Neurodiversity Celebration Week with Jayne Leonard

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone – neurodivergent and neurotypical – celebrated our brains and unique ways of seeing and being in the world? If the world were set up to better support ALL of us? If no one was shamed simply for being the way they were?

‘For us late diagnosed ADHDers, there is that mourning and that grief and that loss and that rage around how different entire lives could have been had we known, but also if the world were different and if the world were more set up. Even now, kids struggle having accommodations made for them even though the accommodations would support everyone, not just the neurodivergent children.’

Episode 50 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

is out a little earlier to help you make the most of the whole week’s worth of

events. You can sign up at https://www.neurodiversityweek.com/events

I hope you enjoy my ADHD chat with the lovely

Jayne Leonard as we talk about what’s helped and is still helping us to befriend

and celebrate our own late diagnosed ADHD brains.

le grá (with love),

Evei

FULL TRANSCRIPT

And yeah, I think just celebrate it, own it,

you know, allow it, accept it. It's not going to change, so you might as well

work with it and, you know, make space for it. Yeah.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and welcome to

the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I am so excited to be sharing new

trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly ideas for you to help you take better care of

your Self, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and

miraculous part of yourself, as well as the basic self-care, which we all know

can be so challenging at times. I really appreciate you tuning in.

If you want a deeper dive, you'll be getting

bonus content each week if you sign up to the Soul to Soul Circle. You can do

that for free or from as little as eight euros a month. And you can also find

more ideas in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for

Embodied Wellbeing (selfcarecoaching.net/book).

Welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

I've got my vegan, ADHD, late diagnosed friend Jayne Leonard here again.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks, Eve, looking forward to this episode.

So we're talking about the Neurodiversity

Celebration Week, which I did not write about in 365 Ways to Feel Better,

Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, because when I wrote this, even

though I'd had a brain scan that showed an abnormality that correlated with

ADHD, I was years and years away from self-diagnosis, let alone actual

psychiatric diagnosis with ADHD.

But I think the whole world has woken up to

the fact that we are not all the same and it's a good thing and that there's

nothing necessarily wrong with anyone. It's simply about differently wired

brains and about conditions that support us rather than trying to fit round

pegs into square holes, in which case everyone comes out feeling like if you're

not completely normal, like what's normal, that there's something wrong with

you. And I'm thinking it's not that long ago that left-handed children would have

their hands tied behind their back to force them to write with their

non-dominant hand. How sadistic was that?

And I think for us late diagnosed ADHDers,

there is that mourning and that grief and that loss and that rage around how

different entire lives could have been had we known, but also if the world were

different and if the world were more set up. Even now, kids struggle having

accommodations made for them even though the accommodations would support

everyone, not just the neurodivergent children.

We wanted to just share a little bit about the

things we celebrate about our differently wired brains and what we'd like to

see more of for everyone.

Yeah, I love this. I love this topic. It's

definitely something I really do celebrate. I think even before I even thought

I might have ADHD, I used to love this part of me that could hyper-focus and

get so much done and learn so much about a topic. I did really well in certain

areas because of this. I used to call it my superpower and my friends, my

family say you're like superwoman, but I almost like over-identified with that.

So then, you know, the times when you have to

rest or you have the bit of the ADHD burnout, I would really berate myself, you

know. But now I think I've found the balance of I'm celebrating this, but also

recognising I need the downtime as well, the recovery period. Yeah.

Just for those of you who don't know, Jayne is

incredible. Not only is she a busy psychotherapist, she's Vice Chair, my deputy

on the Editorial Committee for the Irish Journal of Counselling and

Psychotherapy (IJCP), and she is doing her PhD. I don't know if you

want to say a tiny bit about your PhD and the amazing study you're a big part

of?

Yeah, well, just very briefly, I suppose, as I

was on your podcast before (episodes 28, 42 and 45) talking about food and

mental health and wellbeing.

So that's kind of the area of my study: How we

can use food to support us to feel better. And not just in terms of the actual

nutrition from the food, but also our relationship with the food, the

relationship it has to our culture, our identity, our social lives and the

social aspect of food. And so, yeah, I'm doing a PhD on that. We'll see how it goes now. We'll see how

incredible I am. I'm only a few months into it. We'll see how the burnout goes.

Well, this is it. I think knowing you as a

friend as well and knowing your schedule and just thinking, oh, my God/dess. And I also know that people hear some of what

I'm doing, which I consider completely normal. And they'll be like, oh, my God/dess,

what are you doing?

I've learned to build in rest. Like in my desk

diary, I've used purple highlighter to like carve out like a long lunch break

as many days as I can for a longer yoga nidra. I've used like pink highlighter to take (most) weekends off because

for so many years I was doing overlapping trainings in different types of

therapies and coaching and so much.

It's that challenge to honour the whole cycle,

not just the hyperfocus, but the burnout, the days where getting dressed just

feels impossible.

Yeah, I even booked a few nights away from

myself, you know, in Kerry last week, just so I could hyperfocus. And then I had the downtime after and it's

just, yeah, I think celebrating it is working with this rather than

expecting yourself to be either really super focused all the time or have it

act like someone who has a neurotypical brain or whatever that is. It's just

allowing it, working with it, like you said.

Yeah. And like when you said acting like

someone who has a neurotypical brain, I think like so many of us, we only know

our own brains. I mean, I grew up being called weird, but mostly in a friendly

way. And I was

happy to identify as a weird, but I think understanding where it's like, life

could have been so different.

But things like around nutrition, I remember

learning a good bit as part of my yoga therapy training, and how important it

was for developing brains. And like, I remember back then, in my 30s, then

thinking, oh, it's too late. I should have been eating better. I was vegetarian from the age of

like 11 or 12 and I didn't like vegetables. And I was pretty much malnourished. I had a growth spurt when I went

back to eating meat for a while at 17! I've been vegan now, since 2017. And I do eat much better but there is still

that strong, kind of like the questions around food were really like, oh, wow,

I really thought that was just me. Whereas now I celebrate the mushing up of my

food. And like,

sorry, loved ones who happen to be with me. But it just tastes so much better

like this.

Yeah, absolutely celebrate the differences,

you know, rather than trying to hide them or trying to change them.

Yeah. Like how important it is with ADHD to

have protein with breakfast. Like before we started our recordings today, wholemeal

toast, peanut butter, little bit of Vego (vegan chocolate spread) and mushed

banana. And it's

like, I spent decades being told by everyone, I should be having proper

breakfast. When I was at school, I might have ice cream for breakfast or

bourbon biscuits. And it's like, don't tell me what to do.

That's defiance. Yeah. Pathological Demand Avoidance.

Yeah. Even from myself! But I think

celebrating is even like saying, ‘Oh, well, that demand avoidance actually

served me in some situations. Yeah. And recognising now like, nope, I'm giving myself that protein

now, like at 49, I hope to have many, many decades to come and I'm doing what I

can to rectify that. And it is never too late, actually.

It's never too late to start eating well...