Steph Claire Smith: The KICPOD co-host talks about living with ADHD and how it is helping her as a wife and a mother in a new podcast mini-series It’s My ADHD

When model and influencer-turned-fitness entrepreneur Steph Claire Smith learned she had ADHD last year, she decided to share her diagnosis with her followers.

After all, Smith, also known by her married name Stephanie Miller, has always shared aspects of her life with her fans and 1.4 million Instagram followers, whether that be the highs or the lows.

Now, she is delving further into her ADHD diagnosis as part of a new series on her long-running podcast, telling 9honey learning about her condition had led to “many ah-ha moments” with her husband Josh and was helping her become a better wife and mother.

It has also “answered so many questions” for the Kic app co-founder, lifting “a lot of internal shame and guilt around me being the way that I am”.

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Smith’s ADHD diagnosis came last September – the same week she found out she was pregnant with her second child with husband Josh Miller.

She decided to have an assessment after interviewing comedian Em Rusciano the previous year on KICPOD, the podcast she launched with her friend and business partner Laura Henshaw.

Rusciano is among a number of celebrities who have opened up in recent years about being diagnosed with ADHD as adults.

“I found myself relating to so much of her story and her symptoms that she stopped and asked mid-way through the convo, ‘Are you one of us?’,” Smith said.

Smith said she had suspected for a while she might have ADHD, but it was her chat with Rusciano that motivated her to look into it further.

Thinking back, she can see how her then-undiagnosed ADHD affected her schooling, and detailed “zoning out in class” and finding exam preparations difficult.

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“I really struggled to concentrate in class, particularly if it was a subject I wasn’t interested in,” she said.

“I questioned my intelligence a lot through school, and even in my 20s, because of the way they were labelled.”

Smith said looking back, she “yearned for external validation from my peers” during her school years.

“I got a kick out of being liked and was really affected when I felt like someone didn’t like me,” she said.

“I would often pick up on people’s personality traits or interests and morph myself into a slightly different version of myself to fit in.”

She said now recognised her bluntness was part of her ADHD.

“For a lot of my close friends, they love this because they know they can rely on me for honesty, but I do recall some moments in childhood where my bluntness certainly might have hurt someone’s feelings, which of course was never my intention.”

Smith said her symptoms had become “more severe over the last few years… which I know can be really common for women after having kids.”

“The ones that affect my day-to-day the most would be emotional dysregulation, struggle to focus on one task or in a conversation, task avoidance and untidiness, and just a constant feeling of shame around not being able ‘fix’ some of these things,” she said.

“I’ve also learnt about masking, and how much energy that takes, and how I’ve been subconsciously doing that for years to fit in or be liked.

“And the mood swings, which might come under the emotional dysregulation side of things, but one minute I can be fine, or at least feel like I’m coping well, and the next minute I feel completely overwhelmed and irritable.”

Despite all this, Smith – who made the 2021 Young Rich List after amassing an estimated net worth of $36 million and was included in the 2024 Forbes’ ’30 Under 30′ list – feels there were definitely upsides of having ADHD.

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“I was always driven by interest and trying new things. This meant I explored so many sports or extracurricular activities growing up, and it was through the support of my parents in letting me do so, that further drove me to grow into being someone whose values and interests were really important when it came to picking a career path.”

Smith, who grew up in Melbourne, built a fanbase as an influencer by posting health and fitness related content before launching a modelling career.

In 2015, she published a cook book, Keep It Clean, then in 2018, she and Henshaw launched the Kic app, which includes on-demand workouts, recipes and mindfulness practices. Their podcast, KICPOD, followed in 2019.

She feels fortunate her career is a mixture of different roles that both “keeps it interesting” and is something she is incredibly passionate about, “which is important when it comes to actually following things through with ADHD”.

However, she admitted to constantly feeling overwhelmed, doubting herself and worrying about falling behind on things “that should come so easily to me”.

“Since the diagnosis, I’ve been a little easier on myself knowing now why they are more challenging for me,” she said.

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Smith said she now understood why “I’m not always the nicest person to be around” at home, and was so quick to become irritable or “tipped over the edge into emotional breakdowns”.

She also had an answer for why she was “untidy AF, which I’m blind to until it gets to a state where it becomes a huge overwhelming task that I don’t know how to tackle”.

“It’s also now enabled me to look into ways of managing it and hopefully bring some of the severity of symptoms down in my day-to-day life,” she said.

Smith is not taking medication to treat the condition, and doesn’t think she can while pregnant, but has not ruled it out in the future.

In the meantime, she is “looking to just understand it better and find tools or skills I can implement to support myself and approach things a little differently” such as diet and nutrition, which she explores in the new mini-series, It’s My ADHD, which is part of Smith and Henshaw’s long-running KICPOD podcast.

In it, she unpacks how her ADHD diagnosis has affected her marriage, the way she parents and her career, and explores the unique challenges of a late ADHD diagnosis, particularly for women.

It includes input from experts and guests who understand the realities of living with ADHD, including psychologist Bec McWilliam, psychiatrist Dr Dianne Grocott, clinical dietitian and nutritionist Liv Morrison, journalist Matilda Boseley, relationship coach Megan Luscombe and Rusciano.

“There’s an episode in the mini-series with our Kic dietitian Liv Morrison where we [look at] simplifying meal prep, using repeat orders through online supermarket shopping and organising your fridge and pantry in certain ways can really help with actually sticking to a balanced diet,” she said.

She praised husband Josh for being an “incredible support” and said they had both had “many ah-ha moments since the diagnosis” about some of her traits.

She said as a parent, her diagnosis had given her perspective on how her son was feeling ‘mid-meltdown’.

She urged anyone who was curious about having ADHD to seek an assessment.

“The diagnosis alone can shift the way you see yourself for the better, as long as you let go of the stigma that is often attached to ADHD,” she said. 

The first episodes of It’s My ADHD are available now on LiSTNR, with the remaining ones to be released this week. You can listen to the most recent episode here.

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