'You Can't Faze Me': Marathoner Molly Seidel on Her ADHD Diagnosis

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Speaker: Molly Seidel is one of only three American women to medal in the Olympics in one of the most brutal of events, the marathon. Even with all of her triumphs in competition, perhaps what's even more remarkable about Molly is her success in overcoming a series of mental health challenges. In this first episode of a multi-segment video for WebMD, Molly unpacks her journey with incredible insights. And we're grateful to her for sharing them with us and the lessons learned.

Molly Seidel: As a professional marathoner and Team USA athlete, my whole life is training. I train at a pretty intense level, but also just really long hours. So I'm training upwards of 130 miles a week. I think a lot of people would assume it's just a totally physical thing: just go out, train a lot. But I would say, probably the hardest part is being able to mentally handle going hard and being in pain for a long period of time and being incredibly bored for hours.

I feel many times the way that my brain works, when I can channel it and click in to the right modality of how it's working, it almost becomes like a superpower; I think a lot of people would struggle mentally to focus for the 26.2 miles that it takes to run a marathon. But my brain can just click into that sense of effort. I think some people would call it almost like a flow state. And my brain can get into it very easily when it's healthy and working correctly.

However, when my brain is at its worst — when I'm not putting in the work and when I'm in a very unhealthy state — it completely backfires. So that's the thing. I feel that in certain ways, my brain almost is like tailor-made for the sport that I do. It just can get out of control very quickly if I don't give it the time and attention that I need to be paying to it.

In middle school, I first started developing what I would later learn was pretty classic obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). What I noticed first was the repetitive [behaviors].–A lot of people think of OCD as compulsive hand-washing, or being afraid of germs. But what OCD actually is is compulsive thoughts that you just cannot stop, and then developing repeated behaviors in order to control those thoughts or put those thoughts to rest.

A lot of mine centered around repeated knocking on wood in various sequences. It was incredibly disruptive over my life. But I became very good at hiding it to the degree that my parents didn't really notice it for a long time.

A lot of it would also center around weight. I would compulsively weigh myself every single day, and wouldn't let myself go above a certain weight. It's this feeling that if you don't continue these behaviors, that something terrible is going to happen. You know it's irrational, but I did not have the tools or the help to be able to recognize what it was.

As I've now learned, how attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually presents itself in women is you're typically perfectionist, high- performing. I got very good grades. I wasn't disruptive or anything; I was just very hyperactive, and I got that energy out through running. That's why running was able to focus me and why I was only able to do homework after I had run.

It makes so much sense after the fact. It wasn't until I got to college and we had free therapy through our sports team and through the Notre Dame counseling system that I was like, "Hey, I think I need to go and see somebody about this." So I went in and was immediately diagnosed. It was like classic textbook OCD.

It's just something that we've had to learn. My parents had been on this journey with me through the years of learning how to talk about that, even when I was the one who decided to check myself into eating disorder treatment. That was a pretty tough thing for our family when I talk about that, because it's hard for any parent to see your kid going through that. I think it's even harder when they realize, "Ooh, we did not see this."

There was no recognition and awareness of that. And, frankly, it was really, really difficult. It was only when my second college coach came in. He came in my junior year, and I was shown a lot more emotional intelligence. He actually knew about what I was going through. And it was something that I felt comfortable enough to share with him, because we had a very good relationship.

So he was one of the factors [in getting treatment] — talking with him of me and knowing, hey, I think I really need to go into eating disorder treatment because this is something we can't handle anymore. Kudos to him for being able to say, "Hey, this is something that I'm just not equipped to handle anymore. I know you've been dealing with bulimia, I know you've been dealing with anorexia, and I can't help this anymore. I think you need outside help."

That, luckily, has now blossomed. I think the openness of that relationship has made me recognize how important that is for me to have that relationship with my coach. As of right now, I am not currently taking any medication. I find that my body works best, especially in this sport, when I am doing a lot of work outside of just medication.

That comes down to a lot of talk therapy and various somatic therapies. And the big one for me is super-regular meditation, mindfulness practice, and breathwork, because I kind of operate on a very high-strung, very overstimulated level, and I struggle with coming down. That's when it's almost this sense of spiraling, or like I really feel wound up and I just can't stop.

Being able to decompress and come down from that, using various breath techniques and various calming techniques, has been absolutely vital for me. That's something that I have to do every day, multiple times a day, and really, really monitor it.

I'm very lucky in the sense that as a pro athlete, recovery is a huge part of my job. So I have time set aside in the middle of the day to lie down. if I'm not napping, I'm just literally lying in bed, focusing on my breathing for the better part of an hour in order to do that. I found that is just enormously helpful for what I do and for being able to manage not only life, but a higher level of training.

So I think being able to set aside a time every day to practice it [is important]. But it's hard. It has taken years. I see my openness is trying to be as genuine as I can. I don't really see it as bravery. It's just like saying what it is — this is who I am as a person, this is what I deal with.

In some ways it's been really hard because there aren't many people talking about this kind of stuff. Even just as recently as probably 5 years ago, this just wasn't talked about. So I kind of feel like I have to almost fall on the sword sometimes when we're talking about these things. When I speak publicly about being diagnosed with ADHD and get absolutely flamed online for it, it's frustrating.

And it's a little bit heartbreaking, sometimes because I know that there are other people out there who are dealing with this. One of the reasons that I didn't get help earlier when I was in high school or in college is because I didn't have the role models speaking out about this that I wish. Everybody who was at the pro level running then seemed like these perfect, perfect people. And I was just like, "Why does my brain not work?" They all seem perfect, and they seem like they never deal with this kind of stuff.

So some of this is in an effort to [make people] know that there's someone out there who's dealing with this and wanting to speak out about it. But then it comes with the sadness that when I do talk about it, people use it as a way to criticize and to yell at me and to point fingers.

I think we're getting to a point where there is a lot more acceptance. I think the Tokyo Olympics was a watershed moment for mental health. But there still is so much stigma and so much hatred out there that we need to be aware of. I mean, look at what Simone Biles went through, speaking out about her stuff. And [there is a] lack of acceptance of athletes as being real people who deal with real mental health issues.

I'm hoping that we're moving forward. For every person that hates on me for speaking out about this, it seems like there's five people that message me and say like, "Hey, like, this really helped me." "This encouraged me to get my – to actually take a hard look at, like, my relationship with food." "This actually made me go and look into a diagnosis for ADHD, and I got diagnosed with adult ADHD."

It's those kinds of things that keep me going — being like, hey, this is actually helping. And there's always going to be people that criticize and people that say that it's like… — I don't know. I've heard every horrible thing at this point. So, honestly, you can't faze me.

This video originally appeared on WebMD on April 13, 2023

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Cite this: 'You Can't Faze Me': Marathoner Molly Seidel on Her ADHD Diagnosis - Medscape - Apr 14, 2023.