A letter to my colleagues about my lived experience of ADHD

Melissa Beaton shares a letter written to her colleagues about her personal journey as a psychologist with ADHD, addressing the prejudice and biases she's experienced within the mental health profession.

• Struggling with executive dysfunction throughout life despite extensive therapy and personal development
• Initially attributing difficulties to early life experiences, attachment disruptions, and possible brain injury
• Discovering ADHD diagnosis later in life after realizing something still wasn't right
• Experiencing shame and judgment from colleagues after diagnosis
• Finding that medication transformed daily functioning and self-perception
• Advocating for acceptance of how patients identify rather than trying to change them
• Combining psychological approaches (ISTDP and IFS) with ADHD treatment for comprehensive improvement

If you want to connect with me, check out my breathwork sessions at Zenso House, join my Tuesday morning online group called Connection, or consider my Bali trip in late April. Find me on Instagram @ZensoHouse or visit my website www.zensohouse.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to ADHD Experience
• 1:51 My ADHD Diagnosis Journey
• 4:11 Medication and Professional Stigma
• 6:25 Personal Growth and Treatment Benefits
• 7:42 Connecting with Zenso House Services

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

I'm Melissa Beaton and welcome to the Place for Connection podcast, where I believe connection is the cure. So today I'm talking about my own experience of ADHD and specifically being a psychologist who has ADHD. I think even in my own profession I experience a lot of you know prejudice and biases from people who operate in the profession and perhaps see ADHD somewhat differently to my lived experience. So about a year ago I saw someone post something on a listserv that I'm a member of and so I wrote them a response about my own experience of ADHD and I thought it could be helpful to share it here. So you may or may not find it helpful, yeah, but for me it was really important to communicate my own lived experience, which could be helpful to share it here. So you may or may not find it helpful, yeah, but for me it was really important to communicate my own lived experience, which could be entirely different to yours. So I think for any health professional who, yeah, perhaps experiences executive dysfunction and has done numerous intervention to address it, then yeah, I think it can be very stigmatizing and that the profession can sometimes relate to people with ADHD in incredibly dehumanizing ways. So I don't tend to overly identify with my ADHD diagnosis and yet I do think it explains some of my executive dysfunction. So if that's the case for you too, then yeah, it's okay to use whatever language makes sense for you. And if you're a clinician who is battling with your understanding of ADHD and you want some supervision in the area or on autism, I'm really happy to support you. I'm also an intensive, short-term dynamic psychotherapist, so this conversation was actually in that list, so here's my email. Hello all. Firstly, thank you to the writer for raising this with our community and starting the conversation.

Speaker 0: 1:58

I write this first as a person and second as a psychologist. This is my own lived experience. It does not constitute an argument based in the literature, but I feel compelled to share my internal experience. For almost all my life I've experienced executive dysfunction. I, like many of you seem, attributed this to my early experiences. Maybe I was neglected. I certainly had serious attachment disruptions. Perhaps my own early alcohol use interrupted my neurological development. I was also in a car accident aged eight years. Perhaps that could account for my difficulties. As a result, I've been in therapy since adolescence, working out what's a neurotic reaction from a neurological one, after working with an incredibly talented ISTDP therapist traveling overseas, doing business, coaching and restructuring my business around my cognitive functioning, I realized something was still not right. Why did I always find executive functioning so much harder than my peers? I no longer experience triggers almost at all. I have a balanced experience of my emotions most of the time. My central nervous system is typically regulated and calm and yet I still struggle with daily tasks that almost everyone else finds simple.

Speaker 0: 3:10

I went through an assessment with a trusted peer who diagnosed me with ADHD, inattentive and likely autism, but that's not been finalized at this time. Honestly, I initially found it hard to fathom that I could have ADHD. A successful woman with a beautiful family, relatively good social skills, yet serious cognitive processing issues that have me working late, taking longer to complete tasks, a lifetime of car dinks if anyone saw my Toyota Corolla you would understand driving anxiety, forgetfulness, mistakes, sensory sensitivity I could go on. The list of my symptoms was three pages. I'm not depressed. I've got a typical level of anxiety that relates appropriately to life events. Sometimes I get smooth muscle anxiety which for those of you who don't know is involuntary muscle anxiety with a high enough rise, but this is rare and honestly I don't see my difficulties cognitively as operating defensively. So that's psychology. Speak for a way in which we avoid facing our feelings. And can I say medication has transformed my life. I can finally think, I can get through a whole day, I don't self-attack, I can see my reality through a kinder lens.

Speaker 0: 4:20

But when I initially saw the email sent by the writer, I honestly worked hard not to shame myself again, and I thank two other writers for raising the notion of shame, because when you don't fit in or when you are seen as too much, too intense, too loud, too erratic, then you spend your whole life hiding this behind defences. And even now I still feel anxious to tell people about my diagnosis. I feel even more concerned about the judgment that I may encounter for telling people that I take medication and this is not neurotic. It's not neurotic. Many people have intense opinions about ADHD and, interestingly, most of the time that I've been shamed since my diagnosis has been by my colleagues, by my friends. Fortunately, I feel confident to express my thoughts, feelings and reactions to these opinions so as to make clear the impact on me. But not everyone feels this way. I'm even questioning sending this email as I write it.

Speaker 0: 5:18

But I write this to express my anger at how often people form hypotheses that further narratives that could disable people who already experience being judged and different every day. And I think, as Dr X points out, how could this potentially point to our own inherent biases, and I absolutely can see this in myself too. I wonder if we could instead, as expressed by someone else on the listserv come to accept how our patients identify and not feel compelled to change them. Not feel compelled to change them. Can we just let people identify as they want and not have to change them, or further our own narrative because it makes us uncomfortable? I mean, that's not in my email, that's just my own words. Surely, if we can love our patient, then the patient can come to learn what's neurotic versus neurological.

Speaker 0: 6:12

I certainly had this experience with my own therapist and it's been one of the most healing experiences of my life. There are avenues to treat ADHD that reduce symptoms and certainly metacognitive work that you can do. My two decades of treatment have helped me extensively. If you had have seen me 10, 20 years ago, honestly like my personality is the same, but my coping is unrecognizable. Thank you to my long-term friends. I love you for putting up with my bullshit. I'm so grateful to ISTDP and IFS for these learnings which have transformed my life. So I can move out the bush, change my career or vastly reduce my client load. Find an adopted family to help me with my children, and then I probably won't experience negative symptoms, but that's not likely at this time. If you've got this far, thank you and sending love to anyone who struggles with any and all of the above, you are welcome to reach out.

Speaker 0: 7:08

In general, I don't have any more space for one-on-one clients and look, autistic and adhd folk are some of my favorite. But if you do want to work with me, you can come to my breathwork sessions at zenso house. I will also be starting a new online group called Connection. It's the QR, which runs on Tuesday mornings at 9.30 for 90 minutes, which isa combination of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy and breathwork. And then I also. Is that all I'm doing? No, and then I have the Bali trip which will happen in late April. So if you want to connect with me, check me out. I'm on Instagram at Zenso House, z-e-n-s-o-h-o-u-s-e, or check out my website, wwwzensohousecom. We love Mellie.