October 25, 2024 • 28 mins
A diagnosis of ADHD, autism or dyslexia is merely an indication that your brain works in a different - and exciting - way.
So why are the rates of co-occurring anxiety and depression so high for neurodivergent people?
In this episode, Sonia talks to 16-year-old Emily Martin, who has ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia. Emily suffered from intense anxiety and low self-esteem throughout her primary school years.
Therapist Jane Kjersten explains the specific type of trauma that can come from feeling ‘lesser than’, and suggests ways to heal from the emotional pain.
Guests:
Emily and Jo Martin
Jane Kjersten Jane Kjersten Therapist
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Music is a big thing for me when I'm like overwhelmed.
So Taylor Swift, Yeah, Oil Swift's mine too, really, Oh my.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
God, Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
It's a Wednesday morning and I'm walking to school with
sixteen year old Emily Martin. We talk Taylor Swift for
a while, because when you find a fellow swift Y,
the bond is instant.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It just feels like she's in my brain. Sometimes I'm like,
how do you know.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This about me?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Like this feels like a song about anxiety, or like
there are specific lyrics.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm just like, hold on to specific lyrics, like I'm
the problem. It's me. You might recognize that from Taylor
Swift's song anti Hero. There's a reason these words resonate
with teenagers like Emily. She has dyslexia and ADHD. Nothing
wrong with those, but we live in a society that
still doesn't make space for different cognition, still doesn't really
(00:52):
understand it. So for much of her life Emily has
felt wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I do have moments where I'm like self conscious of
how I'm perceived, because then again I come back to
the thing of I'm the problem. I need to fix something.
It's my fault, and then I feel bad for putting
all my issues on to someone else. I still have
those underlying thoughts of that got to hate me.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity.
I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent, and
a few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. In
this series, you'll hear from experts and from many wonderful
people who experience the world in a unique way. We're
looking at neurodiversity from the inside. Gelda. I'm Sonya Gray,
(01:47):
and this is no such thing as normal. Series two.
Diagnoses like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, etc. Still carry a weighty stigma,
despite all the awareness and all the people like me
(02:09):
continually banging on about it. But if we view them
through a neurodiversity affirming lens, these are simply natural, normal
differences and very very valuable ones. So in this episode,
I'm asking why it is that neurodivergent people are so
prone to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and general overall low
(02:30):
self esteem. Why are those with ADHD and dyslexia filling
our jail cells, our mental health facilities, and our suicide stats.
We're still saying the problem is with the individual. Just
try a bit harder. But it's actually really hard, almost impossible,
to operate in a world that tells you that who
(02:52):
you really are is wrong. Year old Emily Martin was
struggling to find her place in the world from a
very young age, and just her second year of primary school,
she was referred to the public child mental health service
in Auckland, the Cari Center. Emily's come a long way
(03:13):
in the last few years. She is bright and vivacious,
but that sense of I'm not enough it's still there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm very good at masking, so people will say to me, Oh,
you don't have anxiety. You don't have I'm like, actually, yeah,
I do. I just mask it because of the judgment
I've had in the past from people, and so it's
very draining on me.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Can you remember the point where things were really really
difficult for you? Can you give me an idea of
what that looked like.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So I had gone to the Cowrie Center when I
was about six or seven, but I guess I don't
really know the purpose of me being there. It was like, Oh,
I just feel nervous all the time. Where I feel
anxious all the time, but I didn't know there was
like a label for it or an explanation. At that time,
I hadn't been diagnosed with ADHD. It was only the anxiety.
But I don't think I was as ware that I
was called anxiety. I guess I didn't really understand what
(04:09):
was going on in my brain.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Emily tried two different primary schools, but she was miserable
at both.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I was failing everything, Like if I was passing, it
was barely passing.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I think the real low was when she was in
year six, and.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
That's Emily's mum, Joe, who guided her through that hugely
stressful time.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And things were so bad academically, so bad socially. Emily
was in a terrible state. Her self esteem wasn't absolute
low when she wasn't passing, she wasn't in friendship groups
where she could be herself, and I was just like,
what am I going to do here? She had a
(04:52):
teacher that caused significant grief and that's really when the
anxiety really came out, because she was scared to go
to school. She wouldn't eat in the morning at all,
and this teacher had one day ripped up someone's work
in front of the class. This was in year two
and Emily was petrified that would happen to her, and
(05:14):
so it was probably through her whole primary schooling at
both schools. She never ate breakfast. She simply could not,
So we didn't fully understand what was going on.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
What was going on was a kid in crisis and
a schooling system which didn't understand and couldn't accommodate her.
There was a mix of dyslexia ADHD and eventually disc caalculia,
which is a specific learning difficulty with maths.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
The effort that she put in was phenomenal to pass
and to scrape in and so it wasn't obvious because
of her intelligence and because of how hard she worked,
so I understand it was hard probably for the teachers
to understand that as well. But she got a dyslexia
diagnosis I think in year five, and they didn't even
(06:06):
embrace that. So Emily didn't get a lot of support
with her dyslexia. We found out about the ADHD diagnosis,
and then I think it was in year ten dyscalculia.
So she had always struggled with maths and she had
been just absolutely driven to learn her times tables in
year five and sex, and she simply could not. She
(06:28):
tried every single thing she could, but it was always
kind of like it was Emily's fault that she couldn't
do her times tables.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I'm imagining you were seeing it at home, the repercussions
at home.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yes, absolutely, Oh my goodness, maths was not good for
the whole family's mental health.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And what about just in general, Joe, in terms of
how Emily was right through She got into the car
center at six, so obviously you thought there's major problems.
What were you seeing that really caused you concern?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I think it was lot about not fitting in, sort
of difficult relationships with peers.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Was she having meltdowns at home?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Oh yeah, I think just some quite oppositional behavior and
not wanting to cooperate, or if she was feeling anxious,
it would turn into something really big. She could go
from zero to ten just like that.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
The way I like to describe it, because when I
call it emotional overwhelmed, it's the volcano exploding. And I
find it very hard to explain to people. It can
be like obviously oppositional behavior. It can be me having
like a full meltdown, crying panic attack, which I very
rarely now have, but when I do have them, they're
very hard to control, to the point where medication has
(07:44):
to get involved to.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Calm me down.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Tell me about panic attacks when they were at their
worst for you.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
When they're at the worst. I'm crying. I can't really talk.
No one can really understand me. I feel like I'm
going to faint, I feel dizzy, I feel but just disorientated.
I don't know how to get the words out. A
massive explosion. It feels like glasses shattering. It feels like
(08:12):
the whole world is crashing down on me and the
whole world is going to end.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Sitting here listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, you
had this terrible situation with the teacher in year two,
and people might go, oh, kids should be resilient and
be able to handle that. But the kids I have
interviewed and spoken to, it can be one year or
one incident at school at that vulnerable age. It completely
derails you and it's so to me heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yes, you know, the self esteem issue was huge for
Emily because she thought she was dumb, she thought she
was always the problem.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, the problem is me. It's the silent mantra for
so many neurodivigent kids struggling with internalized shame and often
crippling anxiety.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
So anxiety starts from something, usually fear.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
That's Jane Kirsten, whose voice you might recognize from episode
fourteen on Dyslexia. She spoke with her amazing son Michael.
Jane has a private counseling and psychotherapy practice. Many of
her clients are eurodivergent, and often they're still carrying feelings
of shame and unworthiness from childhood.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
If you have grown up failing over years, you know,
then of course you're going to start feeling fearful of study,
you know, of what other people are thinking, what other
children are thinking. Children are actually feeling shame from a
very young age, you know, children with learning differences, difficulties. Yeah,
(09:49):
so from a very young age, children are growing up
feeling like they're less sin. And when you feel like
you're less sin and you're not achieving, then you're probably
likely to feel very anxious and.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Then you're not going to learn very well.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
No, and the more cordex just shuts down, that's right,
And then then comes the trauma piece. But my experience,
because I work mainly now with adults, is that I
see high levels of anxiety across the board, and as
we work down into where this has come from, it
goes all the way back through childhood. But it's across
the board, feelings of not being good enough, failing, not
(10:23):
fitting in, being different, you know, a range of things,
and dependent on their temperaments and history, of course, that
makes them still very anxious adults. It can be ages
later where the problem is suddenly now seen and that
child is already experiencing huge shame in there for anxiety
and that's been going on for a while. I mean, Brusheet,
(10:46):
you're saying to me, you can't test children for dyslexia
before seven, And I was like, oh darn, I think
that we can. I knew my son was dyslexicat too,
and we had diagnosis before seven. There's that whole thing.
By seven, that child might be two years or three
years into a major anxiety or general nosed anxiety disorder or.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Absolutely, despite the fact Janeson Michael had an early diagnosis
and a super supportive mum, he still suffered emotionally. He
was a profoundly dyslexic student in the mainstream school system,
and there's one particular memory of school that still haunts him.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
You hear books start closing, and then people go up
and give the book to the teacher at the front,
and then I'd be on the first page, stool. I
don't know what the heck I'm doing, And it was
the pressure from the other people finishing before me. And
not only did I finish last out of them all,
(11:46):
but I was sitting there feeling really stupid because everyone
was looking back at me, like, oh, we're still going
because this kid's on his first page, you know what
I mean. I definitely carry, you know, even many years
after being gone from school, I carry those anxiety and
all those feelings because of how I felt back in class.
(12:06):
For sure, it was like a living hell being at
school for me personally, it was bad.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Michael's gone on to great things. He is a success story,
but he still feels the shame from school.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
He had had some trauma through being hit by a
teacher in primary school for not listening or not paying attention,
and yeah, needless to say, that was not good for
him at all.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It's the anxiety around the learners that is the problem,
and we can give all the supports and accommodations and
they can get all the best marks. If they're anxious,
they carry that with them. I feel like the missing
piece is how are you? Therapist Jane Kirsten has great
(13:13):
insight into the unique neurodivergent experience of anxiety and shame,
so I'm keen to get her take on what happens
after the diagnosis, particularly for adults. I am struck by
the enormity of what so many are still carrying. Supposedly postdiagnosis,
they understand themselves and their brains better, but for many
(13:34):
the struggle is ongoing and persistent. You get the diagnosis,
Oh okay, it all makes sense, but then it's like, actually,
who am I? Who am I? Because you've had the
masker for so long you're great at playing the game. Yes,
when you try and unmask it as such a process, yes,
(13:56):
it's like that little kid is still in there, going
I'm still here. I don't trust that it's okay to unmask.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
That's right. It's one thing to know something right, it's
another thing to experience it through to a place of healing.
So we can have a diagnosis, which I think is
incredibly important. But then we've got to do the processing
and usually we've got to go back to the original pain. Yeah,
and that makes it very, very hard when you're someone
that finds processing emotions difficult. And I think that this
(14:27):
is a major problem that I'd like other therapists to
really understand, because our people with ADHD dyslexia, even some
gift of people, really really do struggle to process their feelings.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
This makes a lot of sense. Those with unique cognitions
feel the world in bold and when you feel so much,
it's a lot to process. It hurts literally. There are
studies that show intense emotional pain or rejection activate the
same region of the brain is physical pain.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
This guy in my research that said he'd rather take
a greater to his foot than feel that emotional pain again.
And so that was a very profound explanation by him
around facing the emotional pain.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
The greater to the foot a great way of explaining
just how intense it can be. So I wonder if
these lifelong negative emotional experiences can be called trauma. Jane
Kirsten says, it's complicated. Everyone's different and there are different
types of trauma which have different effects.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Trauma is specific in itself as to what it is.
I think that most people I've worked with have a
level of trauma because of their learning difference or neurodifference,
and that tends to come from specific ways that they've
been affected. You know, it's not necessary everybody. I don't
think we're right if we say everybody has trauma. I
(16:04):
don't think we're right in saying everybody who's neurodifferent has trauma.
There's lots of neurotypical people with loads of trauma. Yeah,
but I think there is a specific type of situation
that happens that causes trauma in our children and then
later adults.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
When does a negative experience or experiences cross the line
to be called trauma. We talk about small tea trauma
and big ta trauma. When do we capitalize the te right?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
You know, our brain has capacities to process certain things right,
and so it's when our brain has not got the
capacity to process some horrific thing that trauma starts encode.
So trauma itself really is trappedness. It's when something has
happened that we are unable to fight or flight. The
(16:58):
brain's amygdala when danger is Basically, hormones are sent to
it lightning fast and it goes into the danger of
fight flight freeze response. And so if we've been in
a trap situation, example, a child in a classroom and
something bad has happened and they can't get out and
they are highly upset in that feels like they're going
(17:20):
to be trapped and almost like they might die as
something horrendous is happening. The teacher might be angry at them,
other kids are laughing that child is trapped. They can't
get out of that classroom, they're not allowed out. That's
enough to create a trauma response in them, you know,
and it can become a really difficult, hard spiral for
somebody who gets quite trapped in that. Like you're saying,
(17:41):
old patterns and old experiences. So it needs disseminating, it
needs opening up and understanding all the different facets to it.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Probably what it needs is an expert to guide you
through it, because working with trauma beg T trauma all
Little Teacher Warmer can be traumatizing in itself. And Jane says,
the healing process is not just in the head. It
has to include the body. You need to feel to heal, it's.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Vital and feeling. Yeah, you're not going to heal if
you don't feel you need to take the story away
from their fest you do and just feel it's like
having an observer, to be able to observe what's happening
to us without becoming one with it or one with
a story about it. That's the key to feeling, to healing,
because to face into things that are really hard is
(18:36):
very painful, right, And we're creatures that don't want change,
really and we don't want to face pain. Yeah, but
to heal, we've got to face pain. There's no other
way back to that body. And can't go round, it
can't go over. It's like we're going on a bear hunt.
Do you remember that book? Can't go round, it can't
go over, it can't go under. It got to go
through it. You have to face the beer.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
But what happens when there's more than one beer in
someone's picture, when there's other layers of trauma? I'm guessing
that's not a straightforward.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Oh no, not at all. And so the more sort
of developmental situation that you have, like it could be
you could have a child with who's dyslexic their parent.
One of them is dyslexic but not identified. They don't
like what they're seeing in their child. The child is
already struggling at school, they've already been felt like they
had a trauma situation where they've been trapped in the classroom,
(19:32):
can't get out, they're shutting down. They go home, they
get told off by that parent. The parent yells at them,
they don't want to understand them. That's enough to add
more trauma to that child, let alone other major abuses
that we know about. Yeah, so the more you get
that consistent experience of trauma over and over, the more
complex and more likely for PTSD. And that's why I'm
(19:56):
a great believer in the therapy process, for going into
the pain and into helping integrate, you know, and come
through that trauma and that pain.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But is it possible? And I say that is all right,
But it sounds hard. If there's unsupported ADHD, autism or
dyslexia plus other layers of trauma, it's a lot to process.
So maybe this is where the rest of us come in,
shifting how we think about and treat those with different cognitions,
(20:27):
essentially removing the blame but changing long held views. Isn't
easy either.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
It's very very challenging. How do we do this with
a lot of acceptance and a lot of caring for
each other in all of our differences.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
How can we best help those who experience the world
differently and are carrying trauma and shame. Jane Kirsten says
empathy is key and an understanding that the diagnosis is real,
and so is the pain.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
To actually understand someone, you have to be able to identify.
And I think that because we're human, we all know shame,
and anyone listening to this who says they don't, I
just think it's not true. We all experience shame. Therefore,
we can all identify with each other and then we
can have empathy, because that's how we get empathy is identification.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Joe Martin, mum of sixteen year old Emily, says there's
a lot of empathy in their family now and it's
come quite literally through identification. Despite all that Emily's been through,
there's a silver lining.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
You know, through Emily's journey and also our son is
autistic in ADHD. But it's also led to the various
members of the family realizing that actually they are too,
so Emily's father, through seeing our son and Emily's journeys,
realized that he was autistic in ADHD, and so, you know,
at fifty was able to get those diagnosis and sense
(22:16):
was made about his world, things that had always been
difficult for him, and suddenly he understood himself.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
The autism ADHD combo can come with a lot of
complications in the world. It was he like, Oh, I've
only i'd known, I would have, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I think it was more just relief. He did also
get a dyslexi diagnosis about ten years before that, and
that was the first time I ever saw him in
tears because it was just such a relief. So for him,
it was the relief and thinking back to when he
was a child, there was even less known about neurodiversities.
(22:54):
So now he understands, and he understands why he finds
group situations and why he doesn't like all the small
talk that kind of networking side. He'd rather be one
on one with someone, and why he gets overwhelmed at times.
So we talk about that a lot as a family,
and understanding and seeing the triggers or knowing when to
(23:15):
pull back if someone's in a moment.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
One thing I'm talking about with this is it self
esteem peace, And I just wonder, you know, it's so
interesting for adults that get diagnosed late. Do you think
like there's a relief for him, But is his self
esteem good?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Would you say?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Intelligence actually mastered it and so he was able to
find ways to cope and get through, But it didn't
you know, it was actually really hard. And I think
the thing also with your adversities and especially ADHD, it
takes its toll on your brain because you're constantly working
on all these things and trying to work it out
and trying to make sense what your brain's doing and
what the world around doing, and so it's exhausting. So
(23:54):
he now has a meaning for what his life's been,
and so I think he's accepted that. But the diagnosis
has definitely helped actually his self esteem, I would say,
because he knows why he does things. And yeah, some
people say labels aren't good, but our experience is that
labels can help you understand, and they can help the
(24:15):
people around you understand. And then from there, his sister
got diagnosed, and then his mother got diagnosed, and so
it's been a really good journey for the family. And
while I don't have ADHD, I do have anxiety. So
it's really helped everyone understand each other within the family. Yeah,
(24:36):
it's actually been a real benefit pursuing those diagnoses. Yeah,
because of that understanding.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Understanding is key, But it was lack of understanding that met.
Joe's daughter Emily was deeply unhappy and anxious right through
primary school. They tried the public system, they tried the
private system, and after reaching crisis point in year six,
the family took a risk. They found something completely diff
Mount Hobson Middle School, which had a holistic approach to
(25:04):
learning and just twelve students in each class.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And it worked going to that school, Like I said
to mom, in certainly, I just felt accepted, and I
just felt welcomed, and I just felt like I could
unapologetically be myself. Honestly, I don't know what I would
have done without that school.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
What was it specifically that school gave you.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It gave me a sense of belonging. I felt everyone
was a bit quirky, everyone had something a bit different
about them. It was eye opening for me and the
way that I got to experience so many different people
and see so many different personalities. I think it helped
me in accepting myself and accepting others.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Sadly, Mount Hobson Middle School no longer exists. It couldn't
afford to stay open, which is a big loss. Emily
is now doing really well at her local high school,
but she says it would have been impossible if she
hadn't had the support at Mount Hobson.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I'm still in contact with a lot of the teachers
from there because they genuinely changed my life and it
just felt like a family.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
It needs to be a place of refuge, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Still Yeah, I actually want to go into primary school
education when I go to university, and I guess in
a way, I want to be the teacher that I
wish I had had from a younger age, because like
I don't think any teacher fully got it when I
was younger. I want to be the teacher that can
be supportive and so in a way, I think as
(26:29):
a teacher, I want to do that and help kids
and give the education I wish I had received from
a younger age.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
At primary school, Emily was the kid who barely passed anything.
She believed she was dumb. But now in year twelve.
Even with dyslexia, ADHD and dyscalculia, she's getting top Marx,
She's excelling. He is part of a monologue she did
for English this year.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
My heart stopped.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
In that moment, my heart stopped. All I remember was
repeating for myself, stay strong, stay strong, stay strong.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Life is still hard, The anxiety is still there, but
Emily no longer believes that she is the problem.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I think overall, I've gotten there. It's been hard, but
you know we've gotten there.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, next time on No such Thing as Normal? What's
it like to live with Tourette syndrome? What is the
worst tick? The one that if you could take it away,
you would.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
The f would?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Why Because when I'm in class or in school, people
think I'm like just saying it on purpose.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
But my class knows.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Let all the year fives know, but not really the
year sixes sixth there.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
If you like this podcast, please rate and review it.
It helps people find it. No Such Thing as Normal
is produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. The editor
is Jamie Lee Smith. Owen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawks are
executive producers, and Bridget Mills helped with research. You can
find us on Instagram. No Such Thing as Normal Podcast.
(28:13):
The series is brought to you by the New Zealand
Herald and teen Uniform and it's made with the support
of New Zealand on Air. New episodes of No Such
Thing As Normal are available wherever you get your podcasts.
Music is a big thing for me when I'm like overwhelmed.
So Taylor Swift, Yeah, Oil Swift's mine too, really, Oh my.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
God, Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
It's a Wednesday morning and I'm walking to school with
sixteen year old Emily Martin. We talk Taylor Swift for
a while, because when you find a fellow swift Y,
the bond is instant.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It just feels like she's in my brain. Sometimes I'm like,
how do you know.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This about me?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Like this feels like a song about anxiety, or like
there are specific lyrics.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm just like, hold on to specific lyrics, like I'm
the problem. It's me. You might recognize that from Taylor
Swift's song anti Hero. There's a reason these words resonate
with teenagers like Emily. She has dyslexia and ADHD. Nothing
wrong with those, but we live in a society that
still doesn't make space for different cognition, still doesn't really
(00:52):
understand it. So for much of her life Emily has
felt wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I do have moments where I'm like self conscious of
how I'm perceived, because then again I come back to
the thing of I'm the problem. I need to fix something.
It's my fault, and then I feel bad for putting
all my issues on to someone else. I still have
those underlying thoughts of that got to hate me.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity.
I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent, and
a few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. In
this series, you'll hear from experts and from many wonderful
people who experience the world in a unique way. We're
looking at neurodiversity from the inside. Gelda. I'm Sonya Gray,
(01:47):
and this is no such thing as normal. Series two.
Diagnoses like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, etc. Still carry a weighty stigma,
despite all the awareness and all the people like me
(02:09):
continually banging on about it. But if we view them
through a neurodiversity affirming lens, these are simply natural, normal
differences and very very valuable ones. So in this episode,
I'm asking why it is that neurodivergent people are so
prone to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and general overall low
(02:30):
self esteem. Why are those with ADHD and dyslexia filling
our jail cells, our mental health facilities, and our suicide stats.
We're still saying the problem is with the individual. Just
try a bit harder. But it's actually really hard, almost impossible,
to operate in a world that tells you that who
(02:52):
you really are is wrong. Year old Emily Martin was
struggling to find her place in the world from a
very young age, and just her second year of primary school,
she was referred to the public child mental health service
in Auckland, the Cari Center. Emily's come a long way
(03:13):
in the last few years. She is bright and vivacious,
but that sense of I'm not enough it's still there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm very good at masking, so people will say to me, Oh,
you don't have anxiety. You don't have I'm like, actually, yeah,
I do. I just mask it because of the judgment
I've had in the past from people, and so it's
very draining on me.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Can you remember the point where things were really really
difficult for you? Can you give me an idea of
what that looked like.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So I had gone to the Cowrie Center when I
was about six or seven, but I guess I don't
really know the purpose of me being there. It was like, Oh,
I just feel nervous all the time. Where I feel
anxious all the time, but I didn't know there was
like a label for it or an explanation. At that time,
I hadn't been diagnosed with ADHD. It was only the anxiety.
But I don't think I was as ware that I
was called anxiety. I guess I didn't really understand what
(04:09):
was going on in my brain.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Emily tried two different primary schools, but she was miserable
at both.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I was failing everything, Like if I was passing, it
was barely passing.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I think the real low was when she was in
year six, and.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
That's Emily's mum, Joe, who guided her through that hugely
stressful time.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And things were so bad academically, so bad socially. Emily
was in a terrible state. Her self esteem wasn't absolute
low when she wasn't passing, she wasn't in friendship groups
where she could be herself, and I was just like,
what am I going to do here? She had a
(04:52):
teacher that caused significant grief and that's really when the
anxiety really came out, because she was scared to go
to school. She wouldn't eat in the morning at all,
and this teacher had one day ripped up someone's work
in front of the class. This was in year two
and Emily was petrified that would happen to her, and
(05:14):
so it was probably through her whole primary schooling at
both schools. She never ate breakfast. She simply could not,
So we didn't fully understand what was going on.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
What was going on was a kid in crisis and
a schooling system which didn't understand and couldn't accommodate her.
There was a mix of dyslexia ADHD and eventually disc caalculia,
which is a specific learning difficulty with maths.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
The effort that she put in was phenomenal to pass
and to scrape in and so it wasn't obvious because
of her intelligence and because of how hard she worked,
so I understand it was hard probably for the teachers
to understand that as well. But she got a dyslexia
diagnosis I think in year five, and they didn't even
(06:06):
embrace that. So Emily didn't get a lot of support
with her dyslexia. We found out about the ADHD diagnosis,
and then I think it was in year ten dyscalculia.
So she had always struggled with maths and she had
been just absolutely driven to learn her times tables in
year five and sex, and she simply could not. She
(06:28):
tried every single thing she could, but it was always
kind of like it was Emily's fault that she couldn't
do her times tables.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I'm imagining you were seeing it at home, the repercussions
at home.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yes, absolutely, Oh my goodness, maths was not good for
the whole family's mental health.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And what about just in general, Joe, in terms of
how Emily was right through She got into the car
center at six, so obviously you thought there's major problems.
What were you seeing that really caused you concern?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I think it was lot about not fitting in, sort
of difficult relationships with peers.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Was she having meltdowns at home?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Oh yeah, I think just some quite oppositional behavior and
not wanting to cooperate, or if she was feeling anxious,
it would turn into something really big. She could go
from zero to ten just like that.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
The way I like to describe it, because when I
call it emotional overwhelmed, it's the volcano exploding. And I
find it very hard to explain to people. It can
be like obviously oppositional behavior. It can be me having
like a full meltdown, crying panic attack, which I very
rarely now have, but when I do have them, they're
very hard to control, to the point where medication has
(07:44):
to get involved to.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Calm me down.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Tell me about panic attacks when they were at their
worst for you.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
When they're at the worst. I'm crying. I can't really talk.
No one can really understand me. I feel like I'm
going to faint, I feel dizzy, I feel but just disorientated.
I don't know how to get the words out. A
massive explosion. It feels like glasses shattering. It feels like
(08:12):
the whole world is crashing down on me and the
whole world is going to end.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Sitting here listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, you
had this terrible situation with the teacher in year two,
and people might go, oh, kids should be resilient and
be able to handle that. But the kids I have
interviewed and spoken to, it can be one year or
one incident at school at that vulnerable age. It completely
derails you and it's so to me heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yes, you know, the self esteem issue was huge for
Emily because she thought she was dumb, she thought she
was always the problem.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, the problem is me. It's the silent mantra for
so many neurodivigent kids struggling with internalized shame and often
crippling anxiety.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
So anxiety starts from something, usually fear.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
That's Jane Kirsten, whose voice you might recognize from episode
fourteen on Dyslexia. She spoke with her amazing son Michael.
Jane has a private counseling and psychotherapy practice. Many of
her clients are eurodivergent, and often they're still carrying feelings
of shame and unworthiness from childhood.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
If you have grown up failing over years, you know,
then of course you're going to start feeling fearful of study,
you know, of what other people are thinking, what other
children are thinking. Children are actually feeling shame from a
very young age, you know, children with learning differences, difficulties. Yeah,
(09:49):
so from a very young age, children are growing up
feeling like they're less sin. And when you feel like
you're less sin and you're not achieving, then you're probably
likely to feel very anxious and.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Then you're not going to learn very well.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
No, and the more cordex just shuts down, that's right,
And then then comes the trauma piece. But my experience,
because I work mainly now with adults, is that I
see high levels of anxiety across the board, and as
we work down into where this has come from, it
goes all the way back through childhood. But it's across
the board, feelings of not being good enough, failing, not
(10:23):
fitting in, being different, you know, a range of things,
and dependent on their temperaments and history, of course, that
makes them still very anxious adults. It can be ages
later where the problem is suddenly now seen and that
child is already experiencing huge shame in there for anxiety
and that's been going on for a while. I mean, Brusheet,
(10:46):
you're saying to me, you can't test children for dyslexia
before seven, And I was like, oh darn, I think
that we can. I knew my son was dyslexicat too,
and we had diagnosis before seven. There's that whole thing.
By seven, that child might be two years or three
years into a major anxiety or general nosed anxiety disorder or.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Absolutely, despite the fact Janeson Michael had an early diagnosis
and a super supportive mum, he still suffered emotionally. He
was a profoundly dyslexic student in the mainstream school system,
and there's one particular memory of school that still haunts him.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
You hear books start closing, and then people go up
and give the book to the teacher at the front,
and then I'd be on the first page, stool. I
don't know what the heck I'm doing, And it was
the pressure from the other people finishing before me. And
not only did I finish last out of them all,
(11:46):
but I was sitting there feeling really stupid because everyone
was looking back at me, like, oh, we're still going
because this kid's on his first page, you know what
I mean. I definitely carry, you know, even many years
after being gone from school, I carry those anxiety and
all those feelings because of how I felt back in class.
(12:06):
For sure, it was like a living hell being at
school for me personally, it was bad.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Michael's gone on to great things. He is a success story,
but he still feels the shame from school.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
He had had some trauma through being hit by a
teacher in primary school for not listening or not paying attention,
and yeah, needless to say, that was not good for
him at all.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It's the anxiety around the learners that is the problem,
and we can give all the supports and accommodations and
they can get all the best marks. If they're anxious,
they carry that with them. I feel like the missing
piece is how are you? Therapist Jane Kirsten has great
(13:13):
insight into the unique neurodivergent experience of anxiety and shame,
so I'm keen to get her take on what happens
after the diagnosis, particularly for adults. I am struck by
the enormity of what so many are still carrying. Supposedly postdiagnosis,
they understand themselves and their brains better, but for many
(13:34):
the struggle is ongoing and persistent. You get the diagnosis,
Oh okay, it all makes sense, but then it's like, actually,
who am I? Who am I? Because you've had the
masker for so long you're great at playing the game. Yes,
when you try and unmask it as such a process, yes,
(13:56):
it's like that little kid is still in there, going
I'm still here. I don't trust that it's okay to unmask.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
That's right. It's one thing to know something right, it's
another thing to experience it through to a place of healing.
So we can have a diagnosis, which I think is
incredibly important. But then we've got to do the processing
and usually we've got to go back to the original pain. Yeah,
and that makes it very, very hard when you're someone
that finds processing emotions difficult. And I think that this
(14:27):
is a major problem that I'd like other therapists to
really understand, because our people with ADHD dyslexia, even some
gift of people, really really do struggle to process their feelings.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
This makes a lot of sense. Those with unique cognitions
feel the world in bold and when you feel so much,
it's a lot to process. It hurts literally. There are
studies that show intense emotional pain or rejection activate the
same region of the brain is physical pain.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
This guy in my research that said he'd rather take
a greater to his foot than feel that emotional pain again.
And so that was a very profound explanation by him
around facing the emotional pain.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
The greater to the foot a great way of explaining
just how intense it can be. So I wonder if
these lifelong negative emotional experiences can be called trauma. Jane
Kirsten says, it's complicated. Everyone's different and there are different
types of trauma which have different effects.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Trauma is specific in itself as to what it is.
I think that most people I've worked with have a
level of trauma because of their learning difference or neurodifference,
and that tends to come from specific ways that they've
been affected. You know, it's not necessary everybody. I don't
think we're right if we say everybody has trauma. I
(16:04):
don't think we're right in saying everybody who's neurodifferent has trauma.
There's lots of neurotypical people with loads of trauma. Yeah,
but I think there is a specific type of situation
that happens that causes trauma in our children and then
later adults.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
When does a negative experience or experiences cross the line
to be called trauma. We talk about small tea trauma
and big ta trauma. When do we capitalize the te right?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
You know, our brain has capacities to process certain things right,
and so it's when our brain has not got the
capacity to process some horrific thing that trauma starts encode.
So trauma itself really is trappedness. It's when something has
happened that we are unable to fight or flight. The
(16:58):
brain's amygdala when danger is Basically, hormones are sent to
it lightning fast and it goes into the danger of
fight flight freeze response. And so if we've been in
a trap situation, example, a child in a classroom and
something bad has happened and they can't get out and
they are highly upset in that feels like they're going
(17:20):
to be trapped and almost like they might die as
something horrendous is happening. The teacher might be angry at them,
other kids are laughing that child is trapped. They can't
get out of that classroom, they're not allowed out. That's
enough to create a trauma response in them, you know,
and it can become a really difficult, hard spiral for
somebody who gets quite trapped in that. Like you're saying,
(17:41):
old patterns and old experiences. So it needs disseminating, it
needs opening up and understanding all the different facets to it.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Probably what it needs is an expert to guide you
through it, because working with trauma beg T trauma all
Little Teacher Warmer can be traumatizing in itself. And Jane says,
the healing process is not just in the head. It
has to include the body. You need to feel to heal, it's.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Vital and feeling. Yeah, you're not going to heal if
you don't feel you need to take the story away
from their fest you do and just feel it's like
having an observer, to be able to observe what's happening
to us without becoming one with it or one with
a story about it. That's the key to feeling, to healing,
because to face into things that are really hard is
(18:36):
very painful, right, And we're creatures that don't want change,
really and we don't want to face pain. Yeah, but
to heal, we've got to face pain. There's no other
way back to that body. And can't go round, it
can't go over. It's like we're going on a bear hunt.
Do you remember that book? Can't go round, it can't
go over, it can't go under. It got to go
through it. You have to face the beer.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
But what happens when there's more than one beer in
someone's picture, when there's other layers of trauma? I'm guessing
that's not a straightforward.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Oh no, not at all. And so the more sort
of developmental situation that you have, like it could be
you could have a child with who's dyslexic their parent.
One of them is dyslexic but not identified. They don't
like what they're seeing in their child. The child is
already struggling at school, they've already been felt like they
had a trauma situation where they've been trapped in the classroom,
(19:32):
can't get out, they're shutting down. They go home, they
get told off by that parent. The parent yells at them,
they don't want to understand them. That's enough to add
more trauma to that child, let alone other major abuses
that we know about. Yeah, so the more you get
that consistent experience of trauma over and over, the more
complex and more likely for PTSD. And that's why I'm
(19:56):
a great believer in the therapy process, for going into
the pain and into helping integrate, you know, and come
through that trauma and that pain.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But is it possible? And I say that is all right,
But it sounds hard. If there's unsupported ADHD, autism or
dyslexia plus other layers of trauma, it's a lot to process.
So maybe this is where the rest of us come in,
shifting how we think about and treat those with different cognitions,
(20:27):
essentially removing the blame but changing long held views. Isn't
easy either.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
It's very very challenging. How do we do this with
a lot of acceptance and a lot of caring for
each other in all of our differences.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
How can we best help those who experience the world
differently and are carrying trauma and shame. Jane Kirsten says
empathy is key and an understanding that the diagnosis is real,
and so is the pain.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
To actually understand someone, you have to be able to identify.
And I think that because we're human, we all know shame,
and anyone listening to this who says they don't, I
just think it's not true. We all experience shame. Therefore,
we can all identify with each other and then we
can have empathy, because that's how we get empathy is identification.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Joe Martin, mum of sixteen year old Emily, says there's
a lot of empathy in their family now and it's
come quite literally through identification. Despite all that Emily's been through,
there's a silver lining.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
You know, through Emily's journey and also our son is
autistic in ADHD. But it's also led to the various
members of the family realizing that actually they are too,
so Emily's father, through seeing our son and Emily's journeys,
realized that he was autistic in ADHD, and so, you know,
at fifty was able to get those diagnosis and sense
(22:16):
was made about his world, things that had always been
difficult for him, and suddenly he understood himself.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
The autism ADHD combo can come with a lot of
complications in the world. It was he like, Oh, I've
only i'd known, I would have, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I think it was more just relief. He did also
get a dyslexi diagnosis about ten years before that, and
that was the first time I ever saw him in
tears because it was just such a relief. So for him,
it was the relief and thinking back to when he
was a child, there was even less known about neurodiversities.
(22:54):
So now he understands, and he understands why he finds
group situations and why he doesn't like all the small
talk that kind of networking side. He'd rather be one
on one with someone, and why he gets overwhelmed at times.
So we talk about that a lot as a family,
and understanding and seeing the triggers or knowing when to
(23:15):
pull back if someone's in a moment.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
One thing I'm talking about with this is it self
esteem peace, And I just wonder, you know, it's so
interesting for adults that get diagnosed late. Do you think
like there's a relief for him, But is his self
esteem good?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Would you say?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Intelligence actually mastered it and so he was able to
find ways to cope and get through, But it didn't
you know, it was actually really hard. And I think
the thing also with your adversities and especially ADHD, it
takes its toll on your brain because you're constantly working
on all these things and trying to work it out
and trying to make sense what your brain's doing and
what the world around doing, and so it's exhausting. So
(23:54):
he now has a meaning for what his life's been,
and so I think he's accepted that. But the diagnosis
has definitely helped actually his self esteem, I would say,
because he knows why he does things. And yeah, some
people say labels aren't good, but our experience is that
labels can help you understand, and they can help the
(24:15):
people around you understand. And then from there, his sister
got diagnosed, and then his mother got diagnosed, and so
it's been a really good journey for the family. And
while I don't have ADHD, I do have anxiety. So
it's really helped everyone understand each other within the family. Yeah,
(24:36):
it's actually been a real benefit pursuing those diagnoses. Yeah,
because of that understanding.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Understanding is key, But it was lack of understanding that met.
Joe's daughter Emily was deeply unhappy and anxious right through
primary school. They tried the public system, they tried the
private system, and after reaching crisis point in year six,
the family took a risk. They found something completely diff
Mount Hobson Middle School, which had a holistic approach to
(25:04):
learning and just twelve students in each class.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And it worked going to that school, Like I said
to mom, in certainly, I just felt accepted, and I
just felt welcomed, and I just felt like I could
unapologetically be myself. Honestly, I don't know what I would
have done without that school.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
What was it specifically that school gave you.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
It gave me a sense of belonging. I felt everyone
was a bit quirky, everyone had something a bit different
about them. It was eye opening for me and the
way that I got to experience so many different people
and see so many different personalities. I think it helped
me in accepting myself and accepting others.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Sadly, Mount Hobson Middle School no longer exists. It couldn't
afford to stay open, which is a big loss. Emily
is now doing really well at her local high school,
but she says it would have been impossible if she
hadn't had the support at Mount Hobson.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I'm still in contact with a lot of the teachers
from there because they genuinely changed my life and it
just felt like a family.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
It needs to be a place of refuge, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Still Yeah, I actually want to go into primary school
education when I go to university, and I guess in
a way, I want to be the teacher that I
wish I had had from a younger age, because like
I don't think any teacher fully got it when I
was younger. I want to be the teacher that can
be supportive and so in a way, I think as
(26:29):
a teacher, I want to do that and help kids
and give the education I wish I had received from
a younger age.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
At primary school, Emily was the kid who barely passed anything.
She believed she was dumb. But now in year twelve.
Even with dyslexia, ADHD and dyscalculia, she's getting top Marx,
She's excelling. He is part of a monologue she did
for English this year.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
My heart stopped.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
In that moment, my heart stopped. All I remember was
repeating for myself, stay strong, stay strong, stay strong.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Life is still hard, The anxiety is still there, but
Emily no longer believes that she is the problem.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I think overall, I've gotten there. It's been hard, but
you know we've gotten there.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, next time on No such Thing as Normal? What's
it like to live with Tourette syndrome? What is the
worst tick? The one that if you could take it away,
you would.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
The f would?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Why Because when I'm in class or in school, people
think I'm like just saying it on purpose.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
But my class knows.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Let all the year fives know, but not really the
year sixes sixth there.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
If you like this podcast, please rate and review it.
It helps people find it. No Such Thing as Normal
is produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. The editor
is Jamie Lee Smith. Owen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawks are
executive producers, and Bridget Mills helped with research. You can
find us on Instagram. No Such Thing as Normal Podcast.
(28:13):
The series is brought to you by the New Zealand
Herald and teen Uniform and it's made with the support
of New Zealand on Air. New episodes of No Such
Thing As Normal are available wherever you get your podcasts.
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