Navigating Neurodivergence and ADHD as a Professional

We all have a story. Every story of my childhood school years often includes a mention of how every teacher would offer the phrase 'Qualia could be a great student but they're too busy staring out the window.' I was always that distracted kid. While this never waved any red flags to my parents, or my teachers, it was the 80's and 90's, when ADHD wasn't quite as well known in many places.  Suffice to say, I was largely left in the dark about why certain things, like focusing on many tasks, were so difficult for me and not for others. This led me to assume that I was bad at learning, and school was not for me.

I wonder what 10 year old me would think of the reality that we would eventually complete not just a bachelor degree, a masters degree, and a handful of other certificates and trainings over the years, and that largely, I would get straight A's, even though in grade school I never achieved higher than a B, and most of the time I was the perpetual C+ kid. I graduated high school with very average marks, and not much actually solidified in my long term memory in terms of STEM, but I had a head that was permanently stuffed with an almost obscene amount of Simpsons dialogue, and a photographic memory of Monty Python lines.

When I first began to suspect I had some level of neurodivergence, I became depressed and felt weaker somehow, as if a looming diagnosis meant there was something broken about me. This began to eradicate my motivation, and led to a life filled with things that were not healthy, and that ultimately only made things worse for me. I bounced around a lot, giving up on hobbies, jobs, or goals once the newness wore off or my interest lagged, seeking out something else to fill that same hunger.

Things switched for me in my twenties when I realized, almost accidentally, that I had gathered a long list of interests and hobbies by living like this. It flicked a switch for me, as I began to realize that this thing I was trying to avoid had actually helped me in a round about way. I realized that I was capable of learning, it just had to be on my terms. If I could motivate myself, be really interested in something, then I'd not only learn it, but I'd be excited about it. 

I began to lean into my strengths, and work to overcome my weaknesses. As many ADHD professionals discuss, individuals can find greater success by focusing on things like structure, minimizing distractions, using reminders, breaking down tasks into more manageable pieces, and incorporating movement. Now I noticed that I could increase my focus a lot, manage my overwhelm, and reduce my daily level of stress. A great example of this I noticed was in my writing. Writing a novel had always been a dream of mine, but the task was a mountain looming in the distance. This is where the strategies really made sense to me in a way that landed. It wasn't about writing the novel, it was about saying 'I'm going to write one scene of about one thousand words.' Being able to take a task that I knew would be so gargantuan as to be almost unthinkable, to saying 'okay, this task I can get done in less than an hour,' proved to completely change the game for me.

 Passion, interest, and curiosity all play into self-motivation as well. If you asked me to spend an hour doing a task I couldn't stand, I'd probably spend 45 minutes of that hour trying to avoid it like the plague. This sent me on a long journey of discovering what are the things I'm interested in. For me, this has led to a career helping others; first as a paramedic, then as a nurse, and now as a counsellor. Even once I knew what I wanted to do for a career, I still had to figure out how to fit into those roles. As many neurodivergent individuals that I have met have said, being neurodivergent in a neurotypical  society can be like constantly trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

This is where I developed my love of psychology. Square pegs can often bash themselves against the holes their whole lives as they try to fit in, and I learned the hard way what that was like, and what the repercussions of that were. I ended up in a bad place, mentally and emotionally, that in the end, I had to dig myself out of it. Many cognitive therapies talk about the benefit of radical acceptance, and this has been a cornerstone that I've leaned on, and practiced a lot over the years, even when a big part of me didn't want to accept myself.

One question that stuck with me throughout my journey to find self-acceptance was what if neurodivergence was actually a superpower? If I was to radically accept myself, then I was to radically accept even the parts of myself I used to think were bad, or weak, or a flaw. I recently heard on a podcast, a doctor discussing how people needed to focus more, and study hard in school, then college, to focus their lives on one thing to get really good at it. The more I thought about that, the more it felt like a round hole that I didn't even want to fit into. I'd rather be the person that was pretty good at 50 things, than the person who was extremely good at one thing. 

This is how I've come to feel that ADHD is my superpower. It's like writing the novel in a way. I've moved through life quietly micro-tasking a host of hobbies and interests that to an outside observer, I'm certain looked like I was being aimless and scattered. In reality, however, it's led me to my 40's where I have written almost a dozen books, become a good photographer, been a paramedic, a nurse, and now a counsellor. Maybe  I could have applied myself more and been the best nurse ever, but instead, I've found a meaning and purpose in my life that helps others, and also fulfills me day to day by offering what my mind needed; lots of variation, newness, challenges, and something I could truly get behind and feel excited about doing.

Did I do this all on my own? No, of course not. I had the help of some amazing therapists, nurses, doctors, books, and podcasts to help me along on my journey in ways that were personal to who I was, not what someone else told me was my path. I came to know myself in deeper and more fundamental ways. I know now that when I get overwhelmed, or anxious, I need to go, which for me, translates to I need to go for a run on a regular basis to let that energy out. I know I need to break my day up as much as possible, so that I can let my brain catch up, process, and look to the next hurdle to jump over. This has helped me tremendously in moving through life's challenges while maintaining an ability to take care of myself. Person-centred therapies have helped a lot too, thanks to some great counsellors I've met, and so has the work of Victor Frankl, among others. All of these helped me find a radical acceptance of myself, and realize that the thing I thought would lead to my downfall, has actually led to a level of success I'd never have been able to conceptualize as a kid. 

Frankl is a great example to mention because although Logotherapy is not specifically about working with neurodivergence, it is all about finding meaning, which ties into my story in a big way because when I have been able to conceptualize a task, a job, a relationship, or anything else as inherently meaningful to who I am or who I want to be in the world, it breaks down the focus barrier and often creates the arguable superpower of hyperfocus, where I'm happy to go down a rabbithole for weeks on a subject with incredible focus. Being able to steer the things that I hyperfocus on has been a huge part of my successes in life, and Frankl's work has helped me with that a lot.

Throughout this journey, I've made a lot of changes to help me find a balance with how I live in this world. With help, I developed skills not to negate my neurodivergence, but to work with it, free of judgement so that in a sense, I could be free to be me in a new way. If I'm easily distractable, I accept that that's okay, and I often line up tasks so I can distract myself from one thing with another, so that both end up getting done. Sometimes that means building in structure to the day, sometimes it means having someone around to be in the room while I work, and at other times it means scheduling my day with extra breaks to keep my energy going through tasks I know I'm going to be more distracted by.

I truly believe now that this can be a superpower for us, but it's about going on the journey, finding the strategies that work, finding a path through life that feels congruent to who each of us is in our stories, and discovering what is the meaningful way to live as our true and authentic selves.