ADHD: Finding My Gold | Katie Friedman | TEDxUWE

[Applause] this is the story of how i lost and then found my gold my gold being my whole true self in all my strengths and all my challenges look at this photo what do you see a child dressed as an 80s curtain rail look at this effervescent sparkly me here i was channeling my inner dolly parton and being myself on purpose but even aged eight my gold was getting buried my dad said it was probably under other layers of things i might think about myself i imagine the earth's crust and an icky mantle and a golden core at my center i imagine that this core was like liquid honey and this was the honey in my soul this helped me to believe that they could be gold but the gold kept getting buried i came back to this photo many years later having burnt out of a career in education and school leadership rather than appreciate this beautiful child all i could do was criticize and nitpick why it felt like a mystery i later learned that this was a traumatized response but that didn't make any sense i hadn't experienced childhood trauma and then i retrained as a coach and in coach training at the end of it we had to give each other feedback lots of nice fluff about being a great coach which i instantly dismissed and one thing that we could do for our own benefit to change things all 16 participants independently wrote the same thing about me you should be kinder to yourself [Music] my response in my head what is wrong with you why can't you be kind to yourself you are going to have to try harder at this kind right i had a long way to go but i did get curious i did think well why is it so hard and eventually i learnt age 40 that i have a d h d attention deficit hyperactivity disorder not a sexy label let's be honest and not an entirely accurate one either it's not a deficit of attention it's brains wired for interest when we don't get enough interest we struggle to pay attention when i work with my brain it is definitely not a disorder it's a difference but i hadn't been working with my brain for 40 years because i hadn't understood how it worked i hadn't understood myself we learn who we are from other people children with adhd it's thought receive up to 80 percent more criticism than the average child 80 percent more by age 12 an adhd child may have received up to 200 000 more negative comments than the average child so small trauma leads to big trauma i had internalized wrong and i was constantly rescuing myself from wrong with what i now refer to as my wheel of doom a bit like you know when you're waiting for the computer to load and that horrible wheel comes up my wheel said do better be better try harder do better be better try harder over and over and over constant focus on improvement buries our gold like many other neurodistinct brains autistics dyspraxics dyslexics adhders tourettes or more likely a combination of i have spiky strengths and spiky challenges my verbal skills are high and my memory and my processing is under average at school i tried to fly in a range of subjects where you had to prove yourself with written work in order to show that you were intelligent i worked really really hard usually at home to compensate but in fortnightly pshe debates i would come alive at a level one teacher said you should go to cambridge and then she saw my exam results as a deputy head teacher i was a specialist thinker i was a learning specialist trying and failing to be an all-rounder because my employers had decided that was the only way to become a head teacher constant frustration buries our gold sometimes our goal is so buried that we don't even believe people when they point out what's good about us sometimes i have adhd clients now who assume that everyone can do what they can do but this is not true because our spiky strengths are just as spiky as our challenges my strengths mean i talk a lot i'm good at languages my strengths mean i'm an intuitive learner i'm able to think about barriers to learning and ways around it which helps in education and definitely helps as a coach and trainer now my adhd strengths mean that i thrive in challenge and get very focused in a crisis which helped me to lead schools in trouble and definitely helps me to parent children on the onset of puberty my adhd strengths mean i'm a creative big picture thinker and i'm bold and innovative constantly looking for new ways to do things sometimes these strengths are unusual so they get policed i was described by a group of white male heteronormative senior leaders as great but you've got to rein her in reign her in misogyny like racism and homophobia buries are gold this psychological model really struck a chord for me the more that we internalize wrong the more our layer of shame of who we're scared we are builds and builds and we pretend to be something that we're not so we get further and further away from that golden core for me learning about executive functions of the brain helped me to bust my shame layer and fear we all have executive functions in our brain and some of us have up to a 30 impairment executive functions help us to organize prioritize get started focus shift focus manage our attention and our energy and effort manage our emotions and regulate process information efficiently memorize monitor our actions pretty helpful and very frustrating if you don't know why things are harder for you but it was learning about my executive function challenges that helped me to re-author some of life's mysteries through a very different kinder lens finally my critical voice had started in secondary school i used to sit at the back of the class appraising my teachers i know who doesn't want one of those in their class but it wasn't because i was arrogant or mean it was because i was desperately trying to pay attention and stay focused in the room when they wouldn't let me move and the behavior wasn't spicy enough when i had a tantrum full blown on the kitchen floor age 16 it wasn't because i was a spoiled brat or a drama queen it's because i'd just done an exam and in that exam my speedy brain had rushed past the instructions and the fear of failure had hit me like a tsunami when i had a boyfriend as a teenager who i got together with and then split up from over and over and over again it wasn't because i was an inherently bad person it's because unlike the pretending that i was very mature i was actually behind my peers emotionally my brain is wired for interest so i love the thrill of the chase and then got bored and trapped very quickly in an interview when i was told that my body language which was slumped did not match my enthusiastic words it was not because i wasn't up to the job or i was lying it was because actually i was managing my energy badly in a two-day marathon interview process which is apparently in education the only way to appoint leaders once we get clear on our strengths and we get clear on our challenges we can start thinking about our needs because we never had imposter syndrome anyway just the need to be empowered to understand our differences now when i'm looking for the keys in the fridge or i'm reporting the lost bank card for the third time in two weeks i don't say what is wrong with you i say hey look what you are doing look who you are being let's figure out a way around this thank goodness for apple pay when i have asked for when i'm asked to do chapter edits for a book uh that i've written a chapter for i say yes but let's do this verbally so that you can get the best of my brain when i'm honored to be invited to a ted talk i say yes but here's my reasonable adjustments just in case dolly parton said learn who you are and do it on purpose so that's what i started to do but the world wasn't quite ready for me yet people would unintentionally gas like no you don't have adhd we all get distracted sometimes i got all-out tragedy oh katie when i was in the office of a pediatrician trying to get my son diagnosed she said i don't like to diagnose adhd because people judge and he might not get certain jobs what i will give him is anxiety and she did when i said um i have adhd she said did you fill in the forms yourself or did you do that with your husband for the first time ever i realized i wasn't the problem i wasn't wrong people's views of death of difference was the problem it was as if they had difference as deficit disorder let's diagnose it ddd well where does it come from because we all have it it comes from a systems that we're in it comes from frameworks like school systems which frame us in deficit what's wrong with you what can't you do what do we need to improve to get you to the line to get you to average that even better if the medical system asks what is wrong with you and how can we fix you and get you to average performative work cultures in order to keep you on your toes and working hard ask what do you need to do to be even better constantly working but it's hard to see your gold in these scarcity frameworks so let's break out we all have strengths let's focus on what we're good at and pay attention to our strengths because if we do we leverage so much more well-being and productivity this is even more true for those of us with the spiky strengths and the spiky challenges the one in five of us who are neurodistinct so let's get clear on our strengths clear on our challenges and our needs and let's shame-bust these scarcity frameworks around us then we can all be our true gold selves on purpose thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 34,976

Keywords: Acceptance, English, Health, Mental health, Self, Self improvement, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:50167]

Id: _G91NFmKpF8

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022