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February 16, 2026
What if the season that feels the most destabilizing is the moment your brain is asking to be understood differently?
Dr. Anupriya Gogne is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist specializing in perinatal and reproductive psychiatry at Brown University Health. She recently authored Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Adult Women.
When Dr. Gogne became an attending, her caseload doubled overnight. She stayed late finishing notes while colleagues went home. Around the same time, she impulsively adopted a baby husky. Six years into her career, testing confirmed ADHD and NVLD, a visual-spatial learning difference that explained why she didn't drive until age 30 and why every parking lot looked identical.
Now she treats pregnant and postpartum women with ADHD, addiction, and trauma. In this episode, Tracy and Dr. Gogne discuss ADHD and NVLD in adult women, how visual-spatial differences show up in daily life, the overlap between trauma and addiction, the role of stimulants in recovery when carefully managed, and why pregnancy and postpartum can intensify symptoms through hormonal shifts and sleep deprivation.
If you are in a season where your systems stopped working, this conversation offers context. Sometimes it feels out of control because it is out of control. And that means you need support, not shame.
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“My goal is to give my [ADHD] brain the optimal conditions to be at its best, without all the self-criticism.”
- Anupriya Gogne
“Ruminating wastes time. What helps is channeling that anxiety into learning and skill building.”
- Anupriya Gogne
“When someone attaches to a substance for emotional regulation, they detach from people.”
-- Anupriya Gogne
"Addiction is often an attempt to regulate an overwhelmed brain, not a moral failing."
-- Anupriya Gogne
"It’s not just about stopping substance use. It’s about helping someone become a functioning, fulfilled member of society."
- Anupriya Gogne
"We want a healthy mother-baby dyad. Supporting the mother is supporting the baby."
- Anupriya Gogne
"It’s the same brain that makes you frustrated that also makes you creative and able to think out of the box."
- Anupriya Gogne
- Dr. Gogne shares her late ADHD diagnosis during fellowship, alongside an unexpected NVLD diagnosis that reframed lifelong visuospatial and social processing differences.
- She explains NVLD as a visual integration and contextual processing difficulty that can overlap with autism traits, especially in women.
- Growing up in a high-achieving medical family in India, structure helped her thrive academically despite inattentive symptoms and daydreaming.
[25:00 – 51:00] Trauma, Attachment, and the Roots of Addiction
- She connects addiction to trauma and insecure attachment, describing substance use as an attempt at emotional regulation.
- ADHD and trauma together increase dysregulation, making substances like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and nicotine tools for coping.
- She advocates for realistic risk assessment in treating ADHD with substance history, emphasizing multimodal care over fear-based prescribing.
[51:00 – 01:19:20] Hormones, Motherhood, and Compassionate Treatment
- Pregnancy and postpartum amplify ADHD symptoms through hormonal shifts, sleep deprivation, and changing executive demands.
- Gender roles and internalized shame often worsen distress more than biology alone, especially around perfectionism and caregiving expectations.
- She encourages mothers to seek help without stigma, view treatment as strength-based, and build support systems that protect the mother-baby dyad.
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here
- Website: brownhealth.org/anupriya-gogne
- Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Adult Women: Special Considerations in the Perinatal Period: @springer.com/book