ADHD at 33
[Music]
i was running late
i had to give a parent talk that night
so
i got on my bike and immediately all
these thoughts start racing through my
mind and i was thinking
had i prepared enough for my talk would
the parents
like me and then i start going into
other places as well so i was thinking
you know what was i gonna have for
dinner tonight and this car pulls up
alongside me and they have you know i
love music and
they have this really great beat kind of
playing in the car and i’m kind of
dancing along and enjoying it
and then i’m like oh there’s a really
cool store over there maybe i’ll check
that out sometime
all of a sudden i’m at the building and
you know i’m looking down at my phone
and i’m looking at what was the room
number again and all of a sudden
wham i walk right into a glass wall
and immediately i started thinking what
was i
thinking that was so stupid what why am
i always in this
rush and trying to you know get to where
i’m going i’m always three steps behind
and these are questions that i’ve asked
myself
throughout my whole life and i could
never really quite figure out why i just
thought
you know these are things that
everybody’s always thinking and i just
have to work
really hard to get things right so i go
to my counselor
and my counselor asked me a bunch of
questions about my family
and my history and uh you know why might
i be thinking some of these thoughts
and he said have you ever been assessed
for adhd for attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder
and i thought no you know i know i
struggle with attention
but i always sort of just feel like
well this is what i need to do and as it
turns out
i was diagnosed with adhd and still
am at age 33.
so what i really want to get at today is
these three things where we’re in this
highly distracting society
and all of us are experiencing this
right now
we need to change our ways for better
health
and we really need to help people unlock
their passions
to really help our society and our world
thrive
so adhd you might know someone with adhd
you might have it yourself or you have a
friend who has it or you might think
you know think you have it really is
comprised of
inattention so what’s called inattentive
type where
you’re highly distracted hyperactive
impulsivity so that is the
restlessness and the sitting on the edge
of your seat and
this is the kid who is bouncing off the
walls in the classroom
and you can have one of these or the
other
and you can also have what i have which
is this combined type
so the more i kept reading about adhd
the more i kept thinking that is me that
is
a hundred percent me in a book or me on
a page
things like talking excessively
on the right here i’m a musician and
these are all song ideas
and i’m frantically scribbling down song
ideas and generating all this content
and
in my head i’m thinking oh what’s the
rhythm to that and you know what
instrument should go there
but then you kind of look at the page
and you think
jesus kind of a disorganized mess you
know there’s no real logical
coherence anything about it and
these are the struggles these are you
know things that i deal with every day
and my favorite uh sort of symptom that
when you take the um
screening tool for adhd is this being
driven by a motor
which uh is exactly you know who i am
every day so the key here is that we’re
different
having adhd and this is absolutely
crucial is
does not mean that you’re stupid it
doesn’t mean that you’re inadequate
or you’re not capable of being a
contributing person
in society it just means that you think
differently we are chemically wired to
be different
so if you look back at
research from adhd this syndrome of
paradoxes
so adhd especially if you’ve worked with
someone with adhd if
you have it yourself you know that an
adhd person can be highly distracted
but then the next minute they can be
intensely focused on something
and there’s this paradox right that
happens and
another um term that you might hear is
this variable attention disorder so
my attention varies from one moment to
the next
okay how do i cope with this how do i
deal
with all of these challenges in my
day-to-day
well with the pandemic and all
of these life stressors going on whether
it’s family
or relationships or anything else that’s
going on in your life
it’s really really hard and
as someone with adhd it’s even more
of a struggle right this information
overload trying to make sense of
everything and process
so what do i do well there’s some
really basic things you can do i would
highly suggest getting your own
counseling
i see a counselor regularly regularly
and it is a tremendous help to have an
ally and a coach
and someone who really believes in me
also
if you need it and you’re diagnosed
taking medicine can be really helpful
adhd is
highly treatable in a lot of ways and
really allows me to still
contribute to society
the last piece is this social connection
where
you know if i’m really struggling i call
a friend
maybe i call home find those people
in your life that you know you can
confide in and talk to
and those things are tremendously
helpful
but all of those things as i’ve kind of
processed this and
and worked through this diagnosis and
coming to terms with it
don’t really um change
everything right i still have those
struggles those day-to-day struggles
and i was trying to figure out okay what
is going to really
help me the most and what i realized
is it was following my passions
and focusing my energy on my passions
i’m actually able to focus
on things that i’m passionate about
so this has been really revolutionary
for me and
passions are important for many
different reasons in our life
i think right everyone deserves to
to be able to follow what it is you
really care about
there’s two main things for me that
they’ve been really helpful for
so first is this idea that
when i’m following my passions i’m able
to attend and focus
and put all my time and resources and
energy into that thing that i’m doing
which is something i don’t have that
opportunity to do in something that i
don’t really care about right if i’m
sitting in a boring lecture or a long
talk
i immediately drift off
the other reason they’re really
important is
adhd kind of like i mentioned earlier
we are always feeling like we’re
inadequate
right feeling like we’re not good enough
and
these passions really are things that
i’m confident and i have that
self-confidence
in myself that i know i’m good at this i
know i can do these things well
so a couple examples i love
being in nature and i love
i i grew up on an island and i was a
fish growing up and i love to
swim and i also love going into the
woods
and you know maybe i hear a bird or
maybe i’m checking out a particular
plant or
um and what’s so amazing about nature is
it’s this fully immersive experience
which really is an adhd person’s dream
because there’s so many things i can
attend to and i’m not feeling
judged or like other people are being
critical of me
right i’m just letting myself be and and
be present in that in
that space the
next passion of mine is i absolutely
love to cook
so growing up my family called me shea
pear
which you know short for perry
i love cooking and i love exploring
flavors and textures and
and different foods and what’s amazing
about cooking is
it’s a really complex task so i have to
go from
start to finish and follow all these
different steps to get through a recipe
and get to the end it’s really
complicated and especially for someone
with adhd how amazing is that to
focus and actually see something to
completion and i get this great
satisfaction
when i serve up a warm meal to someone
and just seeing the expression on their
face and wow this is so
delicious this is so good it gives me
that self-confidence that i’m
talking about the other passion of mine
is music
and i grew up playing music and guitar
and doing audio production
as a hobby and mixing and performing
[Music]
and what i love about music is this free
creative space for me to just explore
and there’s so many things to attend to
in music
there’s so many different types of music
there’s so many things for me to focus
on of
the balance of the instruments or the
particular sound that i’m going for
and all of those things right is what i
excel at those are the things that i
know
i can confidently be proud of
so the last one
is i love exercise
and whether it’s going for a bike ride
or a run
[Music]
when i’m exercising there’s actually a
chemical basis for why
exercise is really helpful for people
with adhd
so i have right a a deficit
in neurotransmitters that causes me to
seek out stimulation
okay and when i exercise right it is
this
flood of activity that balances that
chemical imbalance
so when i come back from a run and i sit
down and i have to do
a task and focus i’m actually able to do
it right so it has this chemical basis
so it’s a very very powerful tool to
change my body
and to change my mind and that’s really
something that’s been revolutionary so
how do we unlock this
potential in people we often look at
people with adhd from this deficit
perspective
right and oh they’re so annoying and
they won’t stop talking and they’re
always disrupting
to unlock potential we need to
change how we think about our
development throughout the lifespan
and really help people with adhd figure
out
what is it they’re good at what do they
enjoy what do they like doing
and support them in that right and give
them something to be proud of
and if we can do that our world will
really
thrive thank you
you