, they may legally have to let you go home, but they don't fucking want to.

Because we're all depressed. We all get anxious about things. Keith's got anxiety again. If Keith had MS, they wouldn't say that. They wouldn't. And that's not, you know, these are all, but they're all serious conditions. It's just what you wouldn't say to someone where you can see that condition. Or you don't even have to see it. You just, you have more empathy with it because you have more understanding of it.

I think anxiety, I mean, it's such a, it comes up every episode and I've been plagued by it my whole life. But there's something... It was yours when you were young, did you have it? Yes, I've said the story a number of times, first anxiety attack in a classroom when I was six, that racing mind, that sort of seven highly caffeinated squirrels, just barreling around in my head all the time. I think I do a lot of public speaking now and I drive to my talks and there's something inside me that compels me to work and to

not say no to things, but at the same time, the anxiety that caused that comes from it. You said the theatre burning down when I'm driving to these talks, the thought process in my head is, I hope I'm in a car crash because that will give me a legitimate excuse to not get there on that stage. What what compels you, do you think to say? I don't know, Alex, because you saying that, I remember doing it. It's the only the only show that I've ever had to that I've ever pulled out of because of my illness.

And it was a pantomime in Stockport in 2004. And I remember that because Louis was three. And I was giving my wicked queen in Snow White. And I chose this one because it was near to where I lived. And it's really weird because

I was in rehearsals, and you know with pantomimes, you get like about seven days or something to do what is in fact a full-scale musical, really. And I had just started on the first day, and I was feeling totally fine. And that night,

I went to the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards, a very prestigious, the sort of Northern Olivier's type of thing. And I was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for a Jim Carter, I play, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

And I had not done theatre for many years because of my illness through choice. And I had taken the bull by the horns and done it. Did I get ill when I was doing it? Yes, did I get through it? Yes. Did I do a good turn? Yes. And I won this award.

And my parents had come down and surprised me because they'd been told I'd won and I didn't know and it was all wonderful. And I just felt my God. It was like a real grown-up award, you know, because I've always been a bit underestimated sometimes because I've done lots of other things and I've diversified and people forget that what I really do is that I'm a theatre actress. That's my first love and, you know, what I do best, I think. Anyway,

I won this and it was great. And we all went out and had a few drinks afterwards. And I went to rehearsals the next day. And I got into my head. Oh my God, I've won this award now. Everyone's going to have such a high expectation of me. Even as the wick, you know, wow, it's changed everything for me. It's a wonderful thing. But this was this dialogue going on in my head and I could feel my anxiety.

And I did this speech in rehearsals and I dried and I said, I'm really sorry. I know this speech. And they were going, oh, you're fine. You're just a bit nervous. I wasn't. It was anxiety. And it was the beginning of the end. And I went through the rest of the rehearsals and we opened

And I remember sitting on this throne in the theatre, and everything was red. Everything turned red. And the words are coming out of my mouth while I'm thinking, I'm going to run out of the theatre, and I'm going to run in front of a car.

I'm not going to die, but I'm going to run in front of a car. I'm going to get in my car and I'm going to crush my car. And then I'm going to break my legs and I won't be able to go on the theatre on the thing. And I got a week into the play and I hadn't eaten for a week. I pretended to my family that I had, but I hadn't. And I collapsed in the interval in my dressing room. And my dresser rang my husband.

And he came up to the theatre and he said to the stage manager, I'm terribly sorry, but she's not going on again. And I can remember going, I have to go on. I have to go on. Like it's like a dream to me. And he said no. And do you know something? The show went on. They got somebody to come in and read the role in for two days. And then they took over the role and no one died.

But I'll always remember this review in the Stockport Express, with great apologies to the current Stockport Express. This is 20 years ago I'm talking about. And it really summed up our conditions. And it said,

Denise Welsh let down the thousands of people in Stockport by pulling out of a pantomime and disappointing thousands of children by citing in inverted commas, nervous exhaustion. AI never said those words. They weren't on my vocabulary, but that's what they deemed that I had. Whereas Penelope Pitstop, whoever the girl was playing Snow White, I don't remember, but obviously I wouldn't mention it even if I did, but battled on despite a broken wrist with a plaster on her hand and saved the show.

And I just thought, there you go. There you go.

I had nervous exhaustion in inverted commas, but she bravely battled on with a broken wrist and saved the day. And I went into a fully fledged breakdown after that. And it took me a long time to get back on stage. But having said that, that is the only time that I have ever pulled out of anything. But it came back to the car crash thing when

when Will Young, and this is where I first fell out with Piers Morgan, and Will Young was doing strictly, now I don't know Will Young, I know him to say hello to her to do, you know, or he's guest of the show, he's a lovely guy, but I don't know him, he's not a friend of mine, so I didn't have any skin in Will's game at all. But I remember he was doing strictly, and

And I knew his brother a bit, who sadly took his own life. But I knew his brother a little bit, who had reached out to me on a couple of occasions, because he knew that I suffered. And anyway, but I didn't know Will, and I'm watching Strictly. I'm a fan and, you know, and everything. And then Will pulled out.

And, of course, the media picked it up as, oh, he got a bad score off Len Goodman, or he can't take the pace. He, you know, da-ba-da-ba-da. And I remember thinking, no, no, no, no, no. You don't just pull out of something like that. And then, of course,

A year later he did a big article in a magazine saying that he pulled out because of his mental health and because of his anxiety and that he wanted to break his own leg so that he would be released from the show and of course I immediately.

um related to knew it was something like that when he said I wanted my leg I want to because then people would understand rather than I can't go on because I've got crippling anxiety to me that's the biggest reason in the world but it's not big enough for your peers and stuff to understand and um and I remember um

I remember Piers Morgan writing an article on Twitter, I think it was saying. Will Young said he was then diagnosed with PTSD. Of course his brother also had a similar illness. Anyway, Piers Morgan wrote, Will Young does not have PTSD. He has WNTS, whiny needy twerp syndrome.

And I responded and said, you know that you have just put the mental health cause back 20 years by what you've just said. So Doris from Darlington, who was just about to talk to her family about how she was feeling, has now seen someone with 7 million viewers taking the Mickey out of someone who has bravely come forward and laid his mental health issues on the line. And you've closed the door to all those people again. And he blocked me.

Of course, because that's his free speech way of dealing with stuff. And the Huffington Post picked it up.

And all I'd wanted was a discussion, but he closed it down and thereby started the occasionally ongoing feud. Nothing to do with his views on anything else. I was so fucking angry with that comment from someone who has such a powerful right.

contrast, isn't it, between the perception of illness, mental versus this physical, and we've come a long way. But there's still... We have, but there were still more suicides last year than ever before.

Well, people particularly in the workplace are scared to talk about their diagnosis, anxiety particularly, because they're worried that they're going to be met with an eye roll, because they're not limping with a broken leg, they feel like they're not. But that's it, and these things are supposed to have changed. And we spend, you know, we're raising millions for, you know, it's good to talk and this, that and the other. And of course it is.

How much is virtue signaling? How much is virtue signaling? And how much is genuine awareness and compassion? Those bosses know that they've got all these boxes to take and they have to take things seriously. But believe you me, most people don't take it as seriously as if Brian's got some serious physical illness. Denise, you've mentioned Loose Women briefly. Yeah. What has the show Loose Women taught you about men and how women view men?

Well, one of the major, one of the, I've been doing loose women on and off for 23 years, would you believe? I mean, I can't believe it either. Because I've done, you know, it's a wonderful job and as much as many of us have other jobs as well. So, and it's really only been the last 12 years where

maybe 14 years where it's been very much a staple of the daytime diet, whereas before it was a bit of a, it was on for three months and off for three months and 60-minute makeover would come on and we were nudged to half an hour and everything. One of the main misconceptions that people have about loose women is that we are anti-men. It could not be further from the truth. We love men. I love men. I've been married to three and slept with many more.

So believe you me, I love men.

And men love the show. Again, a lot of people look at what people think of loose women by Twitter or X or whatever it's called. Those people never watch an episode. They sit waiting for it to start, to slag it off. They have no conception of what the show's about. Having said that, it's hard to go down the rabbit holes of those said social media places and I do myself.

I love men. I think that we are very different animals, and I personally don't believe that we all have to be the same. I think men and women, and I know that there are now many other genders, and I respect all of them and everything.

But I gender in sex are different things, and I get as confused as everybody, but I think I've won Ally of the year. You know, I am, I'm inclusive to everybody. But talking about men and women, I think we are different animals. And I remember, who was that? The famous guy that dealt in human behavior. I can't remember what his name was. But he said, a man and a woman living together is like a gorilla in a cat.

Actually, that is how different we are. But I accept and I love those differences, I think. I don't know that I needed loose women particularly to learn about men. But I find the difference between us quite fascinating.

I do think that things like man flu irritate me, that now apparently it's proven that man flu does exist and stuff. I don't know why when my husband has a cold he has to clutch the furniture, why it involves going from A to B across a room from the table to the chair clutching when you have a cold, you know. But you all do.

Without exception, I think. I've just come out of a... I said it was Flea, my partner was rolling her eyes, but very dramatic. It's just so dramatic. And also, if you also believe all of you men, and I am generalising, because it's true, that if you don't, that we've forgotten how ill you are unless you cough every five minutes.

That has to be just so we remember how ill you are. But you know, as I say, I love and appreciate the differences. I wouldn't want to be you guys. And I think that men have, I think maybe one of the things that we do talk about is, I think young men, I'm the mother of two amazing young men who

who I adore and I don't understand where Matthew's intelligence has come from. I don't understand how I gave birth to this academic person, but again, my kids did not excel at school. It bore them to tears until Matthew had this music teacher, Julie Sargent,

He did nothing at school and then jilly brought music into his life in the minute she left the school it went out of his life again. But they're both incredibly intelligent people but school did not do it for them, they kind of self taught.

You know, listening to Matthew, it is like he swallowed a thesaurus, you know, he's just so well versed on everything. And I learned from them on the time, but I am also protective as well. I think that men, you know, have been, it, all these changes are quite difficult for men, you know, and to bring it down to brass tacks when we get down to pulling a chair out or opening a door. Well, for example, my husband went into a big store the other day.

in the south of England where we also have a place in it. We've got a grandson now, so he's taken over our world. Anyway, he went into a store and it was to get my mum-in-law a flask, right? Simple procedure, go in the big store, get my mum-in-law a flask. And this lady who had assisted him by pointing out where they were, he brought it back and he said, oh, thanks, love. She went, don't you dare call me love. And he was shocked.

because it was absolutely a term of endearment. And he came out and he said, this woman just said to me, you shouldn't call people love. And I think it has been a bit of a thing for men generally of not knowing where they stand.

Because I always used to feel sorry for young men when we were going to discos and I was going to zone 22 in Whitley Bay.

I would literally see someone who resembled Quasimodo walking across the dance floor to me. And I would dance with him because I felt so sorry, whereas my sister would just say, no thank you. And I'd say, oh my God, he's just walked across the whole dance floor. She said, he's Quasimodo. I don't want to dance with him. And I would end up dancing with Quasimodo for three songs because I felt so bad for him. So I've always been aware of the male rolling courtship and how

difficult that is and how I've always been really glad that I'm a girl because, you know, I mean, again, having these discussions now, I think is healthy. In a world of, you've got to self-edit, every time I'm talking to you, everything I'm saying, when it's not absolutely personalized, my mind is worrying of how the clickbait media pick things up and how you can be portrayed, you know.

What do you think the shows taught you about women then and the struggles that women face? And we do face struggles. And, well, I mean, obviously menopause has been massive from a physical point of view. Menopause is like the new dyslexia where everyone just thought you were sick if you, you know, and then we discovered that it wasn't that ADHD is similar thing. We weren't just bored or being naughty or maybe we were sometimes, but you know, there was also other neurodiverse things going on.

And I think women are brilliant. I love women. I love the strength of women.

I think the more women in power make the world a better place. I think that again, another misconception and this is to do with the media and it drives me up the fucking wall because we're trying to teach people not to bully, not to be mean and yet they're doing it all the time. And they are constantly putting us in a situation where if we have, this really pisses me off.

If we have a heated debate, as Mrs. Merton used to say, for those old enough to remember, that's what this show is about. This show is about, at any one time, four different women having different opinions, different anecdotes, sometimes the same opinions or the same anecdotes, and having heated debates about stuff that they

you know, have a voice that they want to share. I love it because we are the only show on television and one of the few in the world, which not only employs older women, reveres and respects the voices of older women. Our girls range from 24 to 84, you know, and I think that's incredible. And all of those voices are completely relevant. But if we ever have a slight difference of opinion,

that might include... Well, hang on a minute. You know, I'm... We are in feisty exchange, toxic warfare. Denise Welsh and Stacey Solomon. Oh, Stacey wiped the floor with Denise. It's fucking disgusting.

You know, we're talking about people who really struggle with self-esteem and we're talking about be nice and don't bully, and the online media are the worst bullies of all time. And so sometimes I am self-editing because I can't be asked with how what I say is going to be pursued, which then leads to a Twitter pylon and stuff, you know. It drives me mad.

Even with the best self-editing in real time, do you ever go away overthink that you've said something that you shouldn't have done? Does that cause the eyes to come back? Yeah, I do. Sometimes I've said things, but to be honest, it's not that I've upset Doris from Darlington because I genuinely these days really don't care about Doris from Darlington.

Sorry Doris, if there's a real Doris from Darlington, because I do care. But there's a Doris from Darlington on Twitter is who I'm referring to. So yes, I do go away. More so if I've said something that might impact on my family. Even when I'm doing something like this, I am very aware of how things can be picked up that will impact on my family, especially my children. So I am very limited as to how much I talk about them.

Because my children are...

doing professions which lead to them being more well known, it is more. But you know, the funny thing is we all talk about it, all the girls. When our kids were little, we'd talk about them till the cows come home, because they didn't know. Now, Kay Adams will be about to say something and she'll go, I can't, my girls will kill me, I absolutely can't. And we want to know what that opinion, but the kids don't wanna be on loose women. They don't wanna be talked about on the television, you know? So we're all in that situation.

some for just slightly more different reasons. But we are all the strength of our friendships, and we're not all in each other's pockets all the time. But dear God, when the chips are down, even those who may be less friendly, then in all the years I've been doing this, I will say categorically, I have never had an off-screen argument with one of the loose women, not one. And in fact,

I can't remember anybody else. Yes, of course there are people that people prefer to. There are panels that I prefer because I bounce off people better or they've got more of my sense of humor or I know that they're not going to be as sensitive if I take the Mickey out of their love life because there's others that I don't know as well to do that, you know.

But we are very, very supportive of each other. And every single one of those women has supported me through my issues. I mean, you've got a couple of the women who genuinely did not understand mental health issues or understand neurodiversity. But what they do is they want to learn from it. They're not dismissive of it at all. I think that women are wonderful listeners.

We also share the panel with men now as well. You know, we do lose men, we do lose men and women. Men are less likely to open up about themselves. I liked it recently because I got to anchor and it was Martin and Vernon. And I liked it because whereas the men would try to deflect into a joke, I would

Because I was in the position of being a boss, I could try to bring them back. Well, hang on a minute, but when you said that, when you said that, because men will try to joke off, out joke each other to get out of talking about something more personal, perhaps. I don't know how much you're able to talk about it or even if you want to, but you've had a situation with a stalker.

It's not been very pleasant because of where we are with the situation, with his release and whatnot. I can't say too much, but it has been a terrifying situation and something that when I can,

I will be talking much more about the fact that we have to take this much more seriously. Many people much more much cleverer than me and much more influential than me are doing amazing things in the world of stalking. I've been very lucky that I've had a marvelous harm reduction unit who have seen myself and my husband through a lot of the emotional side of it.

But the harm reduction unit is a postcode lottery and I'm just lucky that we had one. But there are other people who don't have the benefit of that and it's a terrifying situation. And all I will say is believe you me until you're involved in something like this is when you realize that the law is on the side of the perpetrator and not the victim in most cases.

It's all about their human rights, not my human rights, their human rights. And if I didn't have this backup team fighting, I would have been lost in a wilderness and my, you know, my fragile mental health may well have been shaken more than it has been. And also, you know, it's been very hard for my husband because he's an alpha male protector. And when that's taken out of your hands,

It's a very frightening situation and what I am all for rehabilitation. I am all for people being able to move on. But when was somebody who showed no accountability and no remorse and their human rights are more important than yours, that is just not on. And it's something that absolutely has to change. Well, we'll leave that there. Thank you for sharing. Good luck with the process. Thank you.

You're also well known for having a successful musician son, Matty. This is very much not about Matty. I know you don't want to speak about your children. We know many people who have made their name in their own right, naming no names, who didn't raise someone to be successful in their own right. So what did you do right? Wow. I don't know because I did lots of things wrong.

And, you know, Matty and I have had to have our, we're not religious, so it's not contextual, contextual, what's the name of that big word. I'll leave that to Matty. We had to have a come to Jesus about, you know, things that I was in denial about how my behaviours had impacted on him.

And he has also said, but then again, mom, if our house wasn't a bit rock and roll, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing. But you have to take accountability. And I was very defensive. All alcoholics are defensive. All alcoholics when pushed into a corner will blame somebody else for why that's happened to them. It's my illness.

It's because of this, it's because I was getting a divorce, it's not. Like I said before, there are not excuses, there are reasons. And my son wrote the most wonderful song on one of his albums, I can't remember which one, called She Lays Down. For anybody who wants to hear poetry and motion about what we have to a degree is his version of my illness when he was older. And he remembered that when he was old enough to understand,

Because my kids just thought I was poorly. I just went to bed because I was poorly. And they were protected from what it was. They didn't understand at young ages, especially Matthew. But when he was old enough, when he was grown, I told him that about depression and how you lose the ability to love and how I used to lay down beside him on the floor.

praying not to God, because I'm not religious, but to whatever, to the universe, to whatever, to help me love my son again. And it really obviously impacted on him because he knows the relationship that we have and the love that we have for each other. And it's almost incomprehensible, but that is how extreme that illness is.

And it's an incredible song that he didn't tell me when he was writing it. So I only heard it when it was done and made. And it's really quite something. So I always say I did a lot of things wrong, but between his dad and I, we did a lot right. And their step parents also, I have to give credit for any step parent out there. It's a bloody tough one. It's a tough one.

And they've done a great job in helping with our kids, particularly Louis again, because Matty was grown. But he's always known what he...

what he's wanted, Matthew, and he's been singularly focused on it and driven. And we supported him. We supported both our children to follow their heart and their dreams and do whatever they wanted to do. Were there times I was screaming, get a fucking job? Yes, there were. But, you know, now when I watch him play Madison Square Garden, I'm thinking, oh, there's my retirement, I believe.

We're very proud of them both. And my step, son, Lewis, who's given us Theo, our grandson, who, my God, if any little tiny dot can change your life, you know, it's unbelievable what joy that's brought to our lives. Incredible.

I was reading Matty had a has a tattoo on his foot in dedication to you. Yeah, he does. Yeah, his dad's on his wrist and I'm on his foot. So there you go. We joke about that. It was one of his first ones. I think it was when he was going through the periods where he was trying to pretend that I've never been a lover of tattoos.

And i think that stems from my mom my mom i hate tattoos i hate them so i hate to tattoos and then of course my son's a rock star so of course he's gonna have tattoos it's funny enough you know and she wouldn't have minded the one that says any across her that's my mom on on it on his chest.

I remember my sister and I watching him on some talk show in America, and they were saying, you know, so what is, who's Annie? And he said, oh, that's my nana. Debbie and I were going, oh, my God, my mother would have loved to have been talked about on entertainment today in America.

But I think that the Denise was when he was trying to hide them from me. So he went through a period of wearing cardigans and stuff, and stuff that he could pull the sleeves up and down, and it was all to mask that tattoo. But I'm just very honoured that I'm somewhere on him. It's quite a permanent...

Dedication, apartment and gesture. We have a very, very strong love for each other. My kids and I'm very, very fortunate. I have to try to stop being so helicoptery. Louis said to me, Mum,

When you call me, and I don't answer, and you call me two, three, four, five times, and I still don't answer, do you think A? I'm dead, and I went yes.

Not he's in rehearsals. He's with somebody. He's not in vicinity of a signal. It's why do I do that? But of course I realize now this is all very much ADHD. I've got worse with helicopter parenting.

much, much more. This desire to know where they are, which is very difficult when one of them lives in Los Angeles. It's very hard. Constantly looking at the home of what time it is, tracking him around the world. Oh my God, I drive myself mad with it.

Sensitivity gene as well is I realize now is a very ADHD thing. I think our sensitivity to things that I'm bothered by things that I should really shake off, but they affect me intensely. How do you think you were as a mother? Good and the bad.

Someone said something interesting to me recently, or did I read it? I don't know whether it was personally to me. But they said, you grow up with your first child and you parent your second child. And it made a lot of sense to me.

Because you're learning. You've never done it before. There's no guidebook for it. I was thrown into an abyss of desperation because I didn't fit the bill on the front of Parent and Baby magazine. And that's what we've been sold for hundreds of years, that that's what you should look like on the front.

So I didn't know what to do and how to deal with that. And of course, I took a dark path to deal with it because I didn't feel the help was there for me. And there was no one talking. When I was talking out about my illness, I was the only person. We had four TV channels. We had no social media. There was nowhere to go for help. I think that I did. You know what? I think I did the best I could.

Were there things I would do differently now? Oh my God. People say you shouldn't have regrets. I think it's impossible not to have regrets. I would love to redo parts of Matty's childhood. But then again, he's the person that he is.

warts and all, our warts and all, because of his upbringing and he's a great person and he's a sensitive person.

And I'm very proud of them both. I did the best I could. Could I done better? Yeah, we could all have done better in many, many areas of life. And when you're sober for 12 years and you think back, you think, I wish I'd been this person then, but I wasn't.

But I was still a kind person and I was still a nice person, but I was a very troubled person. Is that elastic band spring back sometimes? Is there a worst? What's the worst side of Denise that say the public don't see? And is that sensitivity a part of that? I think if sensitivity is a bad thing, it's something that affects me, obviously. My favorite quote,

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. I really do a dear to that. I have never intentionally hurt anybody. I never would intentionally hurt anybody. If I walk away from a situation thinking that's when I will have my anxiety nights, thinking that somebody thinks I meant something different. And I have a husband who is the ying to my yang

who will say, you didn't mean that. And if they think you meant that, that's on them, because they know what kind of a person you are, Denise, and that you would never say anything mean.

And I think that all the people who love me know that, know that. I'm very forthright and I think I'm a bit not really misunderstood because it is the side of me. You know, if you get me on television supporting Meghan Markle and someone comes on who was paid to lie in an interview to say that Meghan Markle documentary was absolutely dire when they'd not even seen it, then I'm going to kick off with that person.

It doesn't mean I'm a horrible person. It means I've got a voice that I'm prepared to use to support someone that I don't know, but that I feel gets a terrible, terrible rap in this world, is Meghan Markle. And then, of course, you get the people who are anti-Meghan Markle who will portray me on social media to be a bully. It's like, well, I've never bullied anyone in my entire life. If you mean by checking someone that I vehemently disagree with,

because they're denigrating someone that they don't know either. I don't know how she gets through every day that woman. I really don't. I really, really don't. She's the most bullied woman in this world. But if you stick up for someone, you're then accused of being a bully. But those people now, I have learned, I really don't care about the troll world. But I used to. And when I talk about being something that you're saying taken out of context,

I do get upset because people's opinion of you is sometimes based on that media interpretation of you, you know?

People say we shouldn't take any notice of what's on the magazines. Well, I'll tell you differently, we should, because if you are portrayed as a certain way on the front of a magazine, right, unfairly, believe you may have been fairly portrayed on them, but many unfairly. And there was once when I returned to loose women in 2018, and I know who the source was, and then nothing in my life.

There was a front page of one of the women's magazines, and I use the word loosely sometimes women's magazines, and it was diva Denise.

And it was that my demands were that I was paid more, I mean, it makes me laugh, that I was paid more than the other loose women, that I affected the whole lighting to be changed in the studio, right? I'd had one meeting with the producer that was me by agent and the producer when I said, yeah, I'd love to come back. I left seven years ago. You're here now. Fabulous. I'd love to come back.

as if I would have any ability, but the thing is, I am the most on diva personalities. So the fact is, there have been far worse things said about me on the front of a magazine. But that's how I was being portrayed on the front page and over two pages. So if you have that magazine in, it's in Sainsbury's when someone's doing their shopping. And you've got a producer walking by who's thinking of maybe using Denise Welsh for something and maybe using another actress for something. That subconsciously goes into their brain.

and they go with the other person. So it actually, there is a subconscious to what we read. We're all a bit guilty of seeing something about someone we like and saying that's ridiculous. Seeing something about someone we don't like going, oh, no smoke without fire. You know, I can be as guilty of it as well. But they need to take more of a responsibility.

And when you sort of see something like that, and I guess it might trigger something inside of you, I'm alluding to RSD, the sensitivity to criticism and rejection. It's when it's unfounded. So if I am criticized because of something

that if people don't agree with me and they put forward a valid point as to why they don't agree with me, fill your boots. If I do a play or something on television as an actor and somebody doesn't like my performance, will I be upset about that? Yes, but they have a right to say that they didn't think I did the job that they thought I should do or they just don't like my character or whatever. So I, you know, yes, I'm sensitive to it. Where I get

The word triggered is when I am perceived as something that I'm not by people who just make up stuff or just twist stuff to get a click on. Because we know the most of these people on journalists are 20-year-olds who've got to get a click bait for something. But actually, they are quite powerful lows because they all sit in our subconscious. We've all got views of people by what we've read online about them.

Well, a close relative of RSD is justice sensitivity. It's the injustice of it. You know you're being wrongly represented. You see that, and it's a trigger of sensitivity, but it's not a rejection or a criticism. It's the injustice of it. It is the injustice of it.

And also the injustice of not really having a right to reply, because if you reply to it, you just fuel the fire and it makes it 10 times, 10 times worse. And some people report to sort of internalize that feeling of intense sadness. Some people, it comes out in rage. Or what camp do you think you fit in?

Well, I would have probably found solace in other ways back in the day. I'm very, very fortunate, Alex, that I have an incredible marriage. I do talk about my husband a lot because my marriage is the bedrock of my life. If all's good in the hood, I'm okay and I can deal with other stuff.

And when I said before, we've yinged and yanked each other, we really have. Lincoln thinks that I turned on a sensitivity gene in him that had died many years before. And he'd become insensitive and didn't give a fuck about a lot of things. I've turned on that in him and he has helped me toughen up a bit.

about certain things. You can't completely change somebody's character. But he will talk me through stuff. So if I'm feeling particularly sensitive about something that somebody said, I have him as my sounding block. And he will talk me through it and make me think it's not that important. Whereas left to my own devices, I would dwell and start to spiral about it. It's the fact that

It can be someone in a supermarket queue and say, I haven't noticed the person standing there. So I go and put my stuff on the trolley and the person may say, Oh, push in. Why don't you? I will go. Oh my God. I didn't. And I will fill up.

with tears, because that person thinks that I'm a person that would push in front of her without any qualms and do that. And Lincoln will talk me down about how unimportant it is that a random woman that you'll probably never see again thought you'd pushed in and rationalize it for me, because I would spiral with that.

because of the injustice of her thinking, I'm a nice person and I would have actually stood back and let you go in front of me if I saw, because I would do that. If I've got six items and someone's got one, I will let them go forward in the queue and I want to scream, that's who I am. And you're thinking I'm a person that doesn't give a shit that you're there. Whereas with other people, it would be such a non-entity part of their day.

that they might go later, oh, there was this stupid cow in the supermarket, thought I'd pushed in, I told you to fuck off and off I went, job done, you know? And it wouldn't even, it just wouldn't even penetrate them. Here's the extra energy that we have to expel. Do you know that? And it's invisible, no one sees it apart from us. It's the extra energy. And I think we've both obviously carried that.

all through. Yeah. And you know, mine takes an extra dollar because because I voluntarily put myself on a show where I, you know, I'm committed to certain certain things. And I will, you know, there are certain hills that I will be prepared to die on as well for my for my beliefs, not really in a political sense. But

I'm not going down the COVID route, but I took a battering during that time because I was so committed to a lot of the bullshit. It was never to do with the vaccine. I was called a COVID denier. I was called. It was so far from that. It was about a lot of the bullshit, a lot of the Scotch egg bullshit.

It still comes out now. We were in a situation where we were told that we bound our pots and pans on a Thursday night for the NHS, which we did quite happily. I was one of them. We were told to stay at our door and do that because this disease was going to, you know, and we were banging our pots and pans on the doorstep. And at the same time,

People were threatened with arrest if they went to console their mother who had buried their father of 50 years and they couldn't move their chairs in a church hall to go and sit with her. At the same time, I turned on the tele on a Thursday night and Westminster Bridge and Bratacy Bridge was full of people clapping

with the ambulances, the police, and the sirens all going in a carnival atmosphere, while people clapped for carriers, carriers a thousand long. And I thought, where the fox COVID gone on a Thursday? Outside the hospital, there was people who'd taken their guitars down with bottles of wine, and all the nurses, they all came up the hospital and they all put their arms around each other. And when it finished, they all went back in the hospital. Where was COVID on a Thursday night? It vanished. And I thought, fuck this, fuck you, not having it.

Right? And Doris, not Doris. This is Doris from Devon. Poor Doris. Doris couldn't bury, couldn't have more than two people at the funeral. Okay? That was my hill I was going to die on. Don't scotch egg you way out of this with your fucking scotch egg, but you can walk around and go to the toilet and put your mask on. It's bullshit. It was never about the vaccine. I never even hardly mentioned the vaccine. My thing was the vaccine mandate.

Once we know it doesn't stop transmission, you have it, Alex, fill your boots with it. I had it as well, but don't force people because it doesn't stop transmission. But that was a later thing. Mine was the bridge bullshit. I've got that off my chest. I really don't talk about it. I really, but I've got that off my chest.

because it starts to come back up sometimes. And I'm just putting out there that it was never those things I was never in a million years, the things I was, but it was easy to call me that because I was very, had a very big voice about it at the time.

I think RSD continuously takes center stage on this podcast and in the community, this reaction to criticism and rejection, but actually I think justice sensitivity is sort of less spoken about cousin, which I think you're talking about with the story you just told, is that flare up to injustice when you've been treated unfairly when you've been misrepresented. And I think as well, the reason why

when you mentioned the stalker situation, again, which in a year's time I may be able to sort of talk more about it. But it's being thrust into the justice system and realizing the massive injustices towards the victim. And I think that's why I can't just, like Lincoln will say, just deal with our situation. Why is this now going to become a mission?

But I am compelled to make it a bit of a mission. I can't just let it be just about me. I am at the moment because it's a sensitive time. But down the line, I feel compelled because of the lack of justice that I've seen in our justice system. I know we're talking about it in a neurodiverse way, but just the justice system generally. Why am I more affected by the great, bigger picture than other people are?

Just get on with your life, Den, doesn't have to be, but it does. I have to try and make a change in some way. And I tie myself out with it. I don't want to, I want to switch the thing off that makes me, that makes me bothered. You know, I really find it exhausting that I get bothered about things that I can't affect change and I can't control. And I've got to try and turn them off.

I think you just perfectly described the continuousness of that racing mind and the manifests in lots of different ways. The injustice sensitivity is certainly one of them, RSD is another one.

Do you get crossed with your own sensitivity about things? Do you get crossed with yourself about it? And wish that you could toughen up sometimes? Oh, massively. Some people put ADHD in a superpower camp, which I've massively disagree with. No, I'm not a disability camp, which I think is obviously somewhere in the middle. The thing that's most disabling for me is RSD and justice and sensitivity. It can completely bulldoze my day.

I can have a brilliant day being productive having a great time with my partner or family and someone says something that they misinterpreted something i've said and it's putting me in a bad light when i met the complete opposite and it's it's like a dagger to the heart and they've twisted it and it's this internalize i'll just shut down.

that happens and I'm feeling this internalised rage and I see it passes after like half an hour an hour but it's instant visceral reaction to injustice and being misrepresented and they've taken something I've said the wrong way. I can't imagine, I mean your comments you say as you said on TV which is only going to be amplified on social media, I can't

It makes me a person that I'm not. It makes me, you know, look at, you know, this thing, you know, as I say, I have a disagreement with someone. And, you know, but you know what it is. You have a disagreement with someone. And one, this is what happened. So I had a slight disagreement with another of the loose women about

Not about something personal, about the world. You know, I can't even remember what it was. It was so inconsequential to me at the time and to her. But it was just about the world we have different. I think I think it was a Gen Z thing.

And I made some comment about, sometimes, I think that some Gen Z is will ring up if they've lost an eyelash and be off work, probably harping back to that. And the other person was being, and I'm very pro Gen Z, I love young people. Of course, it was just that. And her thing was, well, maybe people shouldn't be going to work five days a week. It was one of those type of discussions. Anyway, someone on Twitter put,

Stacey wiped the floor with Denise today, right? Now, what then happens is, on your feed, if you Google your own name, stop Googling your name, but I always do, because I want to see what people are saying about me before someone goes, oh, I saw what the mirror is, you know what I mean? And also, because of the nature of I do, I do a topical TV show. I have to be on top of the Mail Online and what people are saying and all those things.

And anyway, just in case people think, oh my god, she's googling her own name, that's tragic. But anyway, it's just a thing. And so what I saw was outrage at Denise Welsh as Stacy wipes the floor with her. Now, where that came from was one person on Twitter.

That's all they need to get that headline. So then the mirror, the mail, the thing, all with that headline. And that's how I'm being perceived as this person who was being vile about Gen Z people and da da da da da. And that's what I get pissed off about.

I really do the fact that those people, so what happened was I then put on Instagram on a story. I googled the journalist and got her Instagram handle, put the headline and just put

This is yet again, building the myth that four women cannot sit because it never happens when we have loose men. It would be a heated debate. It would be, oh, things got a bit feisty between John and Steve today on the, you know, that would be it. Strong arguments there from both men, I felt blah, blah, blah. That's what it would be.

But it's so easy for them to use the all women are catty fighters. And that's what I hate. And it makes me sound as if I'm a bitchy catty person. And that's when you say, that's when I get eaten away by upset because I'm not that person. I can be forthright. I actually can't with people in my own life, funnily enough. I can with

Other people, I'm not very good at saying, you really upset me two weeks ago to my friends and I will dwell on that.

But with people that I don't know very well, like the man who came on the Meghan Markleman and stuff, you know, I couldn't wait to do that there if I'm quite opinionated about things. But I hate that being turned into, oh, you're a mean bully to that person. No, I wasn't. I was saying I completely disagree with you. And I said it with Verve and, you know,

I felt that it's injustice to be paid for an interview that you haven't seen to denigrate some other woman or man or whoever. So when that comes back on me, I get upset and angry. But I'm lucky that I have my anchor at home who talks me off the cliff about things like that a bit. But I don't think that

I have got a bit tougher and you asked me a question before we even were recording because I said I was busy juggling several balls at the moment. You said he very good at saying no.

No, I'm not. But I think that's also partly being an actress. And as an actress, you spend many years scrabbling for roles and being out of work. And I still consider myself a jobbing actress. So if I'm offered things, I find it hard to say no, because the old actress in me that didn't work as much is still there. So then I find that I take on too much. And then it's like, I'm overwhelmed, but it's my fault. I didn't have

to do all these things. I saw your eyes glance up at the juggling balls on the shelf behind me. The juggling balls. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. It comes up as, you know, overcommitting, saying yes. Overcommitting and not wanting to hurt people. But you see my dad, this is with my dad, the people pleasing, especially people who weren't that close to him. So my mum would say,

Well, your dad won't do that for me, but he's just offered to take 20 people from them. You know, there was always those type of arguments in there, not seriously, but you know, those type of things in the house and how my dad

In the days before social media, when we got fan letters, you know, they came to your work or to the door and they were in your pigeonhole at work, my dad would look after all that side of things for me. Any charity requests, even up until he died three years ago, charity requests. And people were always so grateful because they wouldn't just get no answer. They'd always get, you know, she can't do this. But when I'd have a precious weekend free,

You know those wonderful weekends where you've committed to nothing and you have no agenda. Why don't we make ourselves have those more? I don't know, but just those wonderful weekends. And my dad would say, the Bolton Gardeners weekly have asked if you'd go and open their fate. Now I've said, you're very busy, but you'll do a couple of hours on the Saturday and I'd say, Dad, well, it's only a couple of hours ago. Dad, that's my weekend gone.

Why? And he couldn't because he was trying to keep him happy, John at the Bolton Gardeners Weekly, and again, if there is such a publication. I'm sorry. It's plucking these names out of midair.

My dad, who was doing economics at university, didn't like it, was pulled by my grandpa into the family firm, into the sweetie manufacturing firm. Welsh's trophy is very big in the day of the Northeast. And I came along a little bit unprecedentedly early. And it was the done thing. I didn't know this time was about 15.

My dad threw himself into a social life, which was amateur dramatics initially, and then being a drag artist. He was a drag act. I used the artist loosely. Because our surnames Welsh, he went out as Raquel. Again, you say to young people these days, it goes completely over their heads, but Raquel Welsh was a very big actress.

I can't believe I have to explain to them. It was always just, well I'll say to him as well, she goes out with Raquel, oh, I get it now, you know. But my dad's hyperactivity, the way his thought processes work, I absolutely, but he wouldn't have cared. My dad was very, very happy being who he was, and I wouldn't have had him any other way. He was always trying to

he would get into fixes because he was trying to make things right for so many people all of the time. Therefore, he would sometimes upset mum because all of this type of thing. But it's all now when I look back on those behaviours. But again, if somebody said, oh, dad, this is who you are, there's a pill for it.

absolutely not in a million years. He didn't want to change anything about the way that he was. And he may not have been. It's just some things I could think. Oh, hang on a minute. I think there's a line there. You've had, you've had sons. Yeah. If you did have a daughter, do you ever think what her characteristics might be? Yeah. I would be

When I say I feel safer having sons, I think I probably just mean more from the, from the physical side of things. I would, I mean, my God, if Lincoln and I had had a daughter, God knows because his protection thing would have gone into, into overdrive these days. That would have been a nightmare. She probably wouldn't have left the house till she was 28. But

Yeah, I mean, I've never sort of hankered after having a daughter. I was so grateful. You know, obviously I had troubles when I had Matty and then I was so grateful to be pregnant at 42. And then Louie was poorly. You know, he had a thing called Hirschbung disease. So, funnily enough, you know, I have a son who I think is well because it can't be detected at scam. I'm 42. I've had every other test done. I'm new synthesis. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm having a healthy child for a woman at 43 years old when he was eventually born.

So I'm so grateful. I didn't care what sex he was. I was just so grateful. Then, of course, three days after birth, he was poorly. And we discovered he had a thing called Hershblin disease, which had it been before 1948, he would have been a child who didn't thrive. That was when the first operation was, and the wonderful old Herr Hospital saved his life on

on two occasions. So I never kind of hankered after having a daughter. And I also think I've been very lucky that

I'm very close to my two boys. Their girlfriends often came to us. It wasn't like sometimes you lose your son, but you've always got your daughter. But I don't know, Alex. I would hope that I would have a lovely relationship with my daughter. Do I think that there are traits of mine that the kids have got? Yeah, but they've also got a very sturdy

a very sturdy, jordy, jordy dad, you know, who's very down the earth. Um, I don't, I've never really talked about ADHD with him, but he's very sort of practical. He was always, you know, yes, we divorce. Yes, things didn't go the right way. We were still friends. We all spent time together. Um, and he was, you know, for a man from his background, he was incredibly understanding about my, about my illness. And I'm sure he would have been about, about any, any, anything else as, as well. So, um,

I think I would have had a very vibrant, sensitive daughter. I think sensitivity is a wonderful thing. It's just when you have it to our level, it can become a problem.

But I wouldn't swap it for the alternative, which is not giving a shit about people or anything or what's going on. I know I can't help the situations in the world sometimes, but we all have those friends who go, oh, I don't know. I put my head in the sand and I don't let it bother me. And I think, wow, am I jealous of that or am I annoyed with that? Is that part of me that would like to be able to do that?

to just let the world's woes trickle off me. I choose what I am like as opposed to genuinely not caring. I'm very sensitive to any kind of, when I say family conflict, we're not a big conflict family, but

I like it when everything's great. And then I'll talk to somebody, even just a friend the other day who'd had a massive fallout with their family. And she was all right. She was pissed off about it, but it was a big fallout. And I'm thinking, I'd be in the corner. I would be in the corner with that. But maybe it's much better to be her because it probably will get resolved.

But it would be very tough for me to have that kind of a fallout. It has resolved. They've kissed and made up. But I wouldn't have been able to go through my day.

Denise, I want to move attention back to the table in front of us, which has got your ADHD item on it, which is a DVD of Real Housewives. Right. And I want to hear your explanation as to why that's your ADHD item. Well, to be honest, I was confused when you asked for my ADHD item. So first of all, before I embarrass myself, tell me what you exactly mean by an ADHD item.

So anything that represents how ADHD has showed up in your life, and I suppose the best way to do it is probably to pull some examples from the showcase of other items behind me. So my item is a washing machine, because for me, I always forget my laundry and my machine, which is obviously a bigger representation of general memory loss and forgetting my reusable shopping bags and all sorts of stuff. Time, so this was my team of cuttons, time being

general lateness or earlyness, or time blindness, ice, ice baths was a neuroscientist who, his item was ice because ice he thinks is the biggest tool for improving focus with ADHD. Paul Whitehouse and Minna was a stick of dynamite, which is above you, because she has a very explosive character, which is her words, which again is a byproduct of the RSD and we were discussing.

Mine is more venturing towards the DVD version of the ice bath. When I find myself spiraling, some people would have an ice bath. Some people would have a massage, I do love a massage, but some people would do all these other things. I will immerse myself in an episode of The Real Housewives. And somehow the chaos in their life

makes mine pale into insignificance, and it calms my mind. So on a superficial level, I love everything bravo.

And in fact, we had Andy Cohen on the show a couple of weeks ago. And for those who don't know, Andy Cohen is the sort of chief head honcho of Bravo Television. He is responsible for all of the Real Housewives. He does all of the reunion shows. He has a show called Watch What Happens Live. And he gets together all the Medgar Stars in the world, like Jennifer Lawrence and Julia Roberts, everything who are all Housewives obsessed. And he came on the show. You could not have got the biggest A-list director in the world.

and I would have not been happier than when Andy Cohen was on. And it was so exciting to me, and he was everything I wanted, I wanted him to be. But there is something about this part of me that is, well, I'm hypocritical about loads of things, I don't really, I'm a hypocrite about loads of things, but

I mean, I don't like bitchy aggressive women, like I've said, right? And you can't get a bigger bunch of bitchy, you know, sometimes aggressive women. Many just forthright. They're all trying to live the life of multimillionaires, and often we know that they're probably in debt as much as anybody else, just on a much bigger level, trying to keep up these lifestyles. They are all for conflict.

You sign the contract. It's no, don't just say privately to Alex, say exactly what you fit. That's how you remain a housewife and that's how you get the books and how you be on these shows. And there's something about that that calms my head down.

It's trite. It's not important to my life. It's mindless entertainment. And again, I love these women. I've known to some of them now. I know the cast of Vanderpump rules and I love. I'm so obsessed with Bravo television and I have Bravo friends. But the whole thing of reality television, and especially the housewives, is just that it's polar opposite about how I live my life.

Seeing another thing talking about the sensitivity and about being upset because the woman at the supermarket said, you know, you pushed in in front of me, how they live their lives, having such conflict. And then they move on, that's their phrase, they move on. So it's kind of like, I feel like I'm learning a bit about how they move on from this conflict.

because I can't do that. And so it's my, if I feel overwhelmed and I get the thing about ADHD for me, which has made me understand it more, is my being overwhelmed by my new tie. So big things like a health problem in the family, and I'm talking about health problem in the wider family of my in-laws and stuff. Lincoln isn't great with health things.

I am very good with, I will deal with it. I will call the hospitals, I will make sure everything is sorted. It's a big serious problem, but I am going to deal with that and it doesn't phase me at all. Even my own health, physical health, I'm not phased by it. I worry about mental health, I'm not phased by physical health. So far,

And so there are big things that I can deal with quite a lot. But my new tie of just diary overwhelmingness, keeping everybody happy, I can't pull out of that because of that. How am I going to get from the why have I taken on all these jobs? And that's when the two dishes on the side of the of the draining board will become like a massive great big thing to me.

How do people, this is what I get like, how do people have no clutter in their house? How do they have it Lincoln? How do they have no clutter? I am a tidy person trapped in the body of someone who's untidy and I don't know why, because that storage place downstairs was empty and now it's full of stuff. Why is it full of stuff? And he goes, oh my God, calm down. Now that would always preempt a depression episode when I started to spiral with my new tie.

So things like being away and remembering that I'd left washing in that the normal me doesn't give a monkeys if it's there for four days. But when I start and everything else overwhelms me, and what I will do is I will go upstairs and I'll get my, hey, you act that I watch everything on. And I will put on that episode. And that to me is my meditation.

I mean, it's probably ridiculous, but it just is how I deal with stuff. I think there's something about engaging in a small amount of drama or sometimes a lot of drama that gives us a little bit of dopamine that can be very soothing for the ADHD mind. I saw a quote the other day, it said, I don't clean because my home is a mess. I clean because my mind is a mess. And someone said they start an argument just to make them feel less anxious.

Now, that's interesting. Two things there. I remember once, Saira Khan, who used to be one of our loose women. She asked me for something, and I said it's in my bag, and she opened my handbag, and she went, your bag is indicative of your brain. But I bet you know exactly what's in there. I do, in the organised chaos.

You know, okay, there may have been once a tampon stuck to a Werther's original as I went through the airport, but I knew it was there. But what she said really resonated with me. She said it in a jokingly lovely, you know, lovely way. But because I'm sort of scattering in a bit hyper and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. She said, that's what your brain is like. Now, of course, I've forgotten what the other thing was that we said off the back of that.

That's why I interrupted. Oh, I said cleaning because your mind is a man. Cleaning because you're cleaning because you're, you're, yes, cleaning because you're, you're not starting an argument. I did something in America once with someone. And this person, many, many years ago, admitted to being quite confrontational. And I said, I wish

I wish I could be sometimes a bit more like that. And she said, I look for it. Now, I'll do anything to avoid confrontation, anything with my own family or with, like I say, apart from, apart from in a work situation, if I agree with somebody, disagree with somebody politically or something, but I'm talking about on personal things. And she said, I need it.

And I can be very unkind sometimes.

But it releases something in me if I'm a little bit unkind. Because I want to get that reaction from that person and I enjoy poking the bear. And I went, wow, I would be frightened of you. We actually ended up becoming really great friends. But I was scared of her because I could see that she was quite confrontational. And it was when I knew and her enough to ask about it, she said, I am. But sometimes that person doesn't deserve it. I just need what it's doing to them to make me feel better.

That's interesting. Stimulation. It might be a toxic source of stimulation. It is, but it's their stimulation. It snaps you out of the boredom, which can turn into anxiety, which can turn into an anxiety attack. It is a toxic trait for some, but I heard someone say it the other week, they start an argument not because they actually have beef with the person, but because they're wanting stimulation. Yes.

I want to quickly do the ADHD agony arm section, which is, as I said, my item is a washing machine, so I always leave my laundry in the machine, although I am better now. Does that drive your partner, Matt? Well, she's... I don't want to speak on her part, but she's just as bad, really. We laugh a lot at the smell of damp. Damp washing, that pervades your home. Yeah, it's time and time again. It's like, oh shit, we've forgotten the machine again. And I'm 36, I've accepted that I'm never going to get that much better. You're never going to take it out.

Although, I have to say, Denise, I've started using the Timo app, which is the sponsor of the show, and I've got a bit better at remembering the washing machine. Oh, OK. This week in the washing machine of woes, so someone on the Instagram community in the ADHD chat community is asking, I'm currently going through a divorce, and I'm a total wreck. I have ADHD and have mental health issues in general, and it all feels too much. Do you have any advice on getting through something so messy and traumatic?

Well, I guess I'd tick all of those boxes. Just don't do what I did. That would be my best advice. Don't go to the dark side, but that's a lot. I think the difference...

You know, we talk about the negative side of social media a lot. I think one of the benefits now is that when I was poorly going through those things with, I know now probably ADHD and depression, I only had my close family to turn to. Thank God they were enough. But for maybe this lady, maybe that she doesn't have such a close family network, the difference is that you could now Google depression groups in Coventry.

women going through divorce, Coventry. And you would find some kind of support group that is ongoing. I think that with this type of thing, it is very important to talk to people who understand what you're going through. The fact that she's reaching out might mean that she, as I say, she doesn't have an incredibly close family network, or maybe they don't live geographically near her or something like that.

And I think that I used to be really against, not against, I was frightened of the word support group, group therapy, anything like that. I was really frightened of it. But actually, it's just a bunch of people going through the same things.

And I think that it's not something that she should put to one side. I mean, all of those three things are different. Divorce mental health issues and neurodiversity are not necessarily all the same, but it's a lot. Again,

I just think it's about that is about reaching out to people and admitting that you're struggling and not trying to go through things on your own.

It's all the old thing because we obviously don't know anything more about her personal circumstances than what she says there. So you don't know if she's on medication or maybe that's something that perhaps she could look into is a little bridge. Like I said earlier in the talk, I am very pro.

antidepressant medication if it is prescribed for the right reason. And so I wouldn't be saying, oh, you're getting a divorce, go for antidepressant medication. But maybe if she's not on medication for the other things, maybe if that was under control, she would be able to at least see the divorce through.

and functioning better in that respect. It's good that she's sent it into here, so she listens to this podcast, or is it on Instagram? So, yes, she listens to the podcast and she would have sent it into the Instagram DMS.

So she's, you know, she knows what she's got and she's sort of dealing with it, but I just think it's, it's very important to surround yourself with people going through a similar thing. And even if it's just one of those things, even if it's an ADHD group or a depression group, getting help for one of those things, the ripple effect will, that it will make things easier. Divorce is never fun. That's why we're getting divorced. You know, I'm very lucky that we've come out the other side and we've managed to salvage an incredible

friendship, but I'm also would never judge anybody who is not able to have that. But if there is anything to salvage, if there is any friendship you can salvage, maybe look down those avenues as well.

It's brilliant advice and perhaps a follow-up question from myself. What advice would you give to someone who just doesn't feel enough and feels like they will never be enough because of this condition called ADHD that they think at this particular moment is plaguing them?

It would be interesting to know why you or fictitious person thinks that you're not enough when you're, you know, it's a bit like, oh, what have you got to be depressed about? But you have got all of the superficial things like that you're a nice looking guy.

You've got a very successful podcast which you started all by yourself with no money to do so and everything and have built it into this brand which is incredible. You've got a girlfriend who doesn't care that you leave your washing in the washing machine. And you clearly are a very liked person which is why you get such amazing guests like me want to go.

The money obviously, obviously joking. But what makes you think that you're not enough?

For me, I think it's a, I really struggle to store my achievements in my head, in my subconscious, and I think call it imposter syndrome, whatever you like, but I think that's a tangible mental health condition. It is. I think I always live in the now. I'm always living in the now. And what I mean by that is things I've done in the past,

and the concept of some kind of future, they don't exist. So when I do things, achieve certain stuff,

I don't store them in my subconscious. So I don't build up this evidence of ability that then when I come to do something again, there's no evidence to look back on and draw on to give me confidence that I'm able to do it. Why did you or did you, did you say to me why when we were talking about the medication, why you never, why you did you try the meds, ADHD? No, I personally never tried. Why did you not try them?

I feel like I manage the- Well, you don't. I feel like I manage some of the trick, negatives of ADHD through exercise and diet. I'm getting better at managing that aspect, the imposter syndrome, through intentionally celebrating when the winds happen.

I think because I had a bad experience, which I do think is very important that I talk about for the reasons that I said. But when I look at another couple of my friends and how the meds have changed that