[Music] Hello and welcome to ADHD Essentials. Part of the ADHD-rewired podcast network. I'm your host, Brendan Mahan. I'm a former teacher and mental health clinician turned ADHD coach, trainer, and consultant. I can be reached at
[email protected]. Here at ADHD Essentials, we help families develop the skills and knowledge needed to better manage attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder. Visit ADHDessentials.com for more details. What's up team? I'm part of the upcoming second annual online parenting ADHD summit. It takes place June 17th through the 21st and is hosted by Penny Williams. Check out the link in the show notes for more information and to reserve your spot. Also, the ADHD Essentials online parent coaching groups will begin the week of July 8th. So go to ADHDessentials.com/parentgroups for more details and to sign up for a free informational call. And finally, if you want to support this show, I can always use one of those five star rating and reviews on iTunes or just tell your friends about it. Anything you can do to spread the word would be much appreciated. Welcome to the ADHD Essentials podcast. Have you seen the ADHD comic memes going around social media lately? There's set on a black background with neon colored words and pictures. Well today, we're talking to the artist of those memes, Danny Dunnethan. Danny is an artist who has her heart on her sleeve and a fire in her belly. She's a part of the ADHD tribe and it was great to talk to her. I really enjoyed our conversation and looked forward to staying connected with her. You can find more of her work and learn more about her at ADHDDD.com. That's three Ds at the end of that. In today's episode, we talk about apologizing for our stories, abandoning food in the car, the catharsis of shared experience. Danny's journey growing up as a girl with undiagnosed ADHD, and of course, her art. Some of which will be included in the show notes. That's right. This one is multimedia. All right. Let's get rolling. I do illustrations and like comics that kind of hopefully explain ADHD to people who have it and then to their loved ones or their teachers, employers, just trying to really foster that understanding and empathy for people like us who I think are kind of misunderstood in general. So I first came across your work. I don't know, maybe a year ago dates are weird. I have ADHD. It's hard. But it was a while ago. Maybe it might not have been a year or maybe five months ago. See dates are weird. So when I first saw your stuff, it was the wrong version I've since learned. So it was sort of something along the lines of a top part that was how normal people tell a story or something like that that was sort of beginning and then a straight line in the end. And then down below it was how I tell a story and it was rambling and disconnected and wondering all of the place and eventually get to the end or the point. And then I saw it and I remember looking at that and being like, that's ADHD. Like that's cool. That should be an ADHD thing. And then later on, I sure enough, I see it as an ADHD thing. And my understanding is that it started as an ADHD thing and someone kind of grabbed it and tweaked it. Made it not as good. Thank you. There was another version floating around that had the exact same. So there's two main, you call them, I have this is okay, I call them bastardized versions, but there's two main ones that I've seen floating around front page of Reddit, top on Facebook. One of them, they like photoshopped over my blue text and typed with like a terrible terrible font that I'm deeply offended by as a graphic designer. Somehow it, Kristen ITC, it's like more offensive to me than Comic Sans somehow. And then the other one was kind of cropped in these little like circular bubbles and put in like a tweet looking format. Like I know why it happened was because you know people with ADHD are maybe the only people who tell stories like that and that not everyone wants to tell everyone in their life that they have an ADHD. And so I made that conscious choice when I titled the different flowcharts, either like how other people tell a story and how I tell the story, not the normal people because I don't like how that sounds. And then I kind of thought to myself, no, like I really want to make a point on this and I don't think there's enough people who kind of talked about this and I wish there were things like this out here when I first got diagnosed. And so I want to keep it ADHD. And so then when more generic versions popped up, it you know sucked because they got way more reach than I did the first one that I saw had they sent me the analytics, which was great, but also hurt me on the inside. And they're like, oh, this reached 20 million people in like a day. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. And then it reached and they're like, oh, 200 million this week. And I go, don't I'm so happy to know this is resonated with people, but like, out right. And so to kind of find out this does have mass appeal, but it's this water down version that is more palatable to a larger audience. I mean, I still keep that in mind, but it hasn't stopped me from making ADHD specific comics or like feeling, oh, I want to get more people to follow me. So I'm going to make these generic now, you know, right. Yeah, I, I feel that sort of bastardized version of my thing, pain because of my wall of awful model, right. I've seen in articles about ADHD even like even in this niche. This is the thing that I'm conquering, right. Like this is my niche. I've seen a couple articles that are like, it's like you're facing a wall of shame. And I'm like, no, it's the wall of awful. And I know where you got the idea. I mean, just throw me a bone at least do it right. But so I hear it. Well, I mean, it's not what it hurts me to. It's nice because I do have, you know, there are obviously people who are going to use it without permission. And there are going to be people who don't know where it came from. And I can, I mean, I can speak to that prior to this whole. They crazy world of comics kind of happening, which has been the last like five months. And I had no way of knowing that that first one was going to blow up. I didn't put a watermark on it. I, you know, didn't think that was that important. And I was wrong. But to not have an audience who already recognized my stuff versus someone like Jim Macarole, where if I see something of hers where it doesn't have a watermark or someone's trying to post it as their own, I know that's hers. And I try to call that out. But for other ones that I've just seen that are funny images that don't have a watermark, I didn't think about where they came from. I shared them with people, people shared them with me. I tried to look that, you know, look up who some of them were. But if I can immediately find it, it wasn't. I don't say that big of a deal. But now I realize, wow, this does not, you know, feel good. And I kind of hate that it took me experiencing it on my own to truly, is it appreciated. But people, people call it out when they see it now. I get tagged in a lot of stuff. And it feels great that even though my audience is smaller than if I maybe would have put a watermark on my first one. And I think that they're really loyal and that they feel compelled to make sure people know and credit the artist for it. So that feels nice. In hearing you talk about the image and sort of its journey kind of away from you and then back to you. One question I have is what do you mean by a watermark? Is that just sort of down the bottom where it's tagged with your website and at Danny Dunnevin, kind of the Twitter stuff? Or is that something different? Because your username, maybe little icons for where people can find you and more importantly find more of your work. So for people who see something like the story, um, star sound filter, um, and want to see, oh, I didn't realize she has 40 more of these. I tell someone out, one time I see another one somewhere else and start to realize these all look the same. They've got a consistent kind of branding throughout. I hope they then start to think there's probably more somewhere. Because that's what happened to me, right? Is I saw that story telling one. I didn't think much of it. And then as time goes by, I mean, I thought it was great, but I didn't think, let me withdraw and rephrase. I wonder if it's more. Right. Yeah. I didn't, I wasn't like, I wonder if there's more. I was just like, that's cool. But I didn't think of it in terms of who made this, right? And then all of a sudden I start seeing this other stuff that's like a black background. It's got sort of neon colors. It looks like it's written in chalk. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute. That reminds me of something. And eventually I realized that it reminds me of this storytelling flow chart. And that's when I started going, hold on, this might be this, this person means it like this is an ADHD thing now because these other ones have ADHD. I've since seen the flow chart one within ADHD proper tagging on it.
And then I landed on Twitter one day and someone tagged you on an image and I was like, "Oh, is that the person?" And so I reached out and I'm really excited to have you on the show to talk about all things ADHD and sort of your journey and anticipating that some of my parents are listening and going like, "What does this have to do with being a parent and why do I care?" Part of why you and I have both sort of been caught up in people encroaching on our spaces a little bit is that the economy is different now. The economy I have ideas, the economy of money, the economy of self-branding in order to get a job, whether that job is with a company or just from clients coming to work with you, it's different. And the challenges that you and I are facing as professionals are the same challenges that kids growing up are going to be facing when they become professionals. And it's different from the economy of 10, 20 years ago where you get a job and you work at that job forever and you die in the factory. That just isn't how it goes anymore. So that is an element of why this matters for parents because one they need to be aware of it and two, they're kids need to be aware of it. And also just all things ADHD, all things artistic. And the fact that you have ADHD and here is another direction for someone with ADHD to go in which is graphic design and also the art skills that come with that and where those may lead you. So one of the things that I knew about myself early on was that I don't have a super long attendance fan. And so when I was in second, third grade, I had wanted to be a comic book artist or at least draw for the Sunday funnies, which I read every week, only part of the newspaper I cared about. And then I moved from that once I started seeing movies like Finding Nemo, Trek, that kind of stuff. I was really enthralled with this new kind of 3D technology. And then I was like, I want to work at Pixar. I want to work at Pixar. And upon learning, doing a little bit more research in fifth grade, realizing, oh, they have to work on these movies for three or four years. And they have to be working on these scenes forever. And I go, I don't want to do that. And graphic design then became a real joy to me because I knew I could get paid to do art, actually make money. And a lot of people would see my stuff and that I would get to do a variety of different types of things. And so then I decided I want to be a graphic designer in eighth grade. And I think most people with ADHD sometimes can have a tendency to hop or try a lot of different things. And I kind of have within my artistic field, but I've always known this was an area that I've been super interested in, really expression. But illustration was kind of like a side hobby for me. Illustrations much harder to kind of make it, to pay the bills, especially doing your own work and not doing client work for someone else. So it's just been such an amazing experience to have people empathize enough with the feelings and the struggles to not have to answer to someone other than myself. And that's what I've always tried to make very clear with the way that I do my comics and the way that I capture my comics is I'm not trying to encapsulate everybody's struggles. I'm not trying to make a comic for something that I do not personally go through. There are a lot of symptoms that I don't have. My husband's struggles in school, we're not the same as mine. And so I don't want to pretend to be something of not. And I don't want to try to be like a mouthpiece for every single person because it varies so much in how people kind of show their stuff. And so keeping it really personal and true to me, I think has resonated with people that they can tell it's authentic because it's so specific. And that specificity rather than again that kind of generic appeal, rather than being like, I'm messy. And like the bullet points, that's what really did it for me was when I first ran across Jessica's how to ADHD channel. Having specific examples of grocery shopping can be difficult. I have never seen that on any symptom list. I've never seen that on any article. I have just self-loatheed forever thinking everyone can do this and I can't. And then realizing that has something to do with this and the back of my car, I haven't emptied my trunk in two years. And that could have something to do with this because every time I think about it, I think about doing it and I don't do it. Is it a wall of awful? Yes. And then I talk to people and people are having that same mind explosion where they realize all this stuff that I don't read about that I haven't seen, even if I look up articles on ADHD, those aren't on the list. It might say messy. It doesn't, you know. It's not specific enough. It's not giving you. Yes, for people to see themselves in it because anyone can be messy. I've got one for you. Ready? This is going to car stuff. So I'm a principal at a private Islamic school in my spare time because I have to watch. I don't know if I'm doing that in my spare time or the ADHD stuff in my spare time. I'm not sure which is which, but from like 9 a.m. to noon, I'm a part time principal at a private Islamic school in my town. A little while ago, I went to like a diversity international sort of fair thing in my town as the ADHD guy just standing behind the table, letting people in town know it exists. And they had some raffles. So I got some raffle tickets. And I won a basket of like stuff from China. Pretty cool. Except some of the food in there is stuff that we're never going to eat, right? So I'm like, I'm not going to eat that. On Sunday, I was like, oh, wait, I can bring it to school. And like hook everybody up with some like tasty cakes and stuff. So I put it in my car Sunday night. So I don't forget to bring it with me to school. And then I am leaving the house on Monday and then realize it's Ramadan. And none of the people in the school eat from sun up to sundown. So that's a bad plan. And it's Friday. And there is a pile of food from China in my passenger seat that still hasn't been moved because I don't need anyone else to be in my passenger seat. And it can stay there for now. My first day. And so I work at Gallup. My first day here, I had this box full of full size Hershey's Chocolate bars because I've gotten married. I really started here a week after I got married. And we had a camp theme wedding. So we had s'mores instead of like a s'mores bar instead of cake because it has been I don't like cake. And it would do way too many chocolate bars. So I was like, it's my first day. Everyone's going to love me. I'm going to be the first in that brings in chocolate on the first day. And I left them in my car and I started in September. It was very hot. I realized at four o'clock that my chocolate was still in my car. And I went out to grab it and all of the bars were melted. And so I stuck them on top of a file cabinet with a little post now that said chocolate melted, probably goofy still tastes good. And it was gone in the eight days anyway. But it looked pretty bad when he opened them, but whatever. That's awesome. So circling back to some of your artwork and I'll be posting links to these images in the show notes and access. And I'm not going to hit too many of them because I don't want to be overwhelming, but we'll post as many as you're comfortable sharing. At the end of that ADHD storytelling flow chart that you have, that sort of it's like pre-story, prologue for context, start of the story, too many details, side story, and then back to the story and then we keep going from there. So we get to the end of the story. And then after the end of the story, you have apologize, which I bet rings true for a lot of people. So I find myself constantly apologizing for talking, especially being hyper self-aware if I've been talking for a long time because I don't usually notice it until it's too late. When you start to pick up on the body language that people around you or just suddenly being conscious of, wow, I haven't come up for air or come up for air in five minutes. And other people having let me know that I do that. And so then feeling the immediate need to show that, oh, sorry, I'm aware that I talked too long. I didn't mean to do that. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And then people immediately go, what are you sorry for? And I hear that and I still do it like a knee-jerk reflex. And it's funny to me now because Aaron Brooke, who's now one of my friends, I reached out to her originally and kind of had this thing where I was like, you've helped me so much. You retweeted my first flow chart. That's one of the reasons this whole thing blew up. And I want to return the favor on a dry-ung avatar, this whole thing. And she hadn't replied. And then I posted this whole other thing and then it was too long and then I stared at it and then I apologized. And now that I get people messaging me and there are these long, long, long messages that are just full of apologies. And I talked to Aaron and she has the same experience of getting mail of people who are apologizing for writing to you. And then I got that kick in the game.
got because I didn't really think about doing that so much. So that apologized at the end. Was that intended as a kicker or was that you just being honest and realizing later that it's kind of a kicker? The second one. That was just my kind of personal experience because I was like, got made fun of a lot for doing that, but people point out that I do it a lot. And so for me, just telling my story and that truly being the journey that I took all the time that was really me, poking fun at it and acknowledging that that's how I do it. And then when people found it kind of as a kicker, I thought about it a lot more and got, ooh, that is. And a lot of my comments actually kind of do take that. I want to say dark, dark turn, but a lot of them now are some of them are more kick in the gut than others. And a lot of times what I've kind of told myself is I care about the point more than I care about if it's funny. And so sometimes they're not funny at all. Sometimes they just need to be blunt or point out uncomfortable truths. And what they are consistently though is insightful. Your comics are incredibly insightful. They're not dark. They're true. And sometimes truth is dark, but that's where the insight comes in. Like you've got ADHD struggles ranked and it's sort of task and difficulty and difficulty goes up. And the finishing projects with no external deadlines has no end. It doesn't get capped like all of the rest of them because that's how hard that is. You didn't get finished. Yeah, and you didn't finish. Like it's awesome. I think that these comics, if you share them with your family, with your kids, with your friends, it can lead to some really important conversations and it can lead to some really significant understanding. That's honestly my biggest goal. So I listened to a lot of Simon Sinek. I'm currently listening to his audiobook Start With Why. And it has been such a trip because I started this audiobook before I was doing these comics. And I have now been listening to it again after this has all happened. And it's making me understand why people are drawn to my stuff, why people, I would say, became pretty loyal fans, why they are passionate about me and supportive. It made a lot of that stuff make sense because when I kind of drilled down into what he was saying and people who start with why, before they start with what or how and knowing, I don't make web comics to be funny. I don't make web comics to get likes. I don't make web comics to try to make myself more popular or I didn't make them to think of it as a career. I just made them because I felt misunderstood and I feel like I didn't have things to explain myself properly. And there's just a lot of invisible struggles that went along with how I felt and how I didn't feel like I could talk to anybody or relate to anybody. And I was so different from everyone I knew. And so for me, making the invisible struggles visible and for helping again people with this condition to understand themselves better and be understood by others to really have those open conversations. And if you can't find the words, that's okay because I'm going to say a picture's worth a thousand words. But you get an understanding. And the funny thing is I had actually given a conference talk a couple years ago at this little thing we do in Omaha that I'm helped put on called Bar Camp by the American Institute of Graphic Arts and pretty much it's called an unconference and it's anybody who comes can sign up for like a little 30 minute spot and speak about whatever they want, right? And I literally I wanted to do it. I'd been wanting to do it for years and I didn't and then I literally made a presentation on the drive there like my husband was driving and I I was making my little like Google slides thing on my phone. It was called OMG Me Too. I had a creative empathy and mental health comics and I had taken all of these comics I'd saved to my phone that I saw that a lot of them in Ukraine, I had taken a lot of them and put them into a presentation to kind of explain, hey, I have never openly talked about this. It's really scary to say this in front of people, people who might hire me in front of my friends who I've never talked to about this. Kind of showing one of my favorite ones is this artist who had done this stick person who has a balloon, you know, that's like call mom and then he sees another balloon that says like wash dishes or whatever it is. He runs and grabs that one, he's holding two balloons and the one pops up that says, you know, fill your gas tank and so then he goes to grab that one, he drops this other balloon. So then he's like running around trying to hold on to more balloons than he can. He looks up and there's just a whole ton of balloons of tasks that have gotten dropped and are all floating up there and things like that that really hit me hard in a way that it was a feeling that I hadn't seen conveyed in another medium before. And so using that and a lot of people came up to me afterwards just so thankful or like people who were saying, wow, I didn't know anyone here had this. I now feel a little bit more comfortable talking about it and I knew I'd wanted to try making them and then I didn't for two years though but realizing the kind of power that that can have and you know, making people cry over stating facts is such a cathart, you know, it's just catharsis from the feeling that we did. I completely agree. I do, I do a ton of workshops. I do them all the time. I've done at least 20 just this year. And the catharsis of me stating something about ADHD and people laughing or crying and feeling altogether and connected is really powerful. So you presenting in that way, allowing people to feel that connection either to you or to each other depending on how they took it is phenomenal. I'm glad that it sort of eventually sent you in this direction because I think your art does the same thing. It's letting people know, right? Oh, it's, I'm not the only one. And because someone drew a picture about this. And created an image, created art around this struggle. And you've got one that is hard to swallow pills, the rejection sensitivity stuff and it's you can't make everyone happy. The right people love you. Anyone gossiping about you is insecure about their own life and needs to feel superior. Everyone isn't mad at you. People aren't analyzing your every move. And there's some other ones but I'll leave those off so listeners can be curious and go look. Yeah. That stuff that's like it's hard to accept. And I love it that it's not just sort of negative feeling stuff like, oh, I can't make everyone happy, but I'm supposed to look what, uh, uh, uh, uh, but then oh, wait, but people love me. Like and the right people love me. That's, that's kind of feels good if I let, if I swallow that pill, but how come I don't want to? It can be so difficult. And I've said this to people so many times that it's easy to say, I started to practice what you preach. And I think these are so relatable is because my life isn't put together. And so I actually had this experience yesterday, a couple days ago where I was at, um, this work conference and I are not conference, but like a couple two day workshop. And I was the only extrovert in the room. There was a lot of introverts and the teacher kept asking questions and there's dead silence. And it's so hard for someone like me who is very communicative, who has poor impulse control to not just like raise my hand with an answer every single time, right? And there are people like me who I'm not like, I want me to teach her 10. I want everybody to think I'm smart. It's not that it's, I feel so bad for teachers who are standing at the front of the class when no one's participating in their participatory activity. And so I then after two days of this was feeling insecure and I was feeling really like I was annoying, all of these people around me by answering too many things. And I thought everybody hated me. I was like, everyone thinks I'm the annoying one in class like because I, and I was feeling all these things, I felt as a kid like I don't grow out of that. And then I kind of had this weird aha moment like right at the end. That's like, wait a second. Why do I care if these people I'm not going to see again? Think I'm annoying for asking questions. And also I'm allowed to be annoyed at them for not answering anything and not participating in this. Like, why do I feel like they get to judge me? Even though people there were nothing but nice to me in my head, I'm like, everyone thinks I'm annoying, everyone thinks I'm annoying. Can I lift that a little bit? Can I poke? Yeah. There's an element to that that is something I've been playing with for a little while now, which is the difference between blame and responsibility. And also I'm taking this approach from a teacher. So I've been in the class where there's one kid who's answering all the questions. And as an ADHD person who is really smart and has been the kid in the class or the adult in the class answering all the questions. And I never once feel bad about it. Sometimes I feel the social pressure and if I feel it, I stop and then other people start answering questions. But if no one's answering, I never feel bad about it. It's because I look at it as a responsibility. And so if you're all going to answer these questions, I'll take the responsibility of being the person answering those questions and moving the class forward and giving the teacher what they need. Whereas it sounds like you sort of were taking the blame of being the person who
wouldn't stop talking and wouldn't stop sharing. - Mm-hmm. - And because I am multifaceted and can think beyond ADHD, there's some misogyny and sexism in there in terms of how women are treated and how women are raised culturally and how men are treated and raised culturally. - Mm-hmm. - So if I can be the dude who is not a jerk and give you permission to take responsibility instead of blame, I would like to be that guy because women are just as powerful and amazing as men are. - Yay, I think so too. So speaking to any parents with daughters who have ADHD, it is a really weird experience growing up, you know, not only feeling different and struggling with stuff, but maybe not feeling like you know any girls who have it. Although the kids that I knew growing up who had ADHD, and I didn't get diagnosed as a kid, I got diagnosed my freshman year of college. - Mm-hmm. - My parents had had curiosity of, this seems like a thing, getting in trouble constantly for not getting up and fidgeting or anything. People might have a notion in their head of what it looks like, but I was just interrupting in class, not raising my hand, talking too much and having, I wanna say, authority issues, but I speak my mind and in a respectful way, but I had no problem challenging. I went to a Catholic school. They don't like when you challenge priests and say, "Hey, I've read the Bible, you're saying this story wrong." They're like, "No, I'm not. I'm like, here is my thing." And they go to the principal, you know. And 'cause you're supposed to do that. And especially as a girl, they're like, "What do you know?" Just feeling like that, my, our daughter's, you know, a bit different and having a teacher tell them, she can't have it, she's too smart. I don't say misinformation, but a lot of people have that mindset of every kid with ADHD visibly struggles in school. And every kid with ADHD is hyper or kids with ADHD kind of look a certain way. And I wasn't even the girl, and even with women, where they say women are more likely to be kind of a spacey day-dreamy type. I'm not that either. Like I pay attention in class because I didn't wanna get in trouble, but mine was more of the outbursts and the impulse control. And so recognizing that as a girl growing up, I didn't know anybody like me, and it was just this extremely isolating experience where I kept thinking, "What's wrong with me? "Why do I annoy people?" And being told, being literally told from classmates or from friends, "Oh my God, you're so annoying." "Oh my God, you're such a spaz." And that just stuck with me, and I didn't fully process. That's maybe why I have such a weird obsession with not annoying people. And why I might be more self-conscious about it is because it's not just bullying from bullies, it's bullying from friends, and feeling like my own friends don't like me, so I shouldn't be myself. - If I can do for you right now what your art has done for so many people, you are not alone in that. As a guy who works in schools and works with kids all the time, there are so many other kids, especially girls, who are hearing, "Oh my God, you're so annoying." - The trick is, very often, if there's more than one of the sort of hyperactive girl in the group, then that's okay, 'cause it's less noticeable, but if there's only one, (laughs) if there's only one, yeah, they stand out and they get to, "Oh my God, you're so annoying." But then there's another friend group down the hall who has the annoying girl, and there's a third friend group somewhere else that has that girl, and then there's two other groups that are entirely made up of those girls. And there, the divas, leaders of the pack girls, because they all have that huge outgoing nature, and they're all either including or excluding everybody, and that gives them power. - That was one, two, where I just always wondered why, me personally, I always got along with guys better. A lot of times people make fun of girls who say that, "Oh, I don't like drama," and those people like the drama the most. That is not the case. I don't like people being mad at me or at other people. It deeply makes me uncomfortable. And just being around people who, I don't know if they didn't think I was annoying, but had that same level of like bluntness without getting their, you know, I'd say, "Fueling's hurt." And also I did know guys with ADHD, and I didn't know any women. Up until now, and the women that I do know who have it, were all online that I met from Twitter. And so being able to have that conversation, and that's why I think Twitter has been such a fun place to put it, 'cause that's also, when people think of sharing images and comics, they put them on Instagram, maybe on Facebook. Twitter is not really an image sharing platform, primarily Twitter is a conversation platform. And so for people who are just now parents, even who are discovering, you know, and say support groups for parents with children, or even parents who have it, who have children, I have a stepson now, I just recently got married. And when he's up in town, my husband and I both having it, figuring out like how to delegate these responsibilities while having ADHD when I'm like, I can't even take care of myself. - I'm running parent coaching groups over the summer. I'll hold a slot for it if you want. - Yeah, you never really think about, I mean, you do think about it, obviously, but when you grow up, you have to parent yourself. And so I grew up in a situation where my parents, even if I didn't have a diagnosis, were very good about knowing how to get me to perform in what ways rewards worked, in what ways fair punishments that were related to what I did wrong worked. And so they were good about making sure that my study area was completely put away from everything else. There was no TV in the room where I did homework. I had instrumental CDs to kind of quiet, I wanna say the voices in my head, but all the thoughts buzzing out of my brain. I had a real environment, which was not an area where I did anything but homework. And so that was really helpful for me because I wasn't around other people to kind of distract myself with, maybe the occasional cat that walked in. But then going to college and not having those, I wanna say safety nets, but those routines put in place for me was when I suddenly was, wow, why is this so hard all of a sudden? And that's why I got diagnosed because I went and saw it at myself, but I hadn't realized how important it was to have someone to hold me accountable, but also to teach myself to become accountable or find those accountability systems to where I don't have to rely on myself, discipline to get myself down. - Yeah, college is one of those times when ADHD can flare up and become problematic exactly because you lose all that structure. A lot of my clients are college age. I get them middle school, high school college, those transition times like going from elementary school to middle school, going from middle school to high school, going from high school to college. And then adults in transition or parents who have kids that are now diagnosed or what do I do with them. That's where ADHD flares up the most at least with regard to my practice. - Do you have, so I moved schools quite a bit and I had, or I'd make a friend and then I had an instance where I find I had a best friend and then her mom was dark, but her mom committed suicide and her stepmom. So that dealing with that in fourth grade was hard enough as it was 'cause she was like my second mom. - I'm sorry. - Yeah, thank you. I didn't know how to deal with those feelings and she, her stepmom moved her to another school. And then when I'd call her house, wouldn't return. My phone calls to let her know that I had called. So I lost complete contact with my best friend. I was mourning feeling like I'd lost a mother figure in my life. Oh, I'm gonna cry. Feeling like I'd lost a mother figure in my life. And then my friend group, while I was off with kind of this, this new girl came in who convinced them all that I was annoying and they shouldn't hang out with me. And I came back needing that support and finding my friends had kind of, I was like, I'll turn to me, but had been persuaded by an outsider that wanted to be part of this now that I didn't belong. And I didn't really even think until I was literally, I processed this like last year that how big of an impact that had on my life. - Oh yeah. - 'Cause when you, you know, it happens that young, you know that it happened, but you move on. And it's not until you get older and you notice these recurring patterns that other people don't seem to have. And you try to go, why? Why? Like, why do I have this weird hang up with feeling like all my friends are mad at me all the time? Or they secretly don't like me or they're all talking about me. And then finding out, now that I'm doing these comics, I'm kind of circling back to that. I have done so much more research and found out about things like rejection sensitive dysphoria, which I don't know about. And I was kind of looking at all these lists of things that go along with it, like thinking everyone's mad at you and being a perfectionist so that your work is beyond criticism and feeling like you have to prove yourself and make everybody like you and really reading into always assuming the negative about your interactions with people. And so for me, having a main, the same way that people have that kind of revelation with ADHD of wow, There's a new.
name, there's a reason finding things like that RSD or you know twice exceptional kind of gifted, gifted, labeled as gifted students who just need to work to achieve their potential and the amount of pressure that puts on like finding all these different parts that go into it that I hadn't heard of before and then being able to share that with people so they can have those aha moments much more quickly than I did. Yeah, I haven't done anything on rejection sensitive dysphoria yet on the podcast it's coming but we've done a ton of work with giftedness I did a whole bad pun gifted episode at the time that's why I was a bad pun because it was gifts at Christmas. But yeah the more you can learn the easier it is to start to self accept right and there's sort of a there's sort of a hurdle in there right like you start to learn and it just makes you feel terrible. And then eventually you come out the other side of that and it becomes easier to accept who you are and how you work and why you work that way. At this workshop I was kind of talking about I there was the last exercise we had to do before we like quote graduated was we had a little worksheet where you put what are words that people use to describe you at work what are underneath it said what are words that you wish were added to that and then it said like how will you kind of go about adding those words to the first list right and I started immediately writing out you know creative ambitious driven like inspiring like stuff that I've heard from people and have retained now problem solver that kind of stuff animated loud that's fair but funny and friendly in this kind of stuff and I was writing all these words down and they give us 15 minutes and I look over and it's like four minutes later I've written out 20 words and I look over everyone at my desk who I was upset that I wasn't more like them you know I was upset that I thought they didn't like me and I look around and no one has written anything no one at my table had written anything they were staring at the paper and I look down at the what do you want to add and I kind of glance at my list and go these are the things that I want to be these are all the things that like are important to me and then I stopped and I go oh my god do I like myself and I've had such lows of a stink out of my whole life and knowing that all the things I want to be I'm either working on or already have been told I am I don't know it was this real other worldly experience for me to finally have them because people can tell you all you want like you shouldn't be so hard on yourself you know and it doesn't absorb until you have that moment of clarity when you really have come to terms with the fact that wow okay I'm okay who I am now that's really powerful in that that's that self-awareness stuff right because I've been the annoying person too right of course I'm an extrovert with ADHD but one of the things that I've come around to and as a perspective of myself that I think also applies to you based on the story is we're not annoying we're obvious yeah hard of my sleeve right yeah it's just easy to tell what we're all about that's all and some people might be annoyed by that and those are people we don't need to hang out with but I want to conceal who you are that's your prerogative yeah but if if we beat ourselves up for being obvious that's where our problems come in but if we can just own it if we can just own the fact that we're loud or own the fact that we care too much own the fact that we drop things or whatever the case may be then it'll be okay for us and everyone else can figure it out that's what I kind of like to say now is the different not broken and to really accept that there is no right or wrong and as much as I might perceive that other people's lives are perfect and they've got it all put together you talk to them like they don't right you think everybody around you is perfect and that I'm so imperfect and and it's just not true it's not and I work at a Gallup we do our Clifton Strengths Finder and it's so common for people the most common ones are responsibility and learner and achiever I don't have those things and I have discipline focus all at the bottom the liver div all at the bottom and all of my top are activator and woo and communication and empathy and competition you know ideation and looking at them and when I first saw them thinking to myself being upset that responsibility wasn't high being upset that focus wasn't high even knowing that like these have to be in some order and then realizing if I could change it I wouldn't change it like there are people who are really responsible that are upset at themselves for not being able to do small talk are upset at themselves for not being able to speak up at meetings you know whereas I'm like I speak up too much there's people that are like I have all these thoughts and I'm too scared to say them and so realizing that there is a flip side to all those coins and that you're part of a team. Someone's got to activate and if that person who activates everybody is terrible at fall through someone will be responsible and the person who was responsible probably didn't activate and so let's be a team and get the thing done so just being mindful of time do you have any ending essentials that you'd like to share with the audience. You know we talk a lot about awareness and we talk a lot about ending the stigma and those things are both really important I don't think awareness people are aware that ADHD exists I don't think awareness maybe is the right word and as far as like ending the stigma that doesn't mean anything to me it's just kind of a platitude right and so I think in order for us to do either of those things we do need understand it better because it's titled so poorly there's so much more that goes into it and nobody would know unless you read an article about it and most people won't take that time unless it's something that grabs their attention or it's something that in my case is funny or tries to be funny or is short that they don't have to read a whole thing and so I really think that cultivating that understanding between people who have it and people who don't employers and employees parents children spouses to understand that the person that you love isn't doing this on purpose they're not trying to be annoying they're not trying to be difficult they probably do feel self-conscious and guilty about the things that you're frustrated with them about but until we can really start to understand one another and break down those barriers of like why is there a stigma in the first place addressing those issues I think then we can really kind of make those changes and make those adjustments but we all have to realize how similar we are and that you know we're all on the same team hey you're still here nice thanks for staying focused all the way through if you have any thoughts or questions about today's episode feel free to email me at
[email protected] and don't forget to check out the website adhdessentials.com and visit our Facebook community I'm looking forward to talking to you again next week in the meantime keep focusing on improvement over perfection 10% better is all you need
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