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Ep.3: Thinking Different- Our ADHD Journey
132 Plays1 year ago
In episode 3 of SEMI-PRECIOUS Amber and Jade unpack their ADHD diagnosis journey and the impact it’s had on their lives thus far.
Warning: this episode is not as amusing or witty as you might have come to expect if you have listened to Episode 1 and 2 so if you are in need of light relief then this might not be your vibe. Sorry, not sorry 😘
Tune in if you want to hear Jade slipping into Counsellor mode with her soft inquisitive “I’m curious, help me to understand” voice and Amber explain her SEMI-PRECIOUS moment as one that could have had her arrested an imprisoned in an overseas country.
Connect with Jade:
If you are wanting to understand more about Jade and her counselling practice or ADHD Coaching you can visit Awaken Insights, Awaken ADHD or on socials Instagram.
Connect with Amber:
If you’ are curious about Amber and her brand agency you can visit The Edison Agency or follow her on socials LinkedIn or Instagram
CREDITS
Producer: Amber Bonney and Jade Bonney
Hosts: Amber Bonney and Jade Bonney
Sound Editing: Jade Bonney
Social Content Creator: Ashton Bonney-Wright, Entice Media
Creative Director: Amber Bonney
To follow and subscribe to your mildly unhinged SEMI-PRECIOUS hosts, you can connect via Instagram
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Transcript
Acknowledgement and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Boon Wurrung country and we wish to acknowledge them as traditional owners. We recognise First Peoples of Australia as the original storytellers of this country and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. You are listening to a semi-precious podcast hosted by uncut and unpolished sisters Amber and Jay.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, welcome to episode three of semi-precious.
Embracing Semi-Preciousness and ADHD Journey
00:00:33
Speaker
Today's focus on what we're going to be talking about is really all about embracing our semi-preciousness. We're going to talk about our aha moment, the diagnosis journey, and the impact that that's had on both of us as middle-aged women. Welcome, Jade. Hello. Thank you. Welcome to you, sister. To me. Thank you.
00:00:55
Speaker
and to everybody listening as well. Jade and I were just reflecting that I know her aha moment, but she doesn't know my aha moment, and that will make more sense in a minute.
00:01:06
Speaker
Right. So here we go. We'll both be learning. Here we go. And I'm just completely off the cuff here trying to recall what my aha moment was. So much preparation. So much preparation. I'm so dedicated to this podcast. All right. So at a very top level, my son was diagnosed with ADHD quite early on. Maybe he was 12. He had presented with
00:01:34
Speaker
things from a very early age, but it wasn't really, I didn't really know what ADHD was, aside from what you see on sort of Today Tonight with ill-behaved children having too much food coloring in their diet. That was like... That's kind of the way it was presented, wasn't it? If you feed your kid too much sugar, they'll be bouncing off the walls and then they'll get some Ritalin and they'll be okay again. Yeah, exactly. And it usually was the cliche of single parents with multiple children with ADHD.
00:02:03
Speaker
I just realised that I did call out today, tonight. I don't watch today, tonight, by the way. She does. Every week she works, by the way.
00:02:15
Speaker
a complex upbringing. He was starting to go through some quite severe behavioral challenges and mental health challenges. I really remember the pivot from probably grade three for him, where he was always very clever. Then as he started to get into grade four and grade five, where learning became more independent,
00:02:36
Speaker
and he needed to plan and structure and really comprehend instruction in more clearly or in more detail. He really started to go from performing very well at school and really understanding the curriculum to not performing at all and really struggling. That was part of that journey. It did take a long time to get his diagnosis, but
00:03:01
Speaker
That was when me as a parent, and this is really a story I know that many, many women who are diagnosed with ADHD later in life, it's a story that's familiar to them because they do the, of course, do the research for other people and for their children. And then throughout that process, start to learn a little bit more about themselves. And so that was really what happened to me. And even throughout that process, I actually didn't
00:03:28
Speaker
ever see the connection to me. It wasn't a reflective moment, I suppose, because his presentation was quite different and he had a lot of other challenges going on.
00:03:41
Speaker
I do remember there was a – not a pediatrician, but – it's actually a podiatrist, believe it or not. He went – a podiatrist. Do you know their feet people? Yes, I do know their feet people. He went to get some new orthotics. It was an old-school podiatrist and we walked into the clinic and
00:04:00
Speaker
Ashton, I don't know, was just being Ashton. But as a firstborn, you sort of don't necessarily always realise some of the quirks and behaviours of children not being atypical until someone points them out to you. But we walked in the door and Ashton was, of course, just not sitting still and carrying on like a pork chop. And this guy came out. He would have been late 70s at the time. Ashton would have been about seven. And he said, he goes, ah, he's got ADHD, does he?
00:04:29
Speaker
I said, oh, no, no, he doesn't. He said, yes, he does. Yeah, he does. Okay, come on, come on in and started looking at his feet. But obviously he sees a lot of children and yeah, he was presenting like that. But back to the aha moment. I was watching a video at like 3am on YouTube doing research on ADHD.
00:04:52
Speaker
And one popped up that said adult women ADHD and it was an American psychiatrist who specialized in women with ADHD. And I watched this 25 minute video and that was when the penny dropped. It talked about why women get diagnosed so late, how they present, why the presentations are quite different to traditionally for boys, which is less about the
00:05:19
Speaker
less about the biology and actually more about the way the construct of the way genders are treated so differently. When I watched that video, suddenly a lot of things in my life started to make sense, just really clicked. Do you know who that
00:05:37
Speaker
psychiatrist or psychologist. No, I'd like to know. Was it Sari Saldan? Because it sounds like her sort of work. It was someone who did, who does a lot of videos, so they've got quite a strong YouTube presence. All right, we'll find out. We'll find out. And then we'll let you know. What about your aha moment?
00:05:57
Speaker
I'm just going to take a sip of my coffee and relax for this bit. Okay. So my moment, it's almost embarrassing to admit now because it seems so obvious to me now. And I was already in the, you know, a mental health professional, but it wasn't until you sent me a link and said, I think I have ADHD and you sent me a link to an adult self-screener.
00:06:27
Speaker
like, what? You don't have ADHD. Which I really didn't. I was really shocked at the thought that you thought you had ADHD. It just didn't even occur to me. I guess I was still with the bouncy, naughty little boy view in my head, which again is really embarrassing as a mental health professional that we just didn't have the training. I suppose though, just to that point, there's a lot of confusion in the industry.
Understanding ADHD and Gender Differences
00:06:57
Speaker
Like mental health and ADHD are two completely different... Well, yeah, it's not a mental health... Yeah, it's not a mental health issue. But often you see it bucketed up as the same thing. Well, that's because, you know, it's psychiatrists that are diagnosing it. Where it's not a mental health disorder, it is, you know, a brain difference. So when you sent me that screener, I, of course, jumped on and did
00:07:26
Speaker
that one and then another 50 after that, I'd say over the next few weeks. And it was like a light bulb going off for me. I'm like, wow, I really, I mean, I clearly have it worse than you because you're my sister and we have to compete. And I win is what I'm saying here. But yeah, it really was a light bulb moment for me.
00:07:51
Speaker
and sent me down a rabbit hole that I'm still down. It's interesting, right, because presentations, there's a lot of familiarities and I know you and I have spoken before about, you know, now we have a radar for people with ADHD and we can sense it and get up a mile away. But the presentations can be obviously very different on different people.
00:08:19
Speaker
Right, because it's quite internal for a lot of women. When you say like your presentation of it, nobody knows what's happening inside your head, what thoughts are bouncing around in your head, how you are running like a motor, but in your head. Sometimes externally, I always like to think of this moment when you and I were living together.
00:08:45
Speaker
in Abbotsford and I was lying on the couch and she pulled a cushion out from under my head to place it back in its original position because she was just in a flurry around the house constantly making sure it looked perfect. I was lying there using that cushion.
00:09:03
Speaker
The cushion analogy plays out many, many circumstances throughout my life, and I still have an obsession with reordering the cushions, which psychiatrists did say is more of an obsessive compulsive tendency, but also that plays in.
00:09:24
Speaker
stop and to keep rearranging things and keep finding neat sequences. Like when I come over for a casual glass of wine and you decide it's a good time to get the baby wipes out and start wiping fingerprints off door frames. Yeah, with a glass of the light in one hand. I still drink the wine.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, she does drink the wine. And she listens to the music and wipes fingerprints off door frames. Yeah. We just need to do more of that at my house so that you can wipe my fingerprints whilst I'm drinking mine. That's less appealing, I'll have to admit. Okay, yeah. You want the house to be clean for you. Yeah. Interestingly, when I go into other people's environments, the compulsion to clean does not exist. I do walk into your house though and start cooking something. I'm okay with that.
00:10:13
Speaker
All right, so where were we? We've done a kind of aha moment. What other things started to make sense to you about your experience of life after that aha moment? Well, I think there's quite a chasm between the aha moment and actual diagnosis because, I mean, that might've been four, five years before a diagnosis happened. Wish I could recall the sequence. Does that sound right to you?
00:10:40
Speaker
four or five years? Yeah, I think I saw that video when Ashton was still in his teens and I just sort of backbrained it. Ah.
00:10:52
Speaker
I didn't recall that though. Did you not share that? No. I think I did have a sense that that might be going on, but there were so many other complexities to my life at the time. I just didn't actually even have the headspace to investigate it. I didn't have capacity.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. So many people don't have the time and the space, so they get these inklings or these, oh, maybe that makes sense, but it's in the too hard basket. Yeah, that people literally... And as a parent, right? You had so much going on just parenting your son.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yes, exactly. So it took a bit of a backseat, I think. I suppose things started to accumulate, and this is very common for women in their 40s, is that they're at the life stage where they have significant responsibilities, whether that's caring for children, caring for loved ones with disabilities, caring for their parents who are aging. They're in a stage in their career where they've got more responsibilities at work.
00:12:00
Speaker
And also that they have less time for themselves and I suppose less downtime and the stacking up of life becomes quite overwhelming. And so at that point, and I have a pretty high threshold for doing things stacking up. She does. She can stack. I can stack. Nobody stacks. And so I first saw my GP and I honestly
00:12:30
Speaker
thought maybe I was starting to suffer, like maybe I had early onset dementia. That was the discussion that I had with my suitcase because my ability
Challenges in Adult ADHD Diagnosis
00:12:42
Speaker
to remember things, I just felt like I had this fog. I just couldn't, everything was just getting so overwhelming that I'm like, maybe I've got early onset dementia because my brain is just not working properly anymore.
00:12:58
Speaker
The GP that I had been saying for many years, not really on anything too serious, but was actually very dismissive. They're like, well, it's actually just, you know, you've got a busy life. You just need to walk on the beach more. You need to just try and relax, try and, you know, just spend a bit more time. I may have said the same thing.
00:13:19
Speaker
It's just too busy, which was true. I was too busy, but it wasn't really addressing, I suppose, what was happening underneath. I sort of ignored him and then saw a psychologist. The psychologist, really, the intent there was to stress manage. That was what I had started seeing him about, saying, I really feel like I'm at the
00:13:44
Speaker
brink of my capacity to manage everything. That's business, that's family, that's managing a high needs child that's approaching my mid-40s. When you say at the brink, what was happening inside your head? What was it like inside your head at those times?
00:14:03
Speaker
Well, so I was doing a lot of driving because we lived remote to work. And during that drive, I would sometimes think, what if I just veered off the road, hit a tree, but didn't die, but just enough to get me into a hospital where I could rest? Right. I did read a meme this morning that said I'd love to be the clothes in my dryer so that I could be in a
00:14:27
Speaker
A dark, warm, quiet space and be left alone by my family for a week. Yeah. And then the other thoughts would be, what if I like, what does an actual nervous breakdown look like? Because if I had a nervous breakdown and then someone had to take me to a mental health facility and I became an inpatient, surely I would just get like two weeks of quiet where people would bring me food and I just
00:14:54
Speaker
No, I've been to lots of mental health wards as a practitioner. Can I just get here? It doesn't look like that. It doesn't look like that, no. So I started to fantasize, I suppose, about just clearing the noise out because there's so much noise. That's what I want to know. So there they're kind of externalized. That's what you were thinking about what you were feeling. But what was the feeling? That noise? What was that noise like?
00:15:18
Speaker
exhausting because it became so cluttered in there that I actually couldn't hold on to a thought or unpack it. You're an ideas person as well. You've got hard thoughts and lots of ideas. Then the hyper focus. With my work,
00:15:36
Speaker
I think really what's helped me be successful is that when I have an interest in something, I can hyperfocus. That actually didn't stop, but what it meant was it caused greater exhaustion because all the other things were still happening. All it meant was when I do hyperfocus still,
00:15:55
Speaker
I then, you know, I get tired afterwards because I've put, you know, 500% in when, you know, a non neurodiverse person would even their 100% is a fifth of what I'm applying in terms of energy. So you're burning yourself out with your hyper focus. Yeah. So then, yeah, everything became overwhelming. And then so I saw the psychologist probably for two years.
00:16:23
Speaker
But I think I was almost a bit embarrassed to just ask him directly. And a lot of the focus of our sessions became my stress management, which to be fair to him was what I asked him for support on. But I was, I think, hoping he might pick up on something.
00:16:44
Speaker
and he just didn't and then in the end i did ask him explicitly and he he did treat a lot of adults with ADHD and he said no i don't think i'm not seeing any indications that that would be
00:16:59
Speaker
That embarrassment, is that part of that stigma, do you think, about the naughty little boy? What is it? What was the embarrassment for you there? I think the embarrassment was actually probably just focusing on me, because a lot of the stress was focusing on external factors. My son, our relationship, his health, business,
00:17:25
Speaker
Sorry, a vulnerability about it actually being... About me. Something about you. So it was obviously when we had our sessions, it was about how I'm coping, but how I'm coping based on all the other external... The things that are kind of outside of your control and coming at you. Yes, but not actually focusing.
00:17:43
Speaker
because every time he wanted to bring a session back to say childhood, I just blocked it. I don't have the capacity. I'm just, there's too much time back. And that is still the case really.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. We'll have to unpack that here. We can have some live therapy sessions. So let's talk about your diagnosis journey, which I feel like was just piggybacking off my actual diagnosis journey. Yeah. I just jumped on board. Well, actually let's just acknowledge that being diagnosed as an adult, especially
00:18:22
Speaker
at the moment in Australia and in post COVID. And I know in other countries actually listening to podcasts from other countries with people with ADHD, it's actually even more complex if you're in the NHS system in the UK, for example. People wait up to two years to get in to see someone. So I think at one point, my experience was I had called about 30 to 40 psychologists
00:18:48
Speaker
At the beginning, I started researching those that I felt were either specialists in adult women or where their profile resonated. And in the end, I'm like, I actually don't care just anyone will do. And that's when I found an online service, basically, that did everything online. And I'm like, well, actually, I've done enough research as long as I have
00:19:14
Speaker
you know, a functioning practitioner who knows how to do a proper diagnosis, then I'm actually just really... That are good enough. That's good enough for me. Yeah. It just needs to be good enough. Yeah. And I remember...
00:19:30
Speaker
Well, I'm not somebody who I go down rabbit holes of research, but I get very tangled in them and then I give up. It becomes very overwhelming. I have too many options and I get paralyzed. So I tend to piggyback off.
00:19:45
Speaker
Somebody's bought a car. You've done all the research. Which car should I get? Somebody's been on holidays. You've done the research. Which way should I go? I'm either impulsive or I piggyback on somebody else's. And I had a friend that had recently been diagnosed and she suggested I contact her psychiatrist. So I put the referral in.
00:20:06
Speaker
And they held my referral for 10 weeks of me going back and forth and back and forth in this triage process. And then they finally said, okay, at the end of this week, we'll give you your appointment date. Didn't hear anything, called them back. Oh, sorry, that practitioner's books are closed.
00:20:29
Speaker
This is a too common story. My referral is going nowhere for all this time. I felt so defeated. I just thought, I'm just going to give up. I actually messaged her, said I was going to give up, called you, said I was going to give up. Then you had at the same time, I think, found
00:20:52
Speaker
that online service and put your referral in and then I started the process a bit after you, but then I think we ended up having a few weeks apart, but I think I ended up getting my appointment. Yeah. Only a week after you because I had a cancellation and
00:21:13
Speaker
And it was easier. I mean, still, given that ADHD is all about struggles with executive functioning, gosh, they don't make the process easy. You constantly have to be back there on top of it, filling out paperwork, using your memory, all of these things that are a bit of a struggle anyway.
00:21:38
Speaker
But I felt like it was a good service. It was a really robust, I mean, the administration was rubbish. I did give them some constructive feedback about that. But the practitioners themselves, so you and I saw the same practitioner, and then I also saw a GP through that service for the referral because I didn't want to go back to the DKAD GP that I had previously. Hope he's not listening. And I found that, yeah, really robust
00:22:06
Speaker
questioning, you know, the process was, I've since referred that process on to other people that I know that potentially have ADHD. And of course, as an adult, it's much more complex because it relies on the input from either parents, loved ones. I mean, there were multiple people. So I think you filled out my assessment, my husband filled out the assessment, and then I filled out the assessment so that there were multiple streams. But
00:22:33
Speaker
They want lots of examples and narratives from early childhood, don't they? A lot of recalling of report cards and examples of behaviours and traits and experiences from early childhood.
00:22:50
Speaker
Which is quite a trigger in itself, isn't it? Because you sort of reflect back and say, oh, actually, that makes more sense now than it did at the time. Amber, that's really one of the biggest things that I experienced was this overwhelming sense of everything in my past being viewed through a different lens now. I remember listening to a podcast,
00:23:19
Speaker
I think it was just the afternoon before I got my diagnosis. So I had my appointment coming. So I was pretty primed to be emotional having done all of the forms and surveys. And I was walking along the beach listening to this podcast. It was the account of who was it? You sent me the link. Clementine Ford. Yes, I think it was Clementine Ford on another podcast on ADHD AF. And I was listening to her experience and just
00:23:48
Speaker
crying, just tears or just falling as all of my past experiences made sense. All of the versions of the little me and the teenage me and the young adult me really started to click into place. And then also an imposter syndrome coming up at the same time going or scared. What if he says no? What if the psychiatrist says, nah, you don't really fit.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, I did have that thought also because I'd already been told by someone I was seeing for over 12 months, which just goes to show, and there's definitely multiple episodes we could do about talking about this, but
00:24:35
Speaker
We're self-advocating people, right? And I really feel, for all the people who don't have the self-advocating skills, because for us, the process has been horrendous. And even working in mental health, as you do, and me as a parent with a child with mental health challenges, it's such a complex
00:24:58
Speaker
process anyway, even if you can advocate for yourself, it's very frustrating. Imagine all the people who don't have those skills to just continue to push back and challenge the status quo. If I have a psychologist who apparently specializes in this,
00:25:18
Speaker
And he's saying no to me. I could have just quite easily have given up and said, okay, well, he knows best. So that's it. And women are maskers as well. They need to be able to look beyond that.
Positive Impacts of ADHD Diagnosis
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, going to see the signs. So what has having a diagnosis meant to you? How has it changed your life?
00:25:42
Speaker
I think for me, it's about being kinder to myself and also allowing me to have conversations with my husband around, just acknowledging that something might not be my strong point. And so being open to him saying,
00:26:02
Speaker
you're cramming too much in or you're trying to do too much or you really need to take a break because that's not my natural state is I'm really poor with time management in terms of not necessarily that I'm always running late, but that I think I can do more in a time frame than I actually can. So I'll cram in five things in a day that
00:26:27
Speaker
other people might just try and bite off two things. That time perception is such a bizarre concept that I hear over and over again. I remember listening to somebody say, I believe somehow that it takes me 15 minutes to get ready and 15 minutes to get to wherever I'm going. I think that's me for even that said that like just it's yeah, I think it's anywhere. And I'm like, yeah, actually, it's pick our traffic. You got to get across.
00:26:55
Speaker
Sydney Harbour Bridge and find a park. It's just 15 minutes to get ready as well, like me to get out the door. I'm like, no, actually I have to feed the chickens.
00:27:11
Speaker
all of the different things. So changing your expectations. And what I'm hearing is you're letting people help you. Yeah. Yeah. You're being vulnerable in those times and saying... A bit more. I've still got a way to go on that front, but I'm being more open to it's not
00:27:29
Speaker
It's not something I can control. It's not an excuse, but it is a reason. I can start to work on ways to support myself and manage it. Anything else that has felt big from being diagnosed? I think just the reflection, as you mentioned before, about difficult periods in life.
00:27:49
Speaker
Like teenage years for example and some of the challenges I had then just looking back now going I can see why that behavior you know why it came out in I don't know like, you know getting suspended all the time at school or And I got bored a lot at school so I just I think I just found a listening to
00:28:16
Speaker
detail instruction, I probably just couldn't follow the... It's like now reading instructions on... If I have to read instructions on playing a board game, I just won't play. If you explain to me and show me how to do it, I'll remember and I can follow it. But if I have to read a sequence of information...
00:28:35
Speaker
It just doesn't happen. I just give up. Let's just play and figure it out, OK? I just completely give up. And so it's the same with anything, building anything, creating anything I have to observe. And so you imagine at school, that's not how things are taught, really. We're taught by, you know, read a textbook. I mean, even just thinking about a textbook just gives shutters. It's just pages and pages of ill formatted typography.
00:29:04
Speaker
with not very evident instructions in terms of bold headings and steps, and I need lots of color.
00:29:15
Speaker
differences in how the information is presented. So if it's a key message, I need that key message to be involved, large and in color for me to then process the rest of the information. It needs to be sparkly and pretty and shiny. And so, you know, the reflection was then I can see why I had to work so hard in year 11 and 12 to get, you know, I did well, but
00:29:40
Speaker
I really had to, like, I put a lot of pressure on myself to deliver that result. And in hindsight, I probably could have done even better had I, you know, had, you know, proper training or the learning structure had it been different. So in that I could have done better. I've heard that story a lot, not from you, but, you know, from people, yeah, clients and such.
00:30:06
Speaker
There's that grief in there. It's a grief for you in what could have been the what-ifs, had only I known, had only I been supported and had the resources and how things would have been different. Definitely. What about you?
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, loads.
Education Challenges and New Purpose
00:30:24
Speaker
I mean, I was a high school dropout. I really kind of disengaged from school. I'm not sure I actually ever really engaged. Engaged in school. With school. I was either sick or pretending to be sick or in high school just, you know, wagging and nothing really caught. There's a term I haven't heard. Wagging. Wagging school.
00:30:46
Speaker
Really, the only things that caught my attention that I enjoyed were English, I loved stories, I loved creating stories, and drama because, you know, I liked playing characters. You loved drama. I liked drama. I loved a baby in a family of five, so yeah, a bit of drama.
00:31:06
Speaker
Definitely, there's grief. There's grief of the way I treated myself and the really reckless behavior all through my teens. There's not a lot of regard for life or value of life. I think there's grief for all aspects of my life.
00:31:26
Speaker
childhood for my education, for my employment, for it taking so long to finally get to something I fell in love with. I feel also very grateful that I found something that I was so passionate about.
00:31:43
Speaker
being the mental health degree that I was able to push through all of my struggles. But I would have to go away for weekends at a time to study. And if I didn't get a high distinction, it wasn't good enough. But I couldn't focus at home. I had to go away and kind of
00:32:04
Speaker
Remember I used to go and stay at your studio or at the place at Phillip Island for the weekend so I could kind of make sense of the chaos I was creating, but had I known and been supported, could I, you know, would I have gone down a different day? Yeah, exactly. Where would my career be now and what relationships would I, you know, have had and friendships and so on and so forth? Yeah, it's a lot.
00:32:30
Speaker
It's a lot. A semi-precious moment. We said that we would bring them up every episode. Of course, every episode I say, I'm going to take notes of my semi-precious moment and then I forget. And then when you ask me, I say, can you remember what semi-precious moment I said I had? She even takes notes and sends them to me. How do you lose them? I don't know. Don't rely on me. No. Lord.
00:32:53
Speaker
Okay so my semi-precious moment recently was I went overseas I went to Japan and while I was in Japan I was talking to a friend of mine who was over there who also has ADHD and takes medication and she said I should have mentioned this before you left but I didn't want to freak you out in case
00:33:12
Speaker
You had already exited, but it's actually illegal in Japan to carry Vivance, which is the medication that I take. Even with a letter from the doctor, you can't carry Vivance. There are other medications that you can carry, but Vivance is not one of them.
00:33:28
Speaker
So for anyone who's been to Japan, the customs, everything's very intense and protocol following. And so then realizing that not only I'd been carrying around a bag in my backpack through customs, through Hong Kong airport and in Hong Kong, they are
00:33:46
Speaker
everywhere that you go is an anti-drug message, so you can't have any cannabis oil, you can't have anything that's got any... You're just loaded. My drug-related, so I've been through all of these airports and been wandering around day after day with this vivance rattling around in my backpack. So, yeah. Then I sent that message to my husband. It's like, didn't you look it up? But who would look it up? No, I didn't.
00:34:11
Speaker
Never think about it. Just take it. Never think about it. Then you had to get rid of it. I did. Then I sort of went, okay, well, how many days? I basically spent the back end of my trip with no medication. What did you have to do? What was the first event you had to kind of conquer with executive functioning offline? Was that the bullet train?
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, the bullet train. Oh, the bullet train with that ticket you showed me with just numbers and characters. So I chained up firstly the night before I was filled with self-loathing because I knew what day I was getting the bullet train. I could have booked the bullet train online, but they run every 20 minutes. I didn't think about it. So the night before in a slight panic, I'm like, I shouldn't
00:34:56
Speaker
look up how early I need to get to the station for the bullet train. And then I did. And every blog I read was like during peak season and cherry blossoms is peak season. That's when I was there. It only runs for two weeks a year. So you can't get any more niche and peak than that.
00:35:12
Speaker
It recommends pre-booking because it's very hard to get on the train. So then all night I'm panicking. So I wake up at five, I get up, I pack my bag, I get ready to go and I get to the station by 7 a.m. I get to the window. Thankfully, there's not many people there. And of course, you know, there's I get my ticket. There was a bit of confusion. The person has booked me on a train that leaves in seven minutes. And if you've traveled to, you know, you're at a
00:35:42
Speaker
chaotic terminal with a million gates, everything in Japanese, the only thing that's there are English numerals. So if I showed you a photo of this ticket, everything was in Japanese, there were 500 numbers. And he's trying to explain to me that, you know, go left and then look for this gate. It hurt my brain to look at this ticket. Honestly, like the panic that I was feeling, I had no time to get a drink.
00:36:06
Speaker
a coffee, nothing. I was just racing around like a lunatic. I went through three gates that were wrong. My train was leaving in three minutes. As I soon discovered with the bullet trains, they turn up in under 60 seconds. They're off again. They have to be standing at your exact ticketed mini gate, one to 30 doors. You've got to be waiting at the door that takes you to your train. The door number could have been any of the 50 numbers on the ticket. Any of the 50 numbers. I'm like, is that the
00:36:32
Speaker
platform number, is that a door number? It hurts. I had all of this adrenaline running through my system and then I just passed out. You managed to wake up before you? I managed to wake up literally like six minutes before I had to get off and then I had to quickly scramble. You had to pretty much be thrown out.
00:36:51
Speaker
And in all my optimism, I had my laptop. I'm like, I'm going to do some work. I'm going to like, had my notebook. I'm like going to get through all of this stuff. And no, I did not because I was heavily fatigued. That sounds fun. Yeah. What was your semi-precious moment? It seems just looking up at the board.
00:37:07
Speaker
where we've written our stuff. Mine just seems a little insignificant in comparison. It is a bit lame. I think we're running over time anyway. It is lame. I knew this would be a long one. Basically, I shaved my right leg twice and my left leg not at all. I'm really keen to understand here, what was the distraction between stopping the first leg
00:37:32
Speaker
And then the natural progression moving on to the other leg. I don't, I don't know how, and I've actually done it again since then. So I haven't learned the lesson. And at what point, you know, when you're shaving anything, what point didn't you notice there was no further hair coming onto the razor?
00:37:48
Speaker
No, I don't even know if it's the hair on the razor because I'm not like wild and woolly legged. Like it's not sparse. Like for someone with dark hair. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not overly hairy just so in case anybody's wondering, I'm not a really hairy person. I don't know because you also run your hand along your leg as you're shaving. And I was doing that and just shaved one leg twice and kind of got out and started to dry and then noticed the sparse that it had to get back in again.
00:38:16
Speaker
So really a bit lame. Sorry that that was my semi-precious moment for this week in comparison to carrying illegal drugs. Could have been arrested. Could have been arrested. But I did want to go back to the ADHD just for a minute because I don't know if you asked me what the biggest change for me was. No, I think I just went straight over my own story. Yeah, you don't care that much. It's fine. Hey Jade, what's been the biggest impact for you?
00:38:43
Speaker
Oh, wow. I feel like we haven't unpacked that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for asking. I just... Yeah, look, it's something I haven't even thought about or considered. We've only got 15 ball points up there.
00:38:56
Speaker
Well, I won't read the 15 bullet points because I think we'll probably need some more episodes. And again, I haven't given this any thought at all. For me, I really felt like I found my people that I felt, I think, very different and alone, even when surrounded by people for a very, very long time.
00:39:16
Speaker
always felt quite lonely. And I think it's because I felt like I was different. Well, I always felt like I was, you know, stupid and ditzy and clumsy and... Do you know what, though? He's something interesting just to bring it back to me for a second. Are you about to say I am stupid and ditzy? No. But I have always felt...
00:39:35
Speaker
slightly the opposite in a sense that I've always found other people to be quite daft because non-neurodiverse people think quite slowly. I've often sat in a room going, oh my God, this is so boring. Just get to the point.
00:39:50
Speaker
Let me just do it for you. Like I've already got that point 10 minutes ago and we're still talking. It's funny. I've never felt slow. I've just felt messy. Like I couldn't quite get things finished or organized or completed. And obviously with the kind of dyslexia as well, you know, there's the spelling and writing that looks like.
00:40:09
Speaker
a shit show. A four-year-old's written it. Yeah. And I would say that to my clients. I'm like, I just want to show you this. Just please excuse the writing that looks like a dyslexic five-year-old because it kind of is. So I am much kinder to myself. You know, I have been working on that even prior to the diagnosis, you know, just kind of accepting who I am, but finding and listening to these podcasts that
00:40:32
Speaker
Oh, there are other people that think and feel and do similar to me. One of the other, you know, big changes is I'm also on medication, a different medication. And, you know, earlier when you were saying you thought you had dementia. Well, I went to my doctor a couple of years ago and thought maybe I had MS, like our mum, because I have cognitive apathy, especially in the morning and evenings where I can't find the word for things.
00:40:59
Speaker
at all and I would trip and stumble and I'd be saying to the kids, oh kids, can you pass me the fish? And nobody'd know what I was talking about and it was kind of scary. It was kind of scary for my kids and my husband and myself and I got the referrals from the neurologist and then, I don't know, I think I lost it. I don't know what I did anyway.
00:41:21
Speaker
But since taking the medication, I don't struggle for words. I find the word and I say it, so that is miraculous. I still do in the evening when the medication's worn off. Oh, yeah, in the evening. Or bets are off in the evening. Kids go to bed, mum can't talk.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah. The other major thing is that it really created or defined a new purpose for me. And I remember kind of talking to you about this new purpose of working in the neurodiverse space within, you know, my field. And you said to me, I hope it's poignant. I can't remember. What did I say to you? You said, Awaken ADHD. Oh yeah, I did. Yeah. And I went, yes.
00:42:02
Speaker
And I instantly built a website called Awaken ADHD. You think I was in branding. That's a genius business proposition. Yeah. And then, you know, did some ADHD kind of postgraduate trainings and some coaching training. And then I recently started an Awaken ADHD podcast. So if you'd plug if you would like to listen,
00:42:25
Speaker
to other people's stories of when they awaken to their ADHD. Do you know how hard it was for me to actually figure out how to edit my own podcast? Yeah. But you did it. I did. Well, I often have to say to Jay, just put your big girl pants on. I know. Okay. I got my big girl pants on. Sometimes it gets a bit defeated. Come on, you can do it. It's very hard. Technology is not my thing. I know, but it's like anything. The more fear you have, just like when you're around a horse, when they smell that fear,
00:42:54
Speaker
Are you saying my computer smells more? It does. I need a new laptop anyway.
00:43:01
Speaker
All
Teaser for Next Episode
00:43:02
Speaker
righty. So next episode, aging, aging, we're getting old. So existential crisis, denial, Botox, crayons, beauty. Yeah. All of that stuff. All of that stuff. So if you want to listen to more of our ramblings, please follow and subscribe and your favorite potty platform of choice. Chad, I'd really prefer you didn't say potty. You don't like abbreviations. Okay.
00:43:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Until next time, embrace your uncut and unpolished selves. Bye. This podcast represents the personal opinions of Amber and Jade. No content should be taken as advice or recommendations.