Dear friends,
Another week and another day of waking up to extraordinary findings. Last week I went to the talk on ADHD and Women: Misunderstood, misdiagnosed and moving forward for change. I can report back that it was fascinating, frightening, funny, factual and forthright.
The keynote speaker, Samantha Hiew was fabulous and described herself as AuDHD. This is taken from her website:
No two brains are the same. But what if you were born with a brain that constantly makes you feel like everything you do differentiates you from everyone else? Her Neurodiversity in the Workplace talk introduces Neurodiversity in the context of society, casting light on ADHD, autism, dyslexia, Tourette Syndrome and how this impacts the workplace. The keynote will go into the female experience in the world of work through an intersectional lens, and the areas to focus on so we can build a compassionate culture, starting with the conversations we have at work.
The main message I took away was that there are many many children and adults out there that are wired in such a diverse way, that typical behaviour is out of their control and out of the neuro-typical brain’s understanding. This makes the way society has established itself a complete disaster for everyone. 1. On the one side ‘how do we cope if we are neurodiverse?’ and on the other2. ‘How do we deal with those who can’t cope? 3. and Those who already think they have the answers – which is generally a neurotypical brain telling the neurodiverse brain to ‘buck up and get on with it’ – then getting fed up as it simply ‘ain’t going to happen’ The second thing I took away was that ‘ Attention Deficit’ as a title, is wrong in itself. It isn’t that an ADHD person can’t concentrate, it is that they can concentrate, way better than the neuro-typics, but it has to be something they are passionate about. In women it is very often the gender role tasks that they are not passionate about, making them look like ‘bad housekeepers, bad mother’s, bad organisers, thoughtless people in general. Well that is just unfair and then an inability to keep organised with the housework is considered ‘low mood’ and you are given tablets to compensate for your ‘low mood’ or CBT which tells you how to think, when you weren’t thinking ‘badly’ about yourself until people told you you were’ bad’ in the first place. The third thing was the factual content of the talk. Those with a diagnosis of ADHD have got a smaller brain overall and the brain has developed differently.
Unfortunately this is too often seen as a negative – (big is good – we all know that, the bigger the better), and yet there are so many positives about having your brain wired differently. So it seems that the frontal lobe is smaller and different to a nuero-typical brain. My mother had a brain scan as her behaviour became more and more erratic and it turned out that her frontal lobe was shrinking away. Eventually she had aphasia and later lost all ability to communicate. Was this a disease? or was it connected to a smaller brain in the first place. I will never know, but it is an interesting idea. My mother disappeared inside herself, we will never know what was really going on. Having said all this I came away from the talk really depressed. If I have got ADHD – and I haven’t had a diagnosis yet – it is considered a disability, negotiating society because society doesn’t work for an atypical brain. Surely this is unfair and leaves people feeling depressed, with low self esteem and unjustified reprimands. This leads Drs to misunderstanding and misdiagnosing conditions. Giving neuro-diverse brains medication they don’t need and a label they don’t want. I can’t help feeling all the way through this process I wasn’t depressed, but they kept telling me I was, so therefore I thought I must be and then I was…………..So tomorrow is a fairly big day for me and this is why. 9.30am Wednesday 3rd May – aged 56 I will see a psychiatrist at a cost of a whopping £1500 for an hour and a half to find out if my life experiences are down to a wiring of my brain that is diverse to what is considered typical or I am an ungrateful lazy self-centred good time girl with absolutely nothing going for her – which is what I have been led to believe all my life. Before the examination I spent 8 hours working on what seemed to be an examination of my life. Endless questions and forms (9 attachments) had to be downloaded, filled in, uploaded and returned. Some had to be done with a close friend or partner, others were supposed to be done with someone who knew you as a child – or in my case answered alongside my school reports, which were, even by my standards, shocking! Finally I have learnt that my life has been a huge struggle with many obstacles which I will go into in further emails. However the psychiatrist thought that I had navigated them amazingly well considering the difficulties I have encountered along the way and for that reason I feel extremely proud of myself. I now intend to use my gifts to spread the word about how to create a level playing field for those of us who start off differently. My career may go in a completely new direction, who knows? Thanks for reading and please spread the word amongst the neurotyps of this world. More on this another day. All the best for the week ahead Arlette