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Ep. 8: "I had so much negative self talk, there was no room for mistakes" (Cameron's Story)
214 Plays2 years ago
This episode is filled with depth and vulnerability. Cameron's story is one of depression, overwhelm and confronting self reflection. "I'm either having a wave crashing over me and I can't do anything, or I'm in between the waves and I can get things done."
They share their experience of not being diagnosed earlier because of the structure and routine and learnt behaviour of 'holding' the energy in. Learning how to sit still despite the discomfort. "Mum had effectively coached me out of the external behaviour."
Cameron and I reflect on the coping skills many of us utilise to self soothe prior to diagnosis. The understanding and reflection that has emerged through the diagnostic journey has lead to deeper relationships and empowered self advocacy.
Camerons story is worth honest, moving and brilliantly insightful.
If you'd like to share your story you email me, visit Awaken ADHD or follow me on instagram
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Transcript
Introduction to Awaken ADHD
00:00:09
Speaker
You are listening to Awaken ADHD, a podcast where people share their ADHD stories, life before and after diagnosis, support strategies, strengths and challenges. Hi, I'm Jade and I'll be your host. I'm a counsellor, ADHD coach and fellow ADHD-er. So join me as we Awaken ADHD.
00:00:33
Speaker
This podcast is recorded on the land of the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation and we wish to acknowledge them as traditional owners. We recognise First Peoples of Australia as the original storytellers and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.
Meet Cameron: Identity & Professional Background
00:00:51
Speaker
Hello, I'm joined today by Cameron. Cameron's a 30-year-old fellow Melburnian. Cameron identifies as gay, gender-fluid, non-binary, masculine-presenting person. I thought I'd stuff that up, and I didn't. They currently work as a court registrar at
00:01:08
Speaker
neighborhood justice center, and self-described as a boring government job. It doesn't sound boring. It sounds quite interesting, but I'm sure we'll hear about that. Cameron's been involved in a few LGBTQIA plus organizations and volunteers with a few others. They have a background in education, management, and skincare. Okay. I don't know how that fits in, but we'll see in here.
00:01:32
Speaker
and work experience and support and community work, corporate and customer service. Yeah, Cameron said that whilst today is a calm day, they can't promise they won't talk too much. And I feel like as an ADHDer, we should never make that promise. Welcome Cameron, thanks for joining us.
00:01:51
Speaker
Thank you for having me. No problem. I did jump full disclosure. I did just take my medication about 20 minutes ago. So we'll see. We'll see how we go. There we go. A bit late today. Yeah. Does that mean you're going to be up late?
00:02:09
Speaker
I take Dexis, so usually they last about four or five hours, so I should be okay. Should be right to sleep. Around nine o'clock to wind down, yeah. That sounds good. I also said that we needed the cameras on because without the cameras on, us ADHDs talk over each other more than we will already anyway.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yes, it can be hard sometimes. Exactly. So thanks for joining us again. And I guess we just start with when you first awakened or realized you had ADHD.
When Did You Realize You Had ADHD?
00:02:46
Speaker
I've always felt a little bit different.
00:02:50
Speaker
Maybe I think the best way I can describe it is because in school always it was the conversation around mainstream. Are you part of the mainstream? I think I would say I'm probably mainstream adjacent. I always felt like I could follow along but never really feeling like I was the same as everybody else.
00:03:13
Speaker
So I guess the true awakening for myself would be within the last three years. So I had clinical depression for almost 13 years. And then I had various forms of counseling, psychology, therapy, and then towards the end medication.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I guess it wasn't really until I came out of that that I was really able to identify more within myself sort of behaviors and some of the things that I would struggle with on a daily basis and sort of trying to understand where those things are coming from and why I might be feeling a little bit dysregulated or I guess chaotic inside. And then I guess it was
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, it was in 2020 when I sort of started winding back from taking antidepressants and then the best way to describe it is because I had not really felt emotion for so long. It was like the doors opened and then suddenly I felt everything all at once and just felt really emotionally just for probably, I would say probably a good 12 months. All through 2021, yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
So you had this big journey of depression and you saw multiple different types of practitioners through that time, none of whom suspected or spoke about ADHD to you. It was just, this is depression. Am I going to treat that? Is that right?
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'll talk a little bit more about it, about my childhood after this, but I guess it was kind of hard to identify and even when I did get diagnosed, my psychiatrist kind of said at the beginning that I didn't really display any of the
00:05:03
Speaker
sort of physical behaviours that he would expect of someone who has ADHD. But then by the end of the diagnostic session, I was starting to move around a little bit more and be fidgety and not really able to focus too much. But yeah, seeing the therapists, no one had really flagged it. I did have a really bad, it was
00:05:24
Speaker
categorized as moderate to severe clinical depression. So it was a big hole that I was in for a long time and it was hard to get out of it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just a lot of distracting myself for a long time. Right. Wow. What a tough journey there. And then as you came off the medication, that's right, the antidepressant medication, then
00:05:48
Speaker
all of the feelings just hit you in one big, had it? Essentially, yeah. It was kind of, there was like a three month period where my GP, who I've been seeing for many, many years now, he's amazing, said that the medication I was on, it's not really something you can just sort of stop. You need to ease your way off, take it step by step.
00:06:14
Speaker
two, three, four weeks at a time, slowly winding down. So I did it over the course of probably four months. And it was sort of at the three months into easing off that I started becoming really overwhelmed most days. And then I think it didn't help as well that we were in COVID lockdown. And that was also a lot of self-reflection, a lot of time to sit with
00:06:44
Speaker
my thoughts and I guess it was good in a way to understand myself a bit more but it was very confronting having so much time to myself to just face the reality of how I was feeling internally and sort of
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, have all of these emotions envelop me all at once. And I had a panic attack a couple of times and I had never had one of those before in my life. And it was just really, yeah, such a big weight had been left off my shoulders. But then all of a sudden, all these other things
00:07:20
Speaker
came in that I wasn't used to dealing with and sort of, I guess, managing my emotions. Yeah. Right. So you've gone from this kind of really flat, you know, in counselor terms, a flat affect, you know, really kind of low mood to this real introspection and kind of lifting of that fog of depression.
00:07:42
Speaker
which then took you to more elevated energy in the panic and anxiety realm in a really big way, and then your COVID was really compounding that.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think the main thing through COVID, which I think is probably the main motivator that kind of led me towards going and getting diagnosed was that there was no structure.
How Did COVID Influence Your ADHD Diagnosis?
00:08:08
Speaker
There was a period where I was working from home full time, but even within that, there's not really
00:08:16
Speaker
structure in terms of you have to wake up at a certain time so that you can get dressed get ready you have to travel somewhere then when you're at work you need to make sure that you have
00:08:28
Speaker
you know, you bring your lunch, is it going to rain? You need an umbrella, all of these things you need to prepare for. Whereas working from home, it was just I could get up 10 minutes before I had to start working. And then even while I was working, you know, I could clean my apartment, do some laundry. That wasn't really the same sort of
00:08:47
Speaker
separation between home life and a work life as there is now and there was before. And it was definitely the combination of coming out of sort of, like you said, like the fog of depression. I likened it more to drowning. It did feel a lot of the time like I was drowning.
00:09:11
Speaker
and sort of like, yeah, coming up for that breath of air after such a long time. And then also having nothing to sort of keep me within some boundaries. Yeah, really untethered sort of feeling that I've heard lots of ADHDers describe and I feel it myself when you don't have any sort of structural routine as much as we get bored with structural routine.
00:09:37
Speaker
it's still we need something to tether us or we're a bit kind of free floating and aimless. Yeah, and I think starting medication for ADHD definitely was a big step that really helped me to sort of I guess gain some structure again because you have to make sure you take your medication at the right time every day but also to feel a bit more even
00:10:06
Speaker
day to day. I do still have days where some days I just feel like it wouldn't matter how much medication I've taken, I'm just going to be off the wall, can't stop thinking at a million miles or hyper focusing on one thing for three hours straight and not being able to really do anything else.
00:10:25
Speaker
medication helped but then also working going back to working full time in an office environment and not just being at home really helped as well to have that structure five days a week and then being able to I guess structure the rest of the parts of my life around working full
The ADHD Diagnosis Journey
00:10:46
Speaker
time. Yeah, it was difficult
00:10:49
Speaker
before I got diagnosed, for sure. And it was a big learning curve when I started taking their medication. Yeah, it sounds like it. You know, I'm wondering what was some of the, obviously, you know, there's that untethered feeling and COVID was contributing to it. But were there any specific traits or qualities or experiences that you had that made you think,
00:11:16
Speaker
Oh, hang on a minute. Maybe this is ADHD. Do you remember any particular ones? I think the main ones would be, for me personally, in the morning when I wake up, it's just sort of like someone's turn to switch on. There's no the calmness from when I'm asleep to suddenly feeling like there's an orchestra playing in my head and I'm
00:11:44
Speaker
thinking so many different things so fast in rapid fire and not feeling so restless and not really being able to, I guess, regulate myself, but also have a judgment of how time is passing. In the morning, I really struggled and especially during COVID to sort of have that idea of, okay, so
00:12:12
Speaker
It's been an hour. What have I done in an hour? And just feeling like time was evaporating out of nowhere and not really feeling like I was getting very much done. But definitely as well at the time when I was sort of
00:12:32
Speaker
becoming more aware of how I was feeling and behaviors I was living with my ex-partner and we were together at the time and sort of the observations that he had at the same time as
00:12:47
Speaker
as well as myself being stuck together inside the apartment for so long for such an extended period of time during the lockdowns. I could be a bit erratic. I might start singing or dancing without anything really happening before. It's just start happening. I would just start singing.
00:13:10
Speaker
Spontaneously, yeah, singing and dancing. I was going to ask, was there anybody there to reflect back what's going on? Because I think that happened a lot in COVID for individuals that people are around them a lot more.
00:13:24
Speaker
to observe these quirks that they had and reflect them back. That's what it sounds like, your spontaneous song and dance. Or repeating songs, did you get a song stuck in your head and just go non-stop? Yes.
00:13:40
Speaker
having that one song, just hyperphyxiating on one song and then playing that one song all day, every day for like two or three weeks straight. And then my ex-partner just saying, you need to stop. It's too much. Why do you like this song so much? It's too much. And I still do it now. Yes. I usually, if somebody gets a song stuck
00:14:05
Speaker
in my head, like my kids will do it on purpose. I put a song. I'm not even going to say what the songs are because then I'll start. Then it'll be over. But there's a few that they know that are super annoying and I will just get stuck on them and maybe just the same verse of one song over and over again. And I will just sing it until somebody comes and pokes me and says, you need to either learn the rest of the song or shut up.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, that does happen to me as well. Prior to being diagnosed, I guess it was conversations I had with my GP. I'd also spoken to my psychologist as well about it. I guess like everybody else during COVID, I was on TikTok a lot and I sort of got into the ADHD TikTok of
00:14:55
Speaker
I guess behaviors that people have or what it was like for them to get diagnosed and then I feel quite lucky at that time that that existed because I stumbled upon a TikTok that I had saved and it was a young person in Melbourne who
00:15:15
Speaker
sort of detailed everything that they had to do to get to the point where they got their ADHD diagnosis and all of the steps that were acquired. And so it felt like this huge step, huge thing that I needed to do for myself. And it sort of was
00:15:34
Speaker
I feel like most ADH years can sort of relate to the yesterday, today, tomorrow. There's not really a sort of, you don't have, today is this day of the week and on that day of the week, I need to do this. It's like living in yesterday, today, tomorrow.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, I really love that. Yeah. Getting diagnosed was sort of this thing that was in the background, like, oh, that's a future day. I need to do that in a day that's not tomorrow, but then that day would never come. Exactly. Yes. And the process itself, you know, is stacked against us. All of the admin, all of the forms, all of the emails, all of the following up and chasing up and, and
00:16:19
Speaker
And all of that is, you know, a lot of people just go, I can't be bothered or I forgot about that. Oops.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Or it can feel really overwhelming because it's like you have to be apparent to yourself when you have ADHD because if you don't keep yourself accountable for the important things you need to do, then they just won't happen. So, I found a sort of wait. It's probably like a three-week cycle.
00:16:51
Speaker
I don't even know if it's a cycle but I feel like every three weeks or so I just have like one good day where I feel maybe less ADHD than other days and those are the days where I feel I can get my life admin stuff done and it just happened that there was one day where I was
00:17:15
Speaker
I think it was probably after a year of me thinking, maybe I have ADHD. This is something I need to do. And then I just went on the Australian psychiatrist's website, looked up all of the psychiatrists near where I lived, and then just sent like 10 or 15 emails to all of these psychiatrists asking for when the next available diagnostic session was. And then I still left it for about a month.
00:17:44
Speaker
Even though I emailed and got all of these replies, I still left it for a month and then when I had another good day, then I was like, right, this is the one that's the closest. So I called them, booked it in, and then it was like a big weight off of my shoulders that I've just sort of been thinking about for such a long time.
00:18:01
Speaker
I just really, I just want to kind of highlight that wave that you're talking about or that pattern or something that I feel many ADHDers experience and it's like, oh, I got to wait for that next moment. Right. I can do it. And then wait for that next one. No wonder it can take us a long time.
00:18:20
Speaker
to get to the next point of whatever it is we're trying to do, or are they in it, doing it, and it's done, or we have to wait for that next good day? Yeah. I've never heard someone explain it in that way, but I think it makes a lot of sense. The way that I feel like it's like a wave, like I'm either being crashed, a wave is crashing on me, and I
00:18:42
Speaker
sort of can't really hold on to anything or it's the in-between and everything's a bit calmer and I feel like, okay, now's the time. I need to take this opportunity to do something.
Reflecting on Childhood and ADHD Masking
00:18:54
Speaker
Staying with that kind of water metaphor when you were in that really dark place
00:18:59
Speaker
You weren't even catching any waves. The waves weren't coming. You were just under the water trying to keep your head just a little bit. And, you know, it's interesting because you were saying before with your diagnosing psychiatrist that even in session, you weren't presenting the way he imagined you might present. Was he looking for a kind of a bouncy, wriggly, externally moving sort of a hyperactive little boy? I don't know. I guess.
00:19:29
Speaker
He must have been sort of looking for some kind of physical expression of ADHD coming from me. And I sort of mentioned it before that in my childhood, I think the main reason why I didn't get diagnosed earlier, my mum did try to get me and my brother
00:19:47
Speaker
diagnosed when we were small but both of my parents were in the Air Force when they were in their late teens, early 20s and my mum for about 10 years was in the Air Force and so we grew up with a lot of structure and dinner is always at this time, you get ready for bed at this time, you go to sleep at this time and then adding school into it when we got a bit older and there was just always this
00:20:12
Speaker
structure and even though she was in the Air Force, she also studied education as well. And she worked in early childhood education up to grade two. So she had an understanding of child development as well. And she would sort of coach us and teach us how to behave in certain situations. And one of those situations was when you go and see the doctor.
00:20:36
Speaker
You have to sit still. You can't talk. You have to listen. You need to be on your best behavior because it's really important and you can't waste that time. So through my childhood, my mom had kind of trained all of us to sort of sit still and listen and only talk when the doctor was speaking to us. And if it wasn't that situation, then we weren't saying anything.
00:21:03
Speaker
And I think as an adult now, I still behave in that way. And that's exactly what happened when I went to go and get diagnosed for ADHD was I sat in the chair and I didn't move probably for the first hour. I just was sitting still containing this buildup of energy that I felt inside of me. But sort of that's just how I was trained as a kid. Yeah, this is learned behavior. And like you said just then,
00:21:32
Speaker
I was containing it. I was holding myself in. You know, I know there's so many people that are really good maskers or want to be the good kid or, you know, like you said, you had a lot of kind of discipline and structure. I don't know that you said discipline, but, you know, there's something about that structure and routine that demanded that of you. And so you learn how
00:21:57
Speaker
to sit still despite the discomfort. Yeah. And I think that played a big part in why when I was a kid, me and my brother weren't diagnosed with ADHD or even possibly being on the autism spectrum was because my mum had essentially coached us out of the behaviours that would identify children as having some of those traits.
00:22:22
Speaker
because of course, it's a little bit harder for kids to have sort of deeper introspective thoughts and depending on their age, their cognitive ability might not be able to allow them to self-describe what's happening internally. They might not have the words or really understand. I think a lot of times, like child psychiatrists look for those behaviors. Yeah, definitely. And we just didn't have them.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think the same is said for me. You know, I grew up in an era of children seen and not heard sort of scenario. So at school, most of the time, apart from some chattiness, I was more of a reserved daydreamer and I even observe in my own child who's nine, she has ADHD, not a formal diagnosis, but I think I know enough now to see it and we'll get there down the track. She's aware of it.
00:23:22
Speaker
But when she did articulate her experience to me before I told her what ADHD was, in school, she would just sit and behave mainly because she was terrified of this particular teacher and so she would just sit and not do anything and hold herself
00:23:39
Speaker
until she got home and then she'd have really big outbursts. We can certainly contain ourselves when we need to. It's just not comfortable, is it? Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I think my mum was very aware of the fact that that's what we were doing because in Australia, majority of kids do go through the industrial education system, which
00:24:04
Speaker
kind of demands kids to sit still and listen for such long periods of the day. And so we had finished school at quarter past three, go home afternoon snack, and then it was outside to play for
00:24:19
Speaker
an hour before we came in to do our homework and I think my mum was very aware that we sort of had this pent up energy that needed to go somewhere and needed to be directed somewhere and it was always go outside and play. One of the things that I learnt in school and I guess my mum kind of encouraged it because it meant that I was
00:24:41
Speaker
more focused was tapping my legs. Either one or both going at the same time because I could then listen to what the teacher was saying to me while I guess self-regulating to a degree physically and the energy going somewhere because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to concentrate.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. People used to say with my leg bouncing that, you know, you're anxious, you know, and they do the horse part on my leg or cut it out. You're shaking the table. I'm like, no, this is comforting. This is helping me sit here. This is part of, you know, what I need to do. And luckily, I think schools are a little bit more allowing of kids to move and especially in your divergent child needs to move to learn most of them.
00:25:31
Speaker
There are a few more internalized ones for children in particular and many, many adults as well need to be moving to be able to process information. I mean, even now my leg is tapping and I do struggle to sit for long periods of time in one position and that's consistent through my entire adult life. I just think that
00:25:53
Speaker
I wasn't really in the right headspace to sort of identify that behavior or other behaviors as something that could be ADHD.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah, as I said during lockdown and sort of coming out of the void of depression into experiencing emotions properly as an adult for the first time, it was really apparent that there was all of these things that I was doing that weren't, I guess, what you would typically expect of a 27-year-old
00:26:32
Speaker
adult person to be doing. There was one point where my ex-partner said, you know, maybe this is something you need to talk to your psychologist about, you know, maybe you have bipolar or who knows, there could be something that you don't know about. And so I went to my psychologist and said, do you think I have bipolar? And he said, absolutely not. You don't have any of the indicators. But there could be something else that I don't have formal training in.
00:27:00
Speaker
What were some of those other things that were being noticed either within yourself or that you're identifying with those kind of TikTok reels or that your ex-partner was noticing? What are some of the other quirks that you haven't spoken about? Starting something and then not finishing it and then just sort of bouncing from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. I do it with calcium. That little cliche.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yes. Starting laundry and then moving to vacuuming and then not finishing the vacuuming because the sound is making me feel a little bit too overwhelmed in the moment and then moving on to cleaning the kitchen and then sort of never really finishing any of the things that I started and then getting mentally tired and then just sitting on the couch and then just zoning out and watching TV to sort of
00:27:52
Speaker
I guess bringing me back inside myself. I think that was one of the behaviors that I sort of noticed a lot during COVID was I was using a lot of things. I thought I was using them to distract myself, but that was really as a way to sort of calm myself and self soothe a little bit.
00:28:12
Speaker
Tell me a bit about that, the different things that you were doing to kind of self-soothe or that you thought were kind of distractions. I guess the easiest ones that I think a lot of people would be able to identify with is watching Netflix or TV and then also playing video games. And I definitely – video games is one of the things that I have a fixate on a lot where it's just
00:28:39
Speaker
sucks all of my time away and I could be playing for six hours straight, not have gone to the bathroom or eaten anything, but it would only feel like an hour has passed because I've been so enveloped in what I was doing that I can't really think about anything externally. And because I had so much time during COVID and the lockdowns, I was playing video games a lot more than I normally would have.
00:29:08
Speaker
And then sort of noticing that it made me feel a lot calmer, but also more of a sense of control because the situation that everyone was in was very out of control. But then also within myself,
00:29:29
Speaker
not really, just feeling very jittery, I guess. I don't know how I would describe it. Just having constantly feeling like I have this energy, but there's nowhere to place it, nowhere to put it. It's almost skin crawly sometimes. I don't know how to get rid of this. I don't know how to move it. It's like a kind of like an itch that needs to be scratched, but you have to figure out what it is that's going to
00:29:57
Speaker
be able to help you get out of that sort of, yeah, skin crawly feeling because it's not always, oh, if I go outside and go for a walk for an hour, maybe that will make me feel better. And then sometimes it makes you feel worse. And then you feel like I've just feel like I need to do something else. And then so a lot of the time it ended up being, yeah, playing video games or watching Disney movies, but
00:30:25
Speaker
skipping through a lot of the movie, not really. Like if there was that part of the movie where it would slow down or just like a scene where I've already watched it, I don't need to watch that again, skipping to the next part where it's really engaging.
00:30:42
Speaker
You know, I'm curious about how and, you know, I'm sure there's lots of different things that led to the feeling of depression or that, you know, that clinical depression phase in your life. But do you feel that you're undiagnosed ADHD played a part or did that just kind of...
The Impact of Undiagnosed ADHD on Mental Health
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to kind of understand how you think that might have been part of that journey for you.
00:31:07
Speaker
I think definitely at the beginning I was 14 when I first I was probably younger when the feelings those feelings of depression started but I guess 14 was when I sort of became self-aware enough to identify that something's wrong and I don't think I should be feeling this way but because of
00:31:32
Speaker
my ADHD, I think a lot of the time externally it might seem that I was fine or that everything was okay because I had energy to do something or I was really invested in a video game or wanting to go outside and be active and just do something. So I think that it definitely played a part at the beginning in sort of
00:32:01
Speaker
not really being able to get a formal diagnosis for my depression because... It was masking your depression rather than kind of being the other way around. You were able to kind of maybe put on a cherry face or an energetic way of being and so people didn't really notice what was happening internally for you.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then even when I was, I think it was when I was 15, maybe 16, I saw a school counselor and then my school had a quite a good school counselor and sort of structure around talking to kids about
00:32:41
Speaker
these things so my parents had a conversation with the school first and then they spoke with the school counselor and then it was from my understanding quite a big discussion and then the school counselor then spoke with teachers, my teachers to see if there was anything that they could really identify and no one really felt like I was displaying depression and so
00:33:09
Speaker
the school counselor came back to me and essentially said, I think you just need to think happy thoughts and do things that make you feel happy. And I can see as an adult, I can see why he would have said that. But I think I probably needed realistically to see a trained psychologist rather than a counselor. Because even though
00:33:31
Speaker
all of the adults in my life might not have been able to see it because I was a very engaging student and I participated because I guess it helped me to sort of distract myself. A lot of my late teens and early 20s was me finding things to sort of distract myself from my depression.
00:33:55
Speaker
It meant that I got told I didn't have depression and then I sort of like lived in that until I was 21 and then tried again and then saw a psychologist and then, okay, I do have something going on that I need help for.
00:34:12
Speaker
Wow. That's just like, I mean, that's rubbish, right? To have an internal experience and you might not have the words to express it or the way to share it or show it, but that's up to the people around you to listen, to stop and listen. You know, obviously I'm a counselor, not a psychologist, and obviously I don't diagnose, but if somebody said to me, I feel depressed,
00:34:41
Speaker
I would be listening to them and understanding their, you know, their perspective. And that's just rubbish that it was, you know, just dust it off, think happy thoughts. Like, that's must have been incredibly confusing and frustrating for you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it definitely caused this very big, it was confusing, but also this internal conflict that I had within myself where
00:35:06
Speaker
I had been told by an adult by someone that I thought I could trust that, no, you don't have depression. Sometimes maybe you just feel sad and you just need to try to be happy, but then still internally wrestling with this huge, big thing that was inside of me that I felt I didn't know what to do about and didn't know where the
00:35:33
Speaker
where to turn to because, you know, I had already tried to talk to my parents. I tried to talk to the counselor at school and I didn't really feel like I had the autonomy to do anything else. And it was even talking to the school counselor was petrifying at the time. Yeah, it wasn't until I was older and I felt I could take those steps myself and try to discover for myself if there was something wrong where
00:35:59
Speaker
There was something that eventuated to me getting help and having therapy. And I think it flipped from when I was a teenager where it was the ADHD was masking the depression.
00:36:15
Speaker
And I guess if anything, the depression was kind of slowing me down at some points because I still didn't want to get out of bed every day. Every day was a struggle. And then in my early to late 20s, it was the other way around where my depression was
00:36:34
Speaker
covering up my ADHD and even though I might feel days where I feel really overwhelmed and I might have said it felt like anxiety, which was probably my ADHD, but because I was so depressed, there was too many other things to think about that felt bigger that I needed to concentrate on. Yeah. Yeah, it was difficult.
Life After ADHD Diagnosis: Improvements and Insights
00:37:01
Speaker
Really difficult, you know, journey there to try and understand what's happening for you and even having other people understand what's going on for you. What is it like now for you? I hope that you're out of the feeling of deep depression now.
00:37:21
Speaker
And now that you've got this ADHD diagnosis, what is it like for you? I think, I guess, manageable is how I would describe it. I think for so much.
00:37:33
Speaker
of my life, almost half my life, things just didn't feel like I had any control. And now there was a lot of issues that I had to work through in therapy while I was medicated to sort of move through the depression and what was causing me to feel that way. And then sort of the chaos of in between coming out of depression and then
00:38:01
Speaker
going to get an ADHD diagnosis and not really feeling balanced at all. And then now having been medicated for about a year and a half and I guess focusing more on structure and routine and I guess all of the things that my mum sort of instilled in me when I was very young, I feel, I guess the closest to normal that I can.
00:38:32
Speaker
You're able to work within that structure and instead of masking from behind it, you're able to use it to your advantage.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, and I feel like you're more in control of what's happening. Just going to ask about your feeling of your self-talk or your narrative or maybe how you did think about yourself before you even understood you had ADHD compared to the narrative now because I know there's usually a lot of negative stories that we have about ourselves when we don't know what is happening for us or why we are responding or doing things.
00:39:05
Speaker
there was definitely a lot of negative self talk. There was a lot of shaming myself. Why did I act that way? Why do I talk so much before I knew I had ADHD for a long time. When I was dating, I would often feel maybe on the first or the second date, that it was just sort of this
00:39:29
Speaker
or too much talking, too many words coming out and not allowing the other person to participate in the conversation. And having a lot of negative self-talk around that and why do I do that? Why am I always talking too much? I need to give people space and allow the other person to talk. And definitely, I think that it affected my relationships for a long time because I didn't
00:39:58
Speaker
have this understanding of where these behaviours were coming from or why I was acting the way I was and not really giving myself any sympathy or room to make mistakes. I held myself to a really high standard and if I wasn't meeting the standard, then I was beating myself up for it.
00:40:23
Speaker
Right. And so you had this high standard that was almost impossible to meet without really understanding what was happening for you and how you could
00:40:33
Speaker
you know, work with it or, you know, different strategies. You were just like, I should be able to do that. I'm not doing that. Therefore, I'm rubbish. That's one part where the ADHD is kind of like for some of the worst parts of my depression sort of like created this loop narrative in my mind where the negative things that I was perceiving I was doing, I was then shaming myself for it and then making myself feel worse. And then... Oh, for sure.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, really, really kind of common experience for I think all ADHDers that really don't know what's happening for them. And I can only imagine how much worse it was when you're in a state of, you know, real depression.
00:41:19
Speaker
I think as well I wasn't really able to have any relationships that were built upon knowing myself because I didn't really have the capacity to
00:41:34
Speaker
do self-reflection to the point where I could understand myself because of the depression, but then even when I came out of it, I think there still wasn't that... I wasn't self-regulated enough or before the medication have had the capacity, the mental capacity to really
00:41:53
Speaker
do deep reflection and have this understanding of myself that I do now. I definitely know that for my romantic relationships, but also my relationships with friends and family that my ADHD definitely didn't help.
00:42:10
Speaker
because I didn't know what was happening and so now I feel like I'm able to have a lot stronger relationships because I know more of myself and know why I act or do the things that I do and the difference is now I kind of stand up for myself a lot more than perhaps I would have especially with my parents. I think if
00:42:34
Speaker
you know, maybe start singing or dancing or not really being able to focus or even just like if I go and visit my parents and my mum will ask me, you know, can you hang the washing out? I'll say yes, but then it's like something has just wiped my brain and I can't remember what it was that I was supposed to be doing and then 30 minutes goes by and then
00:42:58
Speaker
Oh, why have you not done what you said you would do? Now, I will say, well, you know, I have ADHD. I said yes, but then this happened and then it just was gone.
00:43:10
Speaker
Look, that's such an important part of it and something I'm really mindful of with my little one who will forget two seconds after you've asked her to do something. And it really reminds me of me when I was little. And I remember my mum, I would not have done something. She would have asked me to do something. Then I didn't do it. And she would say, did you do what I asked you to do? I go, what was it? And she would refuse to tell me. She would make me sit there and wait until I figured it out myself, which
00:43:40
Speaker
I never did. It was gone, man. I've got no idea. Like, unless I stumbled across the washing, you know, tripped over it, I wouldn't remember. So, you know, having that compassion now for my child and capacity to advocate for myself and for her because she'll beat herself up. Oh, I'm so silly. I should have remembered that. I'm like, yeah, you forgot. That's part of just, you know, how your brain works and we'll find different ways. I'll put it on a post-it note or you can, I'll come and remind you or, you know, that
00:44:10
Speaker
makes such a difference now to be able to advocate for ourselves as adults and for other young people around us that aren't able to as well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
ADHD's Influence on Work Efficiency
00:44:22
Speaker
Are there any strengths that you can see or work, you know, find in your ADHD now? You know, I'm not saying it's a superpower, but some people do identify ways in which they really, you know, like their ADHD brain. I was thinking about this today and I do think about it occasionally every couple of weeks that now it does feel like a big strength, especially in my work life where
00:44:50
Speaker
I'm able to be very, very efficient and I work in an administrative job, so there's a lot of emails and paperwork and meetings and I do sometimes need to set myself reminders and at times I'll have a pile of paperwork
00:45:10
Speaker
sitting in front of me, which I've stacked side by side by side by side, and then ordered in in order of priority so that my work is in front of me. But I'm able to do it very quickly and very efficiently. Sometimes it does feel like a superpower because I can get so many things done when I'm in that hyper fixated
00:45:35
Speaker
mental state that sometimes it does get to the point where I do so much work that I don't have anything else to do and then my manager is then saying, well, I don't know, what are we going to get you to do? And having to create work for me because I've done so much. And then are they able to be lenient on the days in which
00:46:03
Speaker
know, because sometimes it's not as productive, right? There are days where we can just power through things and really get into that zone and other days where we're kind of chasing our tail a little bit. Do you get that at work or are you kind of mostly on? I would say it's probably about 50-50. About half the time, I'm really on and focused and able to get a lot of stuff done. And then the other half of the time, it's just
00:46:28
Speaker
do a chaos and I feel like my feet are on the ground and sort of floating in the air just trying to grasp at something to get something done. I do feel really lucky my
00:46:43
Speaker
manager and all of my team, they all know that I have ADHD and that I'm medicated. It's really interesting because I still sometimes do that thing where I talk myself down for not getting stuff done. And in the work environment, I end up verbalizing that I haven't been able to get this done. This is really annoying. Fortunately, the environment that I work in now is one that's really positive where
00:47:11
Speaker
Everyone will automatically say how important is it doesn't need to be done today did you need to get it done today or can you leave it for tomorrow or can you leave it for friday doesn't need to be done right this second or is it something that's.
00:47:25
Speaker
less of a priority and then automatically that will take me out of that mindset and then say, oh yeah, actually I can just leave this for Friday or I can leave this for tomorrow. That's amazing. How fabulous that you've got a workplace that is able to recognize that for anybody because it's not just an ADHD individual that would struggle sometimes with I haven't got that done and needs a bit of
00:47:51
Speaker
you know, reality check. So it's fabulous that you seem to have a supportive culture there. That's awesome. Is there anything else you wanted to share before we finish up?
Self-Parenting and ADHD Management Strategies
00:48:00
Speaker
The main thing I haven't talked about that I would think would be nice to touch on is that quite regularly, I will tell myself that I need to be more gentle with myself. And I talked about it before about kind of like being my own parent.
00:48:17
Speaker
In terms of getting things done that need to be done i think as well i've been trying recently to i guess self parent in a way that's as you do with your daughter being forgiving and saying you know that's how your brain works.
00:48:33
Speaker
you know, we'll figure out a way to work through it and yeah, tell myself that I need to be more gentle with myself. ADHD is, we tend to have this sort of be all and end all mentality sometimes where it's like everything just feels really big or if this one thing goes wrong, then everything's gonna go wrong. Trying to remind myself that I'm doing very well and I might've forgotten that one thing yesterday or today.
00:49:02
Speaker
overall and doing really well. I really love that. I love it. You know, I got goosebumps, you know, as you were saying it, because we do have to have that internal parent voice and I'm fortunate that I am constantly saying it to my kids so I can hear that voice quite often as a parent. So, I feel like it's easy to bring it back to myself or, you know, turn it towards myself. It is nice to
00:49:31
Speaker
to have people around you as well that can reflect that back or remind you when you're not able to. It's nice when it's a little nine-year-old going, you know what? You made a mistake. Let's just take a minute. Sometimes it's hard. That does sound nice. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you spending time with me today. No problem. It was really nice.
00:50:00
Speaker
Lovely.
Closing Remarks & Community Engagement
00:50:01
Speaker
So if you'd like to share your Awaken ADHD story, you can just reach out on AwakenADHD.com.au and maybe follow me on Instagram where I will forget to post regularly and usually get hit with a massive RSD whenever I create content.
00:50:20
Speaker
I'm trying to get better at it as this big stumbling block for me, but please reach out and follow and I'd love to hear your story as well. So until next time, stay neurospicy as Tegan would say. Thanks. Bye.
00:50:42
Speaker
This podcast is not a licensed mental health provider. It represents the personal opinions and experiences of individuals. No content should be taken as professional advice or recommendation.