Twice Exceptional or Double Trouble? A Journey of Self Discovery – Part 3

By Doug Harris

I honestly believe I’ve made more progress with my ADHD in the 10 months since attending the 2013 ADDA Conference in Detroit than I had made in the previous 15 years. I want to share my story, you might be able to relate.

The Conference

It began in a pre-conference session I attended entitled, “How Later-in-Life ADHD Education and Diagnoses Transformed Two Lives.” The two speakers shared their personal journeys and their stories strongly resonated with me. In telling their stories, the speakers also discussed ADHD coaching, a concept that was new to me and seemed so full of promise. I decided then and there to investigate it further when I got back home.

While others ventured out for lunch on Friday, I stayed back, wobbling along on crutches. Those crutches turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In staying back, I discovered there was a networking lunch going on and I decided to see what opportunities were available to get involved with ADDA. I arrived early, grabbed my box lunch, and sat at the table with a sign that read “Communications.” Before long I was joined by members of the ADDA Communications Committee along with a few others who were similarly interested in learning about what the committee was all about. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice. I was impressed with the vision the committee members spoke so highly about, and ended up joining the committee as a writer. Since the committee was clearly ADHD-friendly, I felt safe taking a chance and getting involved in a way I hadn’t anticipated even earlier that day.

Soon after, I learned of a nearby support group that many ADDA members were participating in – another discovery that would prove to be life changing.

The Post-Conference Blues

Arriving home from the conference, I experienced the same feeling of emotional let-down that I had experienced after my earlier ADDA conferences. The “post-conference blues,” as many call it, is a well-known phenomenon for regular ADDA conference attendees. After such an exhilarating and validating experience of learning and connection within an environment where people really get it, coming home to the same old routines and challenges feels a bit daunting. Lucky for me, the support group I had learned about was to meet the very next day and I got to see a lot of the same faces again. I’ve been going ever since and the continuing support available through the group has made a huge difference in my life. I’ve made a lot of friends, learned a lot from the guest speakers, and have even become part of the leadership team.

The ADDA Conference is still an awesome weekend and I wouldn’t miss it, and now I also have a community of my tribe that’s there for me all year round.

The Committee

The following Monday was my first meeting with the Communications Committee. I heard the familiar voices of those I’d met at the conference over the phone. Even though we are spread out over multiple time zones and countries, it still feels like a real community. Here were people with a shared vision working together to spread the word about ADHD and ADDA. I’ve found the Committee to be as ADHD-friendly as promised and it’s given me fantastic opportunities. Being able to write for this newsletter is an honor and, in doing so, I’ve had the chance to meet and talk with many fascinating people. I’ve also enjoyed corresponding with readers from all over the world.

This opportunity to discover my ADHD voice and connect with people has been priceless.

The Transformation

I followed through with my plan to investigate ADHD coaching and coach training. Though I expected my enthusiasm would wane over time, I found the opposite to be true. After the life-changing experiences of the ADDA conferences, I was open to the possibility that transformation could happen again — and it did!

My personal transformation began in that coaching class, continues to this day, and no doubt will continue for the rest of my life.

I’ve realized that I must live my life wholeheartedly embracing my ADHD. 

For most of my life, I didn’t know anything about ADHD. In the 15 years since my diagnosis, I tried living a normal life, applying the occasional ADHD-patch to a problem but more often using my ADHD as an excuse. Of course, making the same mistakes again, even though you now can use ADHD as an excuse, doesn’t make them less devastating. Adding a strategy here and there to deal with ADHD problems may tidy things up on the surface, but the problem isn’t on the surface — it’s much deeper.

I recall playing the children’s game, “Hot and Cold” in elementary school. A classmate would go out into the hall and another one would hide the blackboard eraser somewhere in the classroom. When the child returned to the room, we would try to guide them to the hidden eraser by yelling “warmer” when they were getting closer and “cooler” when they walked in the wrong direction. Eventually we would be yelling, “You’re on fire!” just before they found it.

We all are born with an inner voice that similarly guides us in making decisions, telling us we’re getting warmer as we approach the choice that is right for us, and cooler as we drift away from that choice.

We all have a guiding inner voice. But that voice grows ever quieter as you ignore its guidance. And that’s what happens when you make decisions based on what others think. As a child, you might be told what you should do and that advice — no matter how well intentioned — simply won’t be right for you and the way your brain is wired. Over time, these societal expectations become internalized and you hear them in your head, in your own voice. At the same time, if following your true inner voice constantly results in trouble and disapproval, it’s only natural you would grow to distrust it. The result is like a classroom of children yelling both “You’re hot!” and “You’re cold!” at the same time. You’ll find the eraser if you blindly stumble upon it. That is how I lived my life in the past – hoping to blindly stumble upon the right decisions.

What I discovered, however, was that my inner voice, though quiet, was still there. And as I learned to recognize it and listened to it, my voice grew stronger.

One exercise in coaching class was particular helpful in guiding me back to myself. The exercise instructed us to make a list of all the moments that we could recall of times when we did something that resulted in great personal satisfaction. When I finished the exercise and read the entire list, the pattern was obvious. Very few times did I succeed by doing what someone else thought I should do; far and away the majority of my successes were the result of using my strengths in ways that I enjoyed. Those were the times I had trusted my inner voice. Your inner voice will always steer you toward using your strengths.

Of course, with ADHD, there’s also a voice telling us to do the impulsive thing, to pay attention to the sparkly thing, to respond with strong emotions. It is just as important to learn to recognize this voice so you can pause and consider whether it is serving you well in that moment.

With ADHD, pitfalls seem to loom everywhere. The more you can learn about ADHD in general and your own ADHD in particular, the better prepared you’ll be to minimize the impact of those weaknesses. Understanding the executive functioning model affected me dramatically when I saw the different ways that my brain’s wiring impacted me. Similarly, I’ve benefited from what I’ve learned about the role of emotions in ADHD and how they make me prone to react in certain ways. Where I once would immediately get down on myself for doing something wrong, I now find I can separate my sense of self from my brain wiring. Instead of just getting mad at myself, I am more likely to respond with curiosity about how I got into a situation and about how I can avoid it in the future given my ADHD brain.

Getting involved with the ADHD community, both locally and internationally, and reinventing myself while embracing my ADHD, has given me a stronger sense of hope than I have felt in a very long time. And because this hope is based on both my strengths and my ADHD self-awareness, it is a realistic hope. This sort of transformation is possible for everyone with ADHD.

It’s hard work, but with practice you can find your internal compass again. That’s not to say everything is suddenly easy; realizing how far I’d drifted off course and how many years were wasted is painful. Some days the void between where I am and where I want to be can seem discouragingly wide. But I am confident that if I keep learning all I can about ADHD, if I stay connected, if I keep up with my coaching, if I keep practicing mindfulness and if I keep running, I will end up in a good place.

I have a new concept of my potential and this time I am going to live up to it. I broke my foot over a year ago and my return to running has taught me valuable lessons about patience. I am finally able to run 10K again, and my pace is gradually approaching what it was before the injury. But more than that, I know that if I keep doing what I’m doing, next October, three days after finishing my advanced coach training, I will run and finish my first marathon. That seems like a fitting metaphor for my life with ADHD.

Douglas Harris is an ADHD Coach near Ann Arbor, Michigan. He works with intellectually gifted adults struggling with ADHD. With coaching, clients discover how to tap into the full potential of their extraordinary minds and put in place the ADHD-friendly strategies to make those dreams a reality. Reach him at Doug@ADHDSynergyCoaching.com.