September 27, 2024 • 52 mins
Horses, and zebras, and King Henry the 8th's wives.... oh my! Join Regina as she chats with Rachel Ferdaszewski, a professional organizer in the Portland, Oregon area. They discuss the process of learning about masking, what it's like to unmask later in life, and talk about their lives as spicy brained moms of spicy brained kids.
If you are looking for help organizing, Rachel and Serenispace do amazing work. Check out the site and her services!
Make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast where ever you listen, Don't forget to check out the earlier episodes. We've had so many amazing discussions so far and can't wait to continue. Follow us on Instagram @DivergentPathsConsulting!
References:
K.C. Davis - Book: How to Keep House While Drowning. Podcast: Struggle Care
About Regina McMenomy Ph.D.
Host of the Divergent Paths Podcast | ADHD & Neurodiversity Advocate | Founder, Divergent Paths Consulting
Welcome to Divergent Paths, a podcast dedicated to exploring life, work, and creativity through the lens of neurodiversity. Hosted by Regina, founder of Divergent Paths Consulting, the show delves into the experiences of individuals navigating ADHD and other invisible disabilities. As someone who received a late ADHD diagnosis, Regina brings personal insights and professional expertise to each episode, helping listeners find new ways to thrive in a neurotypical world.
With over 20 years of experience in instructional design, project management, and coaching, Regina is passionate about creating inclusive spaces where neurodiverse individuals can succeed. Through this podcast, Regina shares conversations with experts, professionals, and everyday people, offering tips, strategies, and stories of empowerment.
Tune in to learn how to embrace neurodivergence, redefine success, and chart your own path forward.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I didn't know that what I was doing was masking until I heard the term and it was explained
(00:08):
to me, but I kind of used to hate it when people would tell me as a kid or a teenager
to just be myself because I didn't know who that was.
I kind of went through life just walking into a room, figuring out what people wanted and
showing this curated version of myself.
(00:41):
Hello and welcome to Divergent Paths.
I'm your host, Dr. Regina McMenemy.
I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor, and this is a podcast, not medical advice.
Have you always felt a little different but didn't know why?
Have you struggled with tasks that some people seem to handle with ease?
Are you mystified by social norms and interactions?
(01:04):
Divergent Paths is a podcast for late diagnosed neurodivergent people to discuss their journeys
discovering the joys and frustrations of having a spicy brain.
Each episode, I will interview someone who discovered they have ADHD, autism, or a combination
of the two later in life.
What defines a later in life diagnosis?
(01:24):
Anytime the realization happens outside of the quote unquote norm of childhood and adolescence.
This episode, I talked to Rachel Ferdicheski, a professional organizer, mom, and small business
owner.
We discussed the joys and pitfalls of discovering the genetic roots of our neuro-spicy families.
So stay tuned and thanks for listening to Divergent Paths.
(01:51):
So I've been trying to remember the first time we met.
Well, I think I might have met you before, but the first time I remember really sitting
down and talking with you was at the Halloween party that the kids had.
Yeah, and the kids were all running around and I had missed the memo that the kids had
(02:11):
sort of transitioned into drop off parties.
And you and Amanda were hanging out for the party and she was like, well, you can stay.
And I'm like, I don't think I will be comfortable if I leave yet.
Yeah.
And I think that the reason that that stands out to me is because we ended up talking about
discovering that we were neurodivergent later in life.
(02:36):
And the whole time we were talking and Amanda was just like, that's a neurodivergent thing
and that's a neurodivergent thing.
We were watching a mirror of what happened to me a couple months prior to that.
I think we had chatted and passing a couple of times before that, but it really was the
(02:59):
first time that we sat down and talked.
And I remember very tentatively bringing it up and being like, well, when I started to
realize I'm probably neurodivergent, I realized that some of these things I think are normal
are not really because...
My normal is not normal.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
(03:19):
My normal is not normal, normal.
And that is definitely part of what I thought kind of bonded the two of us and Amanda as
well.
And I've just gotten to this point in my life where I went through so much masking as a
(03:39):
kid and a teenager and a young adult and even early motherhood in the 30s where I just thought
that I had to be a certain way and trying so hard and just so much energy sucking masking
happening that by the time I met you, I was in the phase of here I am and maybe you don't
(04:05):
like me, maybe I'm not for you, but I'm not going to put any energy into being different.
Right.
I hadn't really come to be that comfortable with the idea of not masking.
I struggled in recognizing my mask because originally I would have said I didn't mask.
And I think that's because it's a very automatic process for me.
(04:28):
Now I know.
Now I know when it goes, I say my shields go up.
I mean, very like Star Trek geeky thing, but my shields go up and I start protecting myself.
I knew you would love that.
But I recognize it now.
At that time, I would have probably more likely said, well, I don't really mask very often.
(04:50):
And I think it's because I had just crafted personas that I felt were so much like me
that I just took on personas that were like, okay, this is very much like me and very much
going to fit in this environment and felt like that wasn't masking.
Now I know.
Now I know because now the shields are down.
(05:10):
I didn't know that what I was doing was masking until I heard the term and it was explained
to me, but I kind of used to hate it when people would tell me as a kid or a teenager
to just be myself because I didn't know who that was.
And I just kind of went through- I was always like, I'm always myself.
(05:33):
Right.
Like I can't avoid being myself, but I kind of went through life just walking into a room,
figuring out what people wanted and showing this curated version of myself that was those
things and left out the things they might not want.
(05:57):
And because I know now because of my neurodivergence, I have such a wide variety of interests and
I have done a reasonably deep dive on so many different topics that I can make it seem like
I am exactly like you.
(06:18):
I can be such a mirror and I would do that so automatically that when someone would say
just be yourself, I would think like, well, I plan to be myself, but what part of me?
Right.
Which version of me are you telling me to be right now?
(06:42):
Right?
Which version are you looking for?
Because it comes in seven different flavors.
Right?
From mild to spicy to extra spicy.
Where exactly do you want this to come?
I think I have similar tastes.
We've talked about this before where people are very comfortable with us, right?
(07:06):
That kind of masking, that flavor of masking comes from working to make sure people feel
the people you're with are comfortable.
Yes.
Yes.
And often ignoring how uncomfortable you are until much, much later.
Exactly.
And much, much later you're like, but wait, I was not comfortable with that.
(07:29):
Yes.
Yeah.
And I said yes and I meant no.
Oh, great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are hard things to kind of come back to.
So you talked a little bit about having a lot of knowledge about a bunch of different
things.
Do you have some persistent special interests that have just kind of continued through your
(07:53):
life?
I have several and I made a career out of one of them.
I love to categorize things and organize things and I built my business as a professional
organizer kind of based on that and combined it with another special interest of mine,
(08:19):
which is psychology and how people work and so just kind of figuring out, well, how does
this person work and how do I help them manage their life and their stuff more efficiently
by building systems to categorize their things in a way that helps them.
(08:43):
Right.
But the ostentatiously fun things that I have been stuck on are, from a very young age,
have been intensely interested in King Henry VIII's wives.
(09:04):
My mom used to sing me this song about being Henry VIII and I don't know what it's from
and this guy is just like, I'm Henry VIII.
My mom used to sing that too.
Just got married to the widow next door.
(09:25):
She's been married seven times before and everyone was an Henry.
Never had a Willie or Sam.
I'm a great old man.
I'm Henry, Henry VIII.
And like, I didn't know why that was funny and then when I found out that he had had
six wives, I was like, well, what?
(09:45):
And just all of the different details of that situation.
I didn't care that much about him as a person, but like all of these women and as I have
gotten older, their personalities and plights and it's just become a deeper fascination
(10:11):
rather than fading away.
So it's like one of those things where you're like, why is this the thing that got stuck
in my brain?
Right?
Right.
And I've been doing different things that I have been interested in for five minutes,
but that's just one of those things that just never went away.
(10:34):
Yeah.
I've mentioned a few times as I've been recording the podcast that like, especially the last
episode that they recorded was about hyperfocus.
And one of my frustrations with hyperfocus is it's not a switch that you can turn on
and off, right?
You don't always get to choose.
And special interests tend to be that way too.
For whatever reason, we don't always get to choose what the things are that persist.
(10:59):
Yeah.
If only, right?
If only we could pick.
I've had a lot of special interests that have been beneficial to me in other ways.
You know, getting interested in triathlons, for example, was a very healthy coping mechanism
through the lockdown.
(11:22):
And you know, bought all the gear and did all the stuff and I was very fit and all of
that.
And it's not that I don't care anymore.
It's just that I don't have that drive.
And I wish that I did because it was so good for me and it wasn't hard to make myself do
(11:47):
it, right?
Right.
And it wasn't let me build the motivation or let me plan it out or let me set myself
up with whatever steps I need to set up with so that I can do this thing.
When it's a hyperfocus, you just slide into it or when it's a special interest, you just
slide into it.
Yeah.
(12:08):
Yeah.
It's reigning yourself back.
That's the hard thing.
Right.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Because sometimes we can go a little too far with things.
What were some of the things that you felt like, you know, sort of tipped off your neurodivergence
or you're sort of wondering or questioning?
Did you have like a big event that was like, you know, knock you upside the head?
(12:32):
Oh, here I am.
Or was it something that just sort of like slowly dawned on you?
It was definitely a big event.
So I was told by my youngest child's preschool teacher that we should probably have my daughter
evaluated for ADHD.
(12:57):
And at the time, you know, it was kind of hard to get an evaluation.
I didn't really want to pay for one out of pocket and the schools won't do them until
you're in school.
And so she was not in kindergarten yet.
And so it kind of got put on the back burner.
(13:18):
But then when we did finally get around to it, I had been, you know, sort of reading
up on what to look for.
Right.
And so I had like very minimal knowledge of what executive dysfunction looks like in kids
(13:39):
that age.
And then they sent home this survey kind of thing that the parents are supposed to fill
out like this long questionnaire.
And I sat down to fill it out.
And every single question, I would think to myself, well, she does that, but that's normal.
(14:02):
I do that.
I do that.
And about halfway through this, like four page, probably like 50 questions, I was like,
wait a minute.
Wait.
No.
Just by the nature of the way that her, you know, incredibly complex medical system works
(14:29):
here in the United States, I ended up being diagnosed before her.
Oh, well, okay.
Yeah.
And I started on medication and all the medications were awful.
And I had to go through like this very long process of trying to find, you know, something
(14:54):
that would work and not make me essentially switch off.
Right.
When it wore off.
Like I would have these crashes where I would fall asleep sitting up.
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
I had one medication where it just heightened my paralysis, my decision paralysis so much.
(15:20):
Oh, God.
That's like my, oh God, that's, decision paralysis is like the thing.
Other than like when I try to start four sentences at one time, like those two things.
I feel like glitching.
Yeah.
Like, you just like, it's not.
(15:41):
Glitch.
It's the glitching, the glitching and the glitching is hard.
But the decision, decision paralysis is really hard for me.
Like just the.
Because I feel like I'm suffocating when I, when I get like that, like I can't, when I
can't decide and I have tricks to like get myself out of it, which are usually, okay,
what do you know you don't want?
(16:01):
I will usually back my way into where I want to be with that question.
But yeah, so if I took a medication that made me.
I would be very unhappy.
I took it one day and I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I had called a friend who
had been through medication trial and error process.
(16:27):
And I was like, can, can medications for this sometimes make your symptoms worse?
And she was like, yes, absolutely.
And unfortunately this particular one was a extended release one.
So it went on all day.
And by the end of the day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed crying.
(16:47):
I had decided I needed to go for a run because my, my friend that I called was like, what
do you do when you just need to feel better?
And I was like, I exercise and she was like, put on your clothes.
And my husband came in to our bedroom and was like, are you going on a run?
(17:09):
Cause I said that I was going to, and then it was like an hour later and I was like,
I don't know.
I don't know.
And I was just crying.
And then he so, so timidly and very, very gently asked me, are you going to take this
medication again tomorrow?
And I said, no, that's not a decision paralysis moment.
(17:39):
We know this isn't happening again.
So yeah, it's a, it's a wild ride, but now that I have one that works for me, you know,
a lot of people think that when you find the medicine that works for you, it's going to
(18:04):
like make you neurotypical, right?
Fix your brain chemistry and it doesn't at all.
But it's also, it's also amazing how much easier my life is with, with the correct medication
for me.
I agree.
(18:24):
I would tell a very similar story of, you know, I know I still have ADHD.
I still struggle with many of the same things, but it's at a point where the get up and go
to get things done isn't, isn't as much of a struggle.
Like I don't have that as much decision paralysis.
I still have, you know, many thoughts hitting at the same time.
(18:48):
I just saw a video today that was someone took, you know, a regular pen and was like
a regular pen or a neurotypical person has like one pen with one thought and they just
have to put the pen to paper to get the thought out.
But like a neurodiverse person has one of those pens with all the different colors that
you have to like push one down to get it.
(19:08):
It gets stuck on each other.
Yeah.
And you're trying to push all of them down at the same time.
And that's what I mean, neurodiverse is like, like you have all of these thoughts and you
have to get them out and you know, you don't know, you don't know how to order them.
And so that's the ordering of thoughts and the ordering of actions and things is easier.
(19:28):
And I can think myself through in terms of like, OK, I am more motivated to do my dishes
at night because I know if the kitchen is clean in the morning, I'm more likely to make
a healthy breakfast for myself.
And I can think through those steps and get the motivation where before I would have been
like, I don't have the I don't have the energy to do this.
(19:50):
Fine, whatever.
I'm not that motivated.
So being able to think through those next steps seems to be a big thing for me.
That's fascinating because I happen to know that you and I take the same medication.
Yes.
And I have found the opposite is true.
Really?
That it doesn't help me at all decide which what is ordering what to order what the priority
(20:13):
is, but it does give me the ability to see something that needs to be done and tell myself
not now.
Like I'm doing this other thing right now.
I see it sidetracked.
It gives me the ability to say no to the side quest.
(20:34):
OK, right.
This still pops up as an option on the screen.
But I'm able to say no instead of just like gallivanting off.
Right.
In whatever other direction you're able to kind of rein in and stay on track.
More fascinating.
Yeah.
And without that anxiety.
So right.
(20:54):
The unmedicated me would get off on the side quests that like just branched off into nothing.
They did right.
Is that I couldn't.
(21:16):
I couldn't say no, because I would be terrified that I would never come back to it.
Right.
And so you have this anxiety that if I didn't do that thing right now, I would never make
it back.
Right.
You'd never get back to whatever it was.
Yeah.
(21:37):
Yeah.
And so what I have found is it allows me to say no to the side quest and it helps.
It helps me in the getting started.
Right.
So it's I can't remember her name right now, but the domestic blisters.
Oh, Casey Davis.
(21:58):
Casey Davis.
Yeah.
She said that when she took the same medication that you and I, that she felt like what it
did was remove that resistance.
So when I see something that I quote unquote should be doing and I decide that is the thing
(22:25):
to do, then I don't have the same gravity pulling me down and I'm able to get up and
do that thing.
Right.
Yeah.
It just it's it greases the wheels.
I think she said something along those lines at one point too.
Like it makes it so I think I heard her in one I'll link I'll link to Casey Davis and
(22:50):
her book, Keeping House While Drowning.
Which I have and is excellent.
It's an excellent book.
It's great.
It's great.
She was she really was one of I told my story in another episode, but you know, she was
one of the tick talkers that helped me realize that I had ADHD.
She had one episode where she said something like or one video where she said she would
(23:15):
be sitting on the couch and where she would be she would have paralysis and not be able
to get up to do her laundry.
She had just the ability just to get up and do the laundry.
And that like there was like you said, the resistance, the resistance is gone.
I experienced that in the lack of anxiety.
Like I knew I was anxious, but I didn't realize the profound depth my anxiety had and the
(23:41):
impact it had on my thinking until until I started taking the medication and the noise
calmed down just like the like blaring noise and my brain started to kind of shift into
like more, you know, lanes of thought.
So I could kind of like see, OK, we've got like five things going on right now.
Where are we going to put our energy where before it was like I could spiral out of control
(24:06):
on, you know, 15 different things all at once if I wanted to or if I didn't want to, I didn't
want to because nobody wants to do that.
No, nobody wants to do that.
We were actually just talking about this.
My husband and I were talking about how to motivate her to do this specific thing at
(24:27):
school and it has to be done.
And she's like there's no dopamine in it for her anymore.
And he was like, well, maybe if we give her this big prize that she can work toward when
she completes the whole program.
And I was like, I don't think that's really going to work because it's not immediate enough.
(24:50):
Right.
Exactly.
You know, I saw an explanation of ADHD motivators and a task being important isn't going to
motivate you.
A task being necessary isn't going to motivate you.
And it's not that I don't understand that those things are important.
(25:12):
It's not that I don't understand they're necessary.
It's that I can't overcome the executive dysfunction to get there.
It has to be novel or interesting or something I'm passionate about or urgent.
I had spent my entire life with urgency as the only method I had for getting me to do
(25:44):
things.
Like that was it.
That was the only thing I knew how to do because society and the world around me and my parents
who didn't know that I was neurodivergent had taught me that making things enjoyable
or doing things just that you enjoy is something you get to do as a reward after you've done
(26:07):
the things that you need to do.
You do the drudgery and then you get to do the fun things.
And that is a kind of a very counter to neurodivergence.
It puts you in that spiral from a neurochemical standpoint, from my understanding.
I am not a brain scientist.
(26:28):
But it puts you in that downward spiral where your brain needs dopamine.
It's searching for dopamine.
It's not finding any dopamine.
So then it has a harder time with executive function.
So then you force it more and it's taking more and more energy for you to get less and
less done and you're berating yourself and you feel bad about yourself and all of this.
(26:51):
Whereas we gamified chores for my daughter and all I did was list out all the chores
that needed to be done.
And then I gave her a D20, a 20-sided die, and she would roll it and like all the fives,
(27:12):
so five, 10, 15, and 20 were take a dance break.
And everything else was one of the chores.
And she got her chores done so fast.
If she would roll the dice and it was one that had already been done, then I think she
(27:35):
got to eat like one M&M or something.
And so as she was getting them done, you get more and more M&Ms, you get dance breaks just
randomly.
And so she got her chores done in like half the amount of time that it had ever taken
her.
Whatever take, yeah.
Just by adding this- A random element.
(27:55):
... things to do.
It took less time because her brain had that dopamine to be like, okay, I have the fuel
to get through this task I don't want to do.
Waiting on the other side of that is another chance.
(28:16):
Finding ways to do that for myself had not occurred to me until I had to start thinking
about it from a parenting standpoint.
Well, that was going to be kind of what I was going to lead into both in how did the
dynamic in your family change when you realized that you and your child were both neurodivergent?
(28:44):
But in addition, how did your family respond?
I don't have a lot of family to talk about this with anymore.
I am pretty sure that my mom and my brothers are neurodivergent.
I brought it up to my one brother that is still with me.
(29:04):
And he's just like, meh, he's 70, doesn't care at this point.
Like whatever.
Okay, you have ADHD, great.
So what kind of response did you get from your family and how did it change for you
guys?
God, it changed everything.
(29:25):
It changed everything quickly and then slowly.
And so I got diagnosed and then my youngest child got diagnosed and then my oldest child
got diagnosed first with ADHD and then later with autism spectrum disorder.
And I have also come to suspect that I am also on the autism spectrum, although I have
(29:53):
not gone through the incredibly long process.
They're diagnosed.
Because paperwork is the deepest layer of hell to me.
Same friend, same.
(30:15):
But there was a lot of resistance from my partner to even get our youngest child evaluated
at first.
And as I think is true with a lot of people who grew up when I did or earlier than that,
(30:41):
there's a lot of stigma attached to these labels.
The diagnosis, the labels, yeah.
I feel like I'm reclaiming it and have found a lot of comfort in it.
I've heard people use the phrase, it's better to be a normal zebra than an abnormal horse.
Like spending your whole life thinking that you're a horse and being really upset that
(31:07):
you have all these stripes and that you're a different shape.
So for me, it was a big relief.
And I did a deep dive into ADHD and later into autism and trying to figure these things
out.
And that became like my new thing.
(31:27):
And it revolutionized the way that I interact with my children.
And we have changed things for them at school.
We have changed schools for my oldest child to give them the right balance they need of
social time and alone, focused time.
(31:50):
And we've just been able to shift the whole way that we operate.
Instead of trying to fit myself and my children into a spot or a place or a mold within society,
(32:13):
I am looking for what is the right shape?
What is the right space?
And how do we make it so that we can live in that instead of trying to shove ourselves
into this other box that doesn't work?
(32:33):
So that perspective shift was probably the biggest change.
And that's when I say that it changed slowly because the acceptance of extended family
has been varied and slow process.
(33:00):
And we are very fortunate that the majority of the people in our family want very much
to be in our lives and are willing to put forth some effort to understand our needs
(33:20):
and those things.
But that doesn't mean it's easy or comfortable always.
So we've had interesting conversations and hiccups along the way.
My parents were scared, I think is the right word, because they were scared of those labels.
(33:50):
They were scared of my children having them.
They were scared of me having them.
And they were scared to start looking at themselves in a way that...
They didn't want to be zebras.
They didn't want to be zebras.
They had spent so long creating their horse facades.
(34:16):
And it had been so unsafe in their lives.
Well, to be othered at all, like in any way, not even just necessarily neurodivergence
or what we see, what we know now as neurodivergence, just to be othered in any way was dangerous
and has been throughout history.
And I can point to many identity factors that are dangerous for people to have.
(34:43):
But I wonder if that's part of my brother sort of just shrugging it off as just like
partially, it doesn't really matter.
And partially, I don't want to think about this as a potential for me, for him, for his
life.
I wonder what my mom would be thinking or what my mom's experience of me recognizing
(35:08):
this would be like.
But that's always forever going to be speculation.
Yeah.
But the data on ADHD shows that there is almost no other reasonable conclusion than basically
(35:33):
to have ADHD, you have inherited it.
Right.
There's a lot of overlap in behaviors with CPTSD and ADHD, but there are some very distinct
differences and the professionals can assess those and see those.
(35:59):
And that ADHD is something you are born with and very, very little of it could possibly
be attributed to environmental factors during pregnancy.
(36:22):
I believe the last statistic I saw on that was 6%.
Yeah.
And the rest of it is just, you're just born with it.
So the fact that I have ADHD and my children have ADHD means that at least one of my parents
(36:43):
has been.
Right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I strongly suspect that my mom had ADHD and my dad was autistic.
And that was just kind of how things rolled for them.
But I think that my mom's generation as well, she would feel responsible in some way.
(37:12):
She would feel responsible.
And I think that that might have generated fear as well.
I was holding her responsible in some way.
And I don't.
I mean, I hold her responsible for some other things, but the ADHD is not something that
I'm like, oh my God, you gave this to me.
Like you.
Yeah.
I have blue eyes.
(37:33):
Like, okay.
You didn't pick that either.
Yeah.
And I think there's a lot of that, especially as women.
There's a lot of guilt that is attached to the way that our children are because it's
such a huge power and responsibility to be able to bring forth life into this world.
(37:57):
Absolutely.
You know, a lot of blame gets attached to that.
Yeah.
And I think that that's something that most mothers have some interaction with that in
some way.
But I think for people like my mom, who came out of a very abusive childhood and a very
(38:24):
difficult time when she was younger, she wouldn't be able to kind of step back and recognize
like this isn't like, this isn't a blame situation.
We don't need to point blame because in some abusive families, that's the big thing is
you need to have somebody that you can pin everything on.
(38:45):
And so she would have been a common dynamic and one that my mom had to live through too.
So yeah, remind myself and every, like I love my mom.
We get along really, really well and everything that she did, she was doing the very best
(39:07):
that she could with the information that she had at the time.
And so I hold nothing against my mom.
It has made for some slightly uncomfortable and sometimes very amusing conversation around
(39:28):
neurodivergence and things that I now know were the neurodivergent quirks, right?
Just intertwining themselves into our everyday lives while I was growing up.
And a lot of it is just like my most cherished things about my childhood and my family and
(39:53):
stuff just wouldn't have been possible or wouldn't have happened without being neurodivergent.
Absolutely.
No, and I think there is like, I think back about my childhood and I grew up in a very
different time than my brothers did.
As you know, my brother's significantly older than I am.
So like my family didn't have a lot of money and whatnot.
So I grew up in this kind of magical childhood where my mom was able to do all kinds of things
(40:17):
for me that she hadn't been able to do for my brothers.
She was also living out like what she wanted for a childhood through my childhood.
She's a lot of pressure.
It is a lot of pressure.
It is a lot of pressure.
And see, like when we want to lean on the things I might want to like hold her accountable
for, some of that pressure would be part of it.
(40:39):
But again, that was not a healed part for her.
That wasn't a knowing thing that she did.
But tell me a little bit about how you feel like your family even not knowing that, to
name it, neurodivergence, like I know you've made accommodations and you talked about like
gamifying things for your kids and to get them the dopamine to get things done.
(41:04):
What are some ways you think your family accommodated their invisible disabilities before they knew
what they were?
Well, I actually think this is one of the things that made it so difficult to find out
that we are a neurodivergent family is that we were so good at having healthy and effective
(41:27):
coping mechanisms that were passed down generation to generation.
It just would go unnoticed.
Right?
So one thing that I think is so fun and hilarious, and when I talk about like the cherished things
of my upbringing, is that every woman in my family sings their way through life.
(41:54):
And none of us are good singers.
And we don't sing songs, like sometimes we sing songs that we've heard, but that's not
what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about when I go downstairs and I need to grab my purse to get a credit card
to input it into something on my computer, I will sing going down the stairs to get my
(42:19):
card, not going to pick up all that stuff, going to get my card, not more copies, just
going to get my credit card.
And I'll sing this to myself as I go downstairs.
And I have to tell my daughter to do more than two tasks.
Right?
(42:39):
Right.
And she'll make up a song for it.
And then she will sing that song to herself as she's doing them so that she remembers
what the next one is.
Right.
And this is a thing that my grandma did.
It's a thing that my mom did.
It's a thing that my sister did when she nannied my kids.
(43:00):
And it's so ingrained in our lives that it did not occur to me that other people don't
do this.
It's fascinating because it's both an accommodation in your helping yourself stay on task with
what you're singing, but it's also satiating that audio stimming.
(43:28):
Right?
I didn't recognize until less than a year ago that audio stimming was a thing.
Just you talking sometimes is a thing.
I have all of these weird sounds that I make in the kitchen.
And when I'm cooking and I'm making different things, I whistle through my teeth, I suck
(43:48):
air in, I do all this stuff.
And I never thought anything of it.
And it's all this audio stimming where I'm just using my voice as a stim mechanism.
Now I recognize that some of my friends who talk all the time do that too.
Absolutely.
Or talking to myself or the dog or a lot of those things.
(44:14):
We had little spots all over our house growing up where you would put things you didn't want
to forget.
And that's a thing that as an organizer, I have found really helpful is to have people
be intentional about this.
A lot of my, the majority of my clients actually are neurodivergent in one way or another.
(44:38):
And all of these accommodations for having your environment set up to work for you are
things that I learned from my mom really and from my parents' relationships.
(45:04):
So my dad definitely has ADHD.
I think my mom has ADHD, autism and ADHD.
But my dad might also have ADHD.
It's hard to tell.
She's less talkative than she is, so I don't know as much of what's going on in his brain.
(45:25):
But they would work together in this way that accommodated each other's things.
So my mom would never touch my dad's doom piles.
And a doom pile, it stands for didn't organize, only moved.
So it can be in a box or it can be a pile on a desk.
(45:46):
It can be a junk drawer.
Yes, my dad would always know exactly where something was in the pile.
And if somebody were to clean it up and organize it for him, he would be lost.
And so my mom was the kind of person who, when she brought canned goods home from the
(46:07):
grocery store, would rotate the oldest ones to the front and face all of the labels in
exactly the same orientation.
My dad would have these big piles and my mom would just leave them alone.
And this was astounding to me.
It was the way that they had found that worked for them was to have these different zones.
(46:33):
They adapted.
Yeah.
And that's where she had her space where she got her labels facing and he had his piles.
And yeah, I am both of those things.
Right?
In different contexts.
And so we've got all of these different things.
And then there's lots of places where neurodivergence overlaps with hypermobility or other conditions.
(47:06):
I also have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
For a long time, I thought I had the hypermobile type, but it turns out I actually have hypermobility.
We have, oh, I forgot the name of it right now, but I have progressive scoliosis.
So there's a type that is specifically linked to that.
(47:28):
But I am also hypermobile.
And my mom would talk about if you stand up too fast, you get the little dizzies.
Right?
And she would talk about how if you roll your ankle, you just got to hop it out.
(47:53):
And these little things that made it seem so normal and not an issue, because to her
it was normal.
Everyone else did it in the family.
And so when I went to the physical therapist, I got a new physical therapist a couple of
years ago.
And she was like, I've never met anybody with a chronic illness like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
(48:17):
before who was so at ease with it.
She was like, is this the only symptom that you have?
And I was like, oh no, I have all the symptoms.
And I went through all of the things that go on with me.
And it's the whole list of them, but I'm not upset about it.
(48:40):
I just do what I need to do.
You just accommodate it as you need.
Yeah.
And it's not a boogeyman, I guess.
It's not this thing that I'm like waiting to see how it's going to hurt me next.
I just do what I need to do and try to foster that gratitude for the things that my body
(49:07):
does do.
My body is really abnormal in a lot of ways.
And it still manages to get me around and do basically everything.
It built people.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it's an amazing thing for doing that.
And you were hypermobile while you were hypermobile and Ehlers-Danlos while you were building
(49:30):
people.
And that's a special thing too.
Yeah, so I think just not having this anxiety about it.
Keeping us from having a label was what allowed my mom to not have anxiety about it.
But having a name for it is what took away my anxiety about it.
(49:54):
So I'm not going to begrudge her what she needed to alleviate her anxiety, but it's
helping me move forward with my own family in this way where I say, you're not broken.
You're not less than.
These are the things that we need for us.
(50:16):
And it's up to other people to figure out what they need for them.
And we...
Comparison is the thief of joy.
So don't compare yourself to everybody else.
Just figure out what you need.
Yeah.
That's a great kind of place, I think, for us to kind of wrap up our conversation.
(50:37):
I really appreciate you coming and chatting with me about all this.
And we have had many conversations over the last few years about this.
And I appreciate you as one of the touchstones that has helped me sort of unpack my own journey
with this, my own path.
So thank you.
(50:58):
Where can our listeners find you?
And where would you like them to come discover more about you or perhaps your services?
Yeah.
So my business is called Serenispace Home Organization.
And our website is www.serenaspace.com.
And that's S-E-R-E-N-I-S-P-A-C-E.com.
(51:22):
Great.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for listening.
I've had the privilege of working with Rachel on my Big Garage Organization project, and
(51:42):
I can wholeheartedly recommend her services.
So check out her site if you're looking for some organizational help.
I will have the website in the show notes.
Make sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, like and leave a review, and share
with your Neuro Spicy Brained friends.
Follow us on Instagram at DivergentPaths Consulting.
(52:03):
No spaces.
And until next time, stay spicy.
I didn't know that what I was doing was masking until I heard the term and it was explained
(00:08):
to me, but I kind of used to hate it when people would tell me as a kid or a teenager
to just be myself because I didn't know who that was.
I kind of went through life just walking into a room, figuring out what people wanted and
showing this curated version of myself.
(00:41):
Hello and welcome to Divergent Paths.
I'm your host, Dr. Regina McMenemy.
I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor, and this is a podcast, not medical advice.
Have you always felt a little different but didn't know why?
Have you struggled with tasks that some people seem to handle with ease?
Are you mystified by social norms and interactions?
(01:04):
Divergent Paths is a podcast for late diagnosed neurodivergent people to discuss their journeys
discovering the joys and frustrations of having a spicy brain.
Each episode, I will interview someone who discovered they have ADHD, autism, or a combination
of the two later in life.
What defines a later in life diagnosis?
(01:24):
Anytime the realization happens outside of the quote unquote norm of childhood and adolescence.
This episode, I talked to Rachel Ferdicheski, a professional organizer, mom, and small business
owner.
We discussed the joys and pitfalls of discovering the genetic roots of our neuro-spicy families.
So stay tuned and thanks for listening to Divergent Paths.
(01:51):
So I've been trying to remember the first time we met.
Well, I think I might have met you before, but the first time I remember really sitting
down and talking with you was at the Halloween party that the kids had.
Yeah, and the kids were all running around and I had missed the memo that the kids had
(02:11):
sort of transitioned into drop off parties.
And you and Amanda were hanging out for the party and she was like, well, you can stay.
And I'm like, I don't think I will be comfortable if I leave yet.
Yeah.
And I think that the reason that that stands out to me is because we ended up talking about
discovering that we were neurodivergent later in life.
(02:36):
And the whole time we were talking and Amanda was just like, that's a neurodivergent thing
and that's a neurodivergent thing.
We were watching a mirror of what happened to me a couple months prior to that.
I think we had chatted and passing a couple of times before that, but it really was the
(02:59):
first time that we sat down and talked.
And I remember very tentatively bringing it up and being like, well, when I started to
realize I'm probably neurodivergent, I realized that some of these things I think are normal
are not really because...
My normal is not normal.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
(03:19):
My normal is not normal, normal.
And that is definitely part of what I thought kind of bonded the two of us and Amanda as
well.
And I've just gotten to this point in my life where I went through so much masking as a
(03:39):
kid and a teenager and a young adult and even early motherhood in the 30s where I just thought
that I had to be a certain way and trying so hard and just so much energy sucking masking
happening that by the time I met you, I was in the phase of here I am and maybe you don't
(04:05):
like me, maybe I'm not for you, but I'm not going to put any energy into being different.
Right.
I hadn't really come to be that comfortable with the idea of not masking.
I struggled in recognizing my mask because originally I would have said I didn't mask.
And I think that's because it's a very automatic process for me.
(04:28):
Now I know.
Now I know when it goes, I say my shields go up.
I mean, very like Star Trek geeky thing, but my shields go up and I start protecting myself.
I knew you would love that.
But I recognize it now.
At that time, I would have probably more likely said, well, I don't really mask very often.
(04:50):
And I think it's because I had just crafted personas that I felt were so much like me
that I just took on personas that were like, okay, this is very much like me and very much
going to fit in this environment and felt like that wasn't masking.
Now I know.
Now I know because now the shields are down.
(05:10):
I didn't know that what I was doing was masking until I heard the term and it was explained
to me, but I kind of used to hate it when people would tell me as a kid or a teenager
to just be myself because I didn't know who that was.
And I just kind of went through- I was always like, I'm always myself.
(05:33):
Right.
Like I can't avoid being myself, but I kind of went through life just walking into a room,
figuring out what people wanted and showing this curated version of myself that was those
things and left out the things they might not want.
(05:57):
And because I know now because of my neurodivergence, I have such a wide variety of interests and
I have done a reasonably deep dive on so many different topics that I can make it seem like
I am exactly like you.
(06:18):
I can be such a mirror and I would do that so automatically that when someone would say
just be yourself, I would think like, well, I plan to be myself, but what part of me?
Right.
Which version of me are you telling me to be right now?
(06:42):
Right?
Which version are you looking for?
Because it comes in seven different flavors.
Right?
From mild to spicy to extra spicy.
Where exactly do you want this to come?
I think I have similar tastes.
We've talked about this before where people are very comfortable with us, right?
(07:06):
That kind of masking, that flavor of masking comes from working to make sure people feel
the people you're with are comfortable.
Yes.
Yes.
And often ignoring how uncomfortable you are until much, much later.
Exactly.
And much, much later you're like, but wait, I was not comfortable with that.
(07:29):
Yes.
Yeah.
And I said yes and I meant no.
Oh, great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are hard things to kind of come back to.
So you talked a little bit about having a lot of knowledge about a bunch of different
things.
Do you have some persistent special interests that have just kind of continued through your
(07:53):
life?
I have several and I made a career out of one of them.
I love to categorize things and organize things and I built my business as a professional
organizer kind of based on that and combined it with another special interest of mine,
(08:19):
which is psychology and how people work and so just kind of figuring out, well, how does
this person work and how do I help them manage their life and their stuff more efficiently
by building systems to categorize their things in a way that helps them.
(08:43):
Right.
But the ostentatiously fun things that I have been stuck on are, from a very young age,
have been intensely interested in King Henry VIII's wives.
(09:04):
My mom used to sing me this song about being Henry VIII and I don't know what it's from
and this guy is just like, I'm Henry VIII.
My mom used to sing that too.
Just got married to the widow next door.
(09:25):
She's been married seven times before and everyone was an Henry.
Never had a Willie or Sam.
I'm a great old man.
I'm Henry, Henry VIII.
And like, I didn't know why that was funny and then when I found out that he had had
six wives, I was like, well, what?
(09:45):
And just all of the different details of that situation.
I didn't care that much about him as a person, but like all of these women and as I have
gotten older, their personalities and plights and it's just become a deeper fascination
(10:11):
rather than fading away.
So it's like one of those things where you're like, why is this the thing that got stuck
in my brain?
Right?
Right.
And I've been doing different things that I have been interested in for five minutes,
but that's just one of those things that just never went away.
(10:34):
Yeah.
I've mentioned a few times as I've been recording the podcast that like, especially the last
episode that they recorded was about hyperfocus.
And one of my frustrations with hyperfocus is it's not a switch that you can turn on
and off, right?
You don't always get to choose.
And special interests tend to be that way too.
For whatever reason, we don't always get to choose what the things are that persist.
(10:59):
Yeah.
If only, right?
If only we could pick.
I've had a lot of special interests that have been beneficial to me in other ways.
You know, getting interested in triathlons, for example, was a very healthy coping mechanism
through the lockdown.
(11:22):
And you know, bought all the gear and did all the stuff and I was very fit and all of
that.
And it's not that I don't care anymore.
It's just that I don't have that drive.
And I wish that I did because it was so good for me and it wasn't hard to make myself do
(11:47):
it, right?
Right.
And it wasn't let me build the motivation or let me plan it out or let me set myself
up with whatever steps I need to set up with so that I can do this thing.
When it's a hyperfocus, you just slide into it or when it's a special interest, you just
slide into it.
Yeah.
(12:08):
Yeah.
It's reigning yourself back.
That's the hard thing.
Right.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Because sometimes we can go a little too far with things.
What were some of the things that you felt like, you know, sort of tipped off your neurodivergence
or you're sort of wondering or questioning?
Did you have like a big event that was like, you know, knock you upside the head?
(12:32):
Oh, here I am.
Or was it something that just sort of like slowly dawned on you?
It was definitely a big event.
So I was told by my youngest child's preschool teacher that we should probably have my daughter
evaluated for ADHD.
(12:57):
And at the time, you know, it was kind of hard to get an evaluation.
I didn't really want to pay for one out of pocket and the schools won't do them until
you're in school.
And so she was not in kindergarten yet.
And so it kind of got put on the back burner.
(13:18):
But then when we did finally get around to it, I had been, you know, sort of reading
up on what to look for.
Right.
And so I had like very minimal knowledge of what executive dysfunction looks like in kids
(13:39):
that age.
And then they sent home this survey kind of thing that the parents are supposed to fill
out like this long questionnaire.
And I sat down to fill it out.
And every single question, I would think to myself, well, she does that, but that's normal.
(14:02):
I do that.
I do that.
And about halfway through this, like four page, probably like 50 questions, I was like,
wait a minute.
Wait.
No.
Just by the nature of the way that her, you know, incredibly complex medical system works
(14:29):
here in the United States, I ended up being diagnosed before her.
Oh, well, okay.
Yeah.
And I started on medication and all the medications were awful.
And I had to go through like this very long process of trying to find, you know, something
(14:54):
that would work and not make me essentially switch off.
Right.
When it wore off.
Like I would have these crashes where I would fall asleep sitting up.
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
I had one medication where it just heightened my paralysis, my decision paralysis so much.
(15:20):
Oh, God.
That's like my, oh God, that's, decision paralysis is like the thing.
Other than like when I try to start four sentences at one time, like those two things.
I feel like glitching.
Yeah.
Like, you just like, it's not.
(15:41):
Glitch.
It's the glitching, the glitching and the glitching is hard.
But the decision, decision paralysis is really hard for me.
Like just the.
Because I feel like I'm suffocating when I, when I get like that, like I can't, when I
can't decide and I have tricks to like get myself out of it, which are usually, okay,
what do you know you don't want?
(16:01):
I will usually back my way into where I want to be with that question.
But yeah, so if I took a medication that made me.
I would be very unhappy.
I took it one day and I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I had called a friend who
had been through medication trial and error process.
(16:27):
And I was like, can, can medications for this sometimes make your symptoms worse?
And she was like, yes, absolutely.
And unfortunately this particular one was a extended release one.
So it went on all day.
And by the end of the day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed crying.
(16:47):
I had decided I needed to go for a run because my, my friend that I called was like, what
do you do when you just need to feel better?
And I was like, I exercise and she was like, put on your clothes.
And my husband came in to our bedroom and was like, are you going on a run?
(17:09):
Cause I said that I was going to, and then it was like an hour later and I was like,
I don't know.
I don't know.
And I was just crying.
And then he so, so timidly and very, very gently asked me, are you going to take this
medication again tomorrow?
And I said, no, that's not a decision paralysis moment.
(17:39):
We know this isn't happening again.
So yeah, it's a, it's a wild ride, but now that I have one that works for me, you know,
a lot of people think that when you find the medicine that works for you, it's going to
(18:04):
like make you neurotypical, right?
Fix your brain chemistry and it doesn't at all.
But it's also, it's also amazing how much easier my life is with, with the correct medication
for me.
I agree.
(18:24):
I would tell a very similar story of, you know, I know I still have ADHD.
I still struggle with many of the same things, but it's at a point where the get up and go
to get things done isn't, isn't as much of a struggle.
Like I don't have that as much decision paralysis.
I still have, you know, many thoughts hitting at the same time.
(18:48):
I just saw a video today that was someone took, you know, a regular pen and was like
a regular pen or a neurotypical person has like one pen with one thought and they just
have to put the pen to paper to get the thought out.
But like a neurodiverse person has one of those pens with all the different colors that
you have to like push one down to get it.
(19:08):
It gets stuck on each other.
Yeah.
And you're trying to push all of them down at the same time.
And that's what I mean, neurodiverse is like, like you have all of these thoughts and you
have to get them out and you know, you don't know, you don't know how to order them.
And so that's the ordering of thoughts and the ordering of actions and things is easier.
(19:28):
And I can think myself through in terms of like, OK, I am more motivated to do my dishes
at night because I know if the kitchen is clean in the morning, I'm more likely to make
a healthy breakfast for myself.
And I can think through those steps and get the motivation where before I would have been
like, I don't have the I don't have the energy to do this.
(19:50):
Fine, whatever.
I'm not that motivated.
So being able to think through those next steps seems to be a big thing for me.
That's fascinating because I happen to know that you and I take the same medication.
Yes.
And I have found the opposite is true.
Really?
That it doesn't help me at all decide which what is ordering what to order what the priority
(20:13):
is, but it does give me the ability to see something that needs to be done and tell myself
not now.
Like I'm doing this other thing right now.
I see it sidetracked.
It gives me the ability to say no to the side quest.
(20:34):
OK, right.
This still pops up as an option on the screen.
But I'm able to say no instead of just like gallivanting off.
Right.
In whatever other direction you're able to kind of rein in and stay on track.
More fascinating.
Yeah.
And without that anxiety.
So right.
(20:54):
The unmedicated me would get off on the side quests that like just branched off into nothing.
They did right.
Is that I couldn't.
(21:16):
I couldn't say no, because I would be terrified that I would never come back to it.
Right.
And so you have this anxiety that if I didn't do that thing right now, I would never make
it back.
Right.
You'd never get back to whatever it was.
Yeah.
(21:37):
Yeah.
And so what I have found is it allows me to say no to the side quest and it helps.
It helps me in the getting started.
Right.
So it's I can't remember her name right now, but the domestic blisters.
Oh, Casey Davis.
(21:58):
Casey Davis.
Yeah.
She said that when she took the same medication that you and I, that she felt like what it
did was remove that resistance.
So when I see something that I quote unquote should be doing and I decide that is the thing
(22:25):
to do, then I don't have the same gravity pulling me down and I'm able to get up and
do that thing.
Right.
Yeah.
It just it's it greases the wheels.
I think she said something along those lines at one point too.
Like it makes it so I think I heard her in one I'll link I'll link to Casey Davis and
(22:50):
her book, Keeping House While Drowning.
Which I have and is excellent.
It's an excellent book.
It's great.
It's great.
She was she really was one of I told my story in another episode, but you know, she was
one of the tick talkers that helped me realize that I had ADHD.
She had one episode where she said something like or one video where she said she would
(23:15):
be sitting on the couch and where she would be she would have paralysis and not be able
to get up to do her laundry.
She had just the ability just to get up and do the laundry.
And that like there was like you said, the resistance, the resistance is gone.
I experienced that in the lack of anxiety.
Like I knew I was anxious, but I didn't realize the profound depth my anxiety had and the
(23:41):
impact it had on my thinking until until I started taking the medication and the noise
calmed down just like the like blaring noise and my brain started to kind of shift into
like more, you know, lanes of thought.
So I could kind of like see, OK, we've got like five things going on right now.
Where are we going to put our energy where before it was like I could spiral out of control
(24:06):
on, you know, 15 different things all at once if I wanted to or if I didn't want to, I didn't
want to because nobody wants to do that.
No, nobody wants to do that.
We were actually just talking about this.
My husband and I were talking about how to motivate her to do this specific thing at
(24:27):
school and it has to be done.
And she's like there's no dopamine in it for her anymore.
And he was like, well, maybe if we give her this big prize that she can work toward when
she completes the whole program.
And I was like, I don't think that's really going to work because it's not immediate enough.
(24:50):
Right.
Exactly.
You know, I saw an explanation of ADHD motivators and a task being important isn't going to
motivate you.
A task being necessary isn't going to motivate you.
And it's not that I don't understand that those things are important.
(25:12):
It's not that I don't understand they're necessary.
It's that I can't overcome the executive dysfunction to get there.
It has to be novel or interesting or something I'm passionate about or urgent.
I had spent my entire life with urgency as the only method I had for getting me to do
(25:44):
things.
Like that was it.
That was the only thing I knew how to do because society and the world around me and my parents
who didn't know that I was neurodivergent had taught me that making things enjoyable
or doing things just that you enjoy is something you get to do as a reward after you've done
(26:07):
the things that you need to do.
You do the drudgery and then you get to do the fun things.
And that is a kind of a very counter to neurodivergence.
It puts you in that spiral from a neurochemical standpoint, from my understanding.
I am not a brain scientist.
(26:28):
But it puts you in that downward spiral where your brain needs dopamine.
It's searching for dopamine.
It's not finding any dopamine.
So then it has a harder time with executive function.
So then you force it more and it's taking more and more energy for you to get less and
less done and you're berating yourself and you feel bad about yourself and all of this.
(26:51):
Whereas we gamified chores for my daughter and all I did was list out all the chores
that needed to be done.
And then I gave her a D20, a 20-sided die, and she would roll it and like all the fives,
(27:12):
so five, 10, 15, and 20 were take a dance break.
And everything else was one of the chores.
And she got her chores done so fast.
If she would roll the dice and it was one that had already been done, then I think she
(27:35):
got to eat like one M&M or something.
And so as she was getting them done, you get more and more M&Ms, you get dance breaks just
randomly.
And so she got her chores done in like half the amount of time that it had ever taken
her.
Whatever take, yeah.
Just by adding this- A random element.
(27:55):
... things to do.
It took less time because her brain had that dopamine to be like, okay, I have the fuel
to get through this task I don't want to do.
Waiting on the other side of that is another chance.
(28:16):
Finding ways to do that for myself had not occurred to me until I had to start thinking
about it from a parenting standpoint.
Well, that was going to be kind of what I was going to lead into both in how did the
dynamic in your family change when you realized that you and your child were both neurodivergent?
(28:44):
But in addition, how did your family respond?
I don't have a lot of family to talk about this with anymore.
I am pretty sure that my mom and my brothers are neurodivergent.
I brought it up to my one brother that is still with me.
(29:04):
And he's just like, meh, he's 70, doesn't care at this point.
Like whatever.
Okay, you have ADHD, great.
So what kind of response did you get from your family and how did it change for you
guys?
God, it changed everything.
(29:25):
It changed everything quickly and then slowly.
And so I got diagnosed and then my youngest child got diagnosed and then my oldest child
got diagnosed first with ADHD and then later with autism spectrum disorder.
And I have also come to suspect that I am also on the autism spectrum, although I have
(29:53):
not gone through the incredibly long process.
They're diagnosed.
Because paperwork is the deepest layer of hell to me.
Same friend, same.
(30:15):
But there was a lot of resistance from my partner to even get our youngest child evaluated
at first.
And as I think is true with a lot of people who grew up when I did or earlier than that,
(30:41):
there's a lot of stigma attached to these labels.
The diagnosis, the labels, yeah.
I feel like I'm reclaiming it and have found a lot of comfort in it.
I've heard people use the phrase, it's better to be a normal zebra than an abnormal horse.
Like spending your whole life thinking that you're a horse and being really upset that
(31:07):
you have all these stripes and that you're a different shape.
So for me, it was a big relief.
And I did a deep dive into ADHD and later into autism and trying to figure these things
out.
And that became like my new thing.
(31:27):
And it revolutionized the way that I interact with my children.
And we have changed things for them at school.
We have changed schools for my oldest child to give them the right balance they need of
social time and alone, focused time.
(31:50):
And we've just been able to shift the whole way that we operate.
Instead of trying to fit myself and my children into a spot or a place or a mold within society,
(32:13):
I am looking for what is the right shape?
What is the right space?
And how do we make it so that we can live in that instead of trying to shove ourselves
into this other box that doesn't work?
(32:33):
So that perspective shift was probably the biggest change.
And that's when I say that it changed slowly because the acceptance of extended family
has been varied and slow process.
(33:00):
And we are very fortunate that the majority of the people in our family want very much
to be in our lives and are willing to put forth some effort to understand our needs
(33:20):
and those things.
But that doesn't mean it's easy or comfortable always.
So we've had interesting conversations and hiccups along the way.
My parents were scared, I think is the right word, because they were scared of those labels.
(33:50):
They were scared of my children having them.
They were scared of me having them.
And they were scared to start looking at themselves in a way that...
They didn't want to be zebras.
They didn't want to be zebras.
They had spent so long creating their horse facades.
(34:16):
And it had been so unsafe in their lives.
Well, to be othered at all, like in any way, not even just necessarily neurodivergence
or what we see, what we know now as neurodivergence, just to be othered in any way was dangerous
and has been throughout history.
And I can point to many identity factors that are dangerous for people to have.
(34:43):
But I wonder if that's part of my brother sort of just shrugging it off as just like
partially, it doesn't really matter.
And partially, I don't want to think about this as a potential for me, for him, for his
life.
I wonder what my mom would be thinking or what my mom's experience of me recognizing
(35:08):
this would be like.
But that's always forever going to be speculation.
Yeah.
But the data on ADHD shows that there is almost no other reasonable conclusion than basically
(35:33):
to have ADHD, you have inherited it.
Right.
There's a lot of overlap in behaviors with CPTSD and ADHD, but there are some very distinct
differences and the professionals can assess those and see those.
(35:59):
And that ADHD is something you are born with and very, very little of it could possibly
be attributed to environmental factors during pregnancy.
(36:22):
I believe the last statistic I saw on that was 6%.
Yeah.
And the rest of it is just, you're just born with it.
So the fact that I have ADHD and my children have ADHD means that at least one of my parents
(36:43):
has been.
Right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I strongly suspect that my mom had ADHD and my dad was autistic.
And that was just kind of how things rolled for them.
But I think that my mom's generation as well, she would feel responsible in some way.
(37:12):
She would feel responsible.
And I think that that might have generated fear as well.
I was holding her responsible in some way.
And I don't.
I mean, I hold her responsible for some other things, but the ADHD is not something that
I'm like, oh my God, you gave this to me.
Like you.
Yeah.
I have blue eyes.
(37:33):
Like, okay.
You didn't pick that either.
Yeah.
And I think there's a lot of that, especially as women.
There's a lot of guilt that is attached to the way that our children are because it's
such a huge power and responsibility to be able to bring forth life into this world.
(37:57):
Absolutely.
You know, a lot of blame gets attached to that.
Yeah.
And I think that that's something that most mothers have some interaction with that in
some way.
But I think for people like my mom, who came out of a very abusive childhood and a very
(38:24):
difficult time when she was younger, she wouldn't be able to kind of step back and recognize
like this isn't like, this isn't a blame situation.
We don't need to point blame because in some abusive families, that's the big thing is
you need to have somebody that you can pin everything on.
(38:45):
And so she would have been a common dynamic and one that my mom had to live through too.
So yeah, remind myself and every, like I love my mom.
We get along really, really well and everything that she did, she was doing the very best
(39:07):
that she could with the information that she had at the time.
And so I hold nothing against my mom.
It has made for some slightly uncomfortable and sometimes very amusing conversation around
(39:28):
neurodivergence and things that I now know were the neurodivergent quirks, right?
Just intertwining themselves into our everyday lives while I was growing up.
And a lot of it is just like my most cherished things about my childhood and my family and
(39:53):
stuff just wouldn't have been possible or wouldn't have happened without being neurodivergent.
Absolutely.
No, and I think there is like, I think back about my childhood and I grew up in a very
different time than my brothers did.
As you know, my brother's significantly older than I am.
So like my family didn't have a lot of money and whatnot.
So I grew up in this kind of magical childhood where my mom was able to do all kinds of things
(40:17):
for me that she hadn't been able to do for my brothers.
She was also living out like what she wanted for a childhood through my childhood.
She's a lot of pressure.
It is a lot of pressure.
It is a lot of pressure.
And see, like when we want to lean on the things I might want to like hold her accountable
for, some of that pressure would be part of it.
(40:39):
But again, that was not a healed part for her.
That wasn't a knowing thing that she did.
But tell me a little bit about how you feel like your family even not knowing that, to
name it, neurodivergence, like I know you've made accommodations and you talked about like
gamifying things for your kids and to get them the dopamine to get things done.
(41:04):
What are some ways you think your family accommodated their invisible disabilities before they knew
what they were?
Well, I actually think this is one of the things that made it so difficult to find out
that we are a neurodivergent family is that we were so good at having healthy and effective
(41:27):
coping mechanisms that were passed down generation to generation.
It just would go unnoticed.
Right?
So one thing that I think is so fun and hilarious, and when I talk about like the cherished things
of my upbringing, is that every woman in my family sings their way through life.
(41:54):
And none of us are good singers.
And we don't sing songs, like sometimes we sing songs that we've heard, but that's not
what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about when I go downstairs and I need to grab my purse to get a credit card
to input it into something on my computer, I will sing going down the stairs to get my
(42:19):
card, not going to pick up all that stuff, going to get my card, not more copies, just
going to get my credit card.
And I'll sing this to myself as I go downstairs.
And I have to tell my daughter to do more than two tasks.
Right?
(42:39):
Right.
And she'll make up a song for it.
And then she will sing that song to herself as she's doing them so that she remembers
what the next one is.
Right.
And this is a thing that my grandma did.
It's a thing that my mom did.
It's a thing that my sister did when she nannied my kids.
(43:00):
And it's so ingrained in our lives that it did not occur to me that other people don't
do this.
It's fascinating because it's both an accommodation in your helping yourself stay on task with
what you're singing, but it's also satiating that audio stimming.
(43:28):
Right?
I didn't recognize until less than a year ago that audio stimming was a thing.
Just you talking sometimes is a thing.
I have all of these weird sounds that I make in the kitchen.
And when I'm cooking and I'm making different things, I whistle through my teeth, I suck
(43:48):
air in, I do all this stuff.
And I never thought anything of it.
And it's all this audio stimming where I'm just using my voice as a stim mechanism.
Now I recognize that some of my friends who talk all the time do that too.
Absolutely.
Or talking to myself or the dog or a lot of those things.
(44:14):
We had little spots all over our house growing up where you would put things you didn't want
to forget.
And that's a thing that as an organizer, I have found really helpful is to have people
be intentional about this.
A lot of my, the majority of my clients actually are neurodivergent in one way or another.
(44:38):
And all of these accommodations for having your environment set up to work for you are
things that I learned from my mom really and from my parents' relationships.
(45:04):
So my dad definitely has ADHD.
I think my mom has ADHD, autism and ADHD.
But my dad might also have ADHD.
It's hard to tell.
She's less talkative than she is, so I don't know as much of what's going on in his brain.
(45:25):
But they would work together in this way that accommodated each other's things.
So my mom would never touch my dad's doom piles.
And a doom pile, it stands for didn't organize, only moved.
So it can be in a box or it can be a pile on a desk.
(45:46):
It can be a junk drawer.
Yes, my dad would always know exactly where something was in the pile.
And if somebody were to clean it up and organize it for him, he would be lost.
And so my mom was the kind of person who, when she brought canned goods home from the
(46:07):
grocery store, would rotate the oldest ones to the front and face all of the labels in
exactly the same orientation.
My dad would have these big piles and my mom would just leave them alone.
And this was astounding to me.
It was the way that they had found that worked for them was to have these different zones.
(46:33):
They adapted.
Yeah.
And that's where she had her space where she got her labels facing and he had his piles.
And yeah, I am both of those things.
Right?
In different contexts.
And so we've got all of these different things.
And then there's lots of places where neurodivergence overlaps with hypermobility or other conditions.
(47:06):
I also have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
For a long time, I thought I had the hypermobile type, but it turns out I actually have hypermobility.
We have, oh, I forgot the name of it right now, but I have progressive scoliosis.
So there's a type that is specifically linked to that.
(47:28):
But I am also hypermobile.
And my mom would talk about if you stand up too fast, you get the little dizzies.
Right?
And she would talk about how if you roll your ankle, you just got to hop it out.
(47:53):
And these little things that made it seem so normal and not an issue, because to her
it was normal.
Everyone else did it in the family.
And so when I went to the physical therapist, I got a new physical therapist a couple of
years ago.
And she was like, I've never met anybody with a chronic illness like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
(48:17):
before who was so at ease with it.
She was like, is this the only symptom that you have?
And I was like, oh no, I have all the symptoms.
And I went through all of the things that go on with me.
And it's the whole list of them, but I'm not upset about it.
(48:40):
I just do what I need to do.
You just accommodate it as you need.
Yeah.
And it's not a boogeyman, I guess.
It's not this thing that I'm like waiting to see how it's going to hurt me next.
I just do what I need to do and try to foster that gratitude for the things that my body
(49:07):
does do.
My body is really abnormal in a lot of ways.
And it still manages to get me around and do basically everything.
It built people.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it's an amazing thing for doing that.
And you were hypermobile while you were hypermobile and Ehlers-Danlos while you were building
(49:30):
people.
And that's a special thing too.
Yeah, so I think just not having this anxiety about it.
Keeping us from having a label was what allowed my mom to not have anxiety about it.
But having a name for it is what took away my anxiety about it.
(49:54):
So I'm not going to begrudge her what she needed to alleviate her anxiety, but it's
helping me move forward with my own family in this way where I say, you're not broken.
You're not less than.
These are the things that we need for us.
(50:16):
And it's up to other people to figure out what they need for them.
And we...
Comparison is the thief of joy.
So don't compare yourself to everybody else.
Just figure out what you need.
Yeah.
That's a great kind of place, I think, for us to kind of wrap up our conversation.
(50:37):
I really appreciate you coming and chatting with me about all this.
And we have had many conversations over the last few years about this.
And I appreciate you as one of the touchstones that has helped me sort of unpack my own journey
with this, my own path.
So thank you.
(50:58):
Where can our listeners find you?
And where would you like them to come discover more about you or perhaps your services?
Yeah.
So my business is called Serenispace Home Organization.
And our website is www.serenaspace.com.
And that's S-E-R-E-N-I-S-P-A-C-E.com.
(51:22):
Great.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for listening.
I've had the privilege of working with Rachel on my Big Garage Organization project, and
(51:42):
I can wholeheartedly recommend her services.
So check out her site if you're looking for some organizational help.
I will have the website in the show notes.
Make sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, like and leave a review, and share
with your Neuro Spicy Brained friends.
Follow us on Instagram at DivergentPaths Consulting.
(52:03):
No spaces.
And until next time, stay spicy.
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