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