Speaker 1: Just a note, this episode does contain explicit language.
Speaker 2: What do you call it?
Speaker 3: It's just cotton wall tied into.
Speaker 1: Bots and you take it everywhere.
Speaker 3: I take them everywhere.
Speaker 1: That's Rich Rowley talking about his homemade's dress ball.
Speaker 3: We're in the.
Speaker 1: Studios at endzedy me and he's taken me through some
Speaker 1: of his many silent dims things he does to help
Speaker 1: calm himself when he's uncomfortable, which is a lot of
Speaker 1: the time. There's a finger counting ritual.
Speaker 2: I do it with my toes. You can't really see
Speaker 2: me doing that.
Speaker 1: And the lip reverb, I.
Speaker 2: Just vibrate my bottom. It's sort of vibrating inside. And
Speaker 2: that's just that's so common.
Speaker 3: And so then.
Speaker 2: I'm always uncomfortable when I'm out of the house, right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter where I am. I'm always everything's loud
Speaker 2: and bright and.
Speaker 1: And I'm just thinking now, like you're sitting here and
Speaker 1: there's a shitload of lights. It's a weird environment. Are
Speaker 1: you okay?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the onest answer to that is no, right,
Speaker 2: it's horrible. The practical answer is, where isn't like this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You get used to it, it does I'm never going
Speaker 2: to like it never going to be really comfortable. What
Speaker 2: does a world look like that's comforting to me? I
Speaker 2: genuinely don't know, because I've never heard it, never had it.
Speaker 1: I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent and
Speaker 1: a few years ago I was diagnosed ady h D.
Speaker 1: In this series you'll hear from experts and from many
Speaker 1: wonderful people who experience the world in a unique way.
Speaker 1: We're looking at neurodiversity from the inside, Jelda, I'm Sonia Gray,
Speaker 1: and there's no such thing as normal. Series two. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're looking at cooccurring autism and ADHD. Most
Speaker 1: neurodivergent people will fit the criteria for more than one diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and often we'll have a secondary condition like anxiety or depression.
Speaker 1: Autism and ADHD used to be mutually exclusive. That is
Speaker 1: not the case anymore. In fact, it's pretty common to
Speaker 1: be diagnosed with both. The unofficial abbreviation is all DHD,
Speaker 1: and many people are looking at the traits and thinking
Speaker 1: that's me or that's my child. Often it means a
Speaker 1: mind that's constantly at odds with itself.
Speaker 2: Stayful by routing book, desperate for it because I've got
Speaker 2: these constant internal narrative, like these like ampsters on wheels
Speaker 2: that never shut off.
Speaker 1: Rich Raley featured in series one of this podcast, Gone
Speaker 1: Back because I love steeping inside his brain. And if
Speaker 1: anyone can describe their experience of AUDIHD, it's rich.
Speaker 2: I've got lots of different sort of labels, right, so
Speaker 2: they sort of seemed to compete against each other, right,
Speaker 2: But like I got a formal diagnosis of ADHD like
Speaker 2: ten years ago or so, that was a journey in
Speaker 2: itself kind of come into grips with that. And then
Speaker 2: I met my new partner and we've got a beautiful
Speaker 2: blended family and our eldest he'd got he was formally
Speaker 2: diagnosed with autism. But it was like first time I
Speaker 2: met him, I was like that he's just like me,
Speaker 2: like really just like me.
Speaker 3: And my partner was like.
Speaker 2: It's so like ready you're autistic and idize like it's
Speaker 2: like no, I'm not.
Speaker 3: It's ADHD.
Speaker 2: And then you know it's going down that thing as well.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: When Rich God is initial diagnosis of ADHD, it's unlikely
Speaker 1: autism would have been recognized at the same time. This
Speaker 1: is pretty new for everyone.
Speaker 4: There is still so much more for all of us
Speaker 4: to learn in that professional space because it is such
Speaker 4: a kind of a really emerging area in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways.
Speaker 1: That's clinical psychologist Sarah Watson, who runs Totally Psyched in
Speaker 1: Parmackey Mikodo. She says her team are now recognizing and
Speaker 1: diagnosing more and more young people with what they call
Speaker 1: the combo.
Speaker 4: It is actually such a current thing. How it used
Speaker 4: to be diagnostically was principally you could only be ADHD
Speaker 4: or you could be ASD. Anything like one had to
Speaker 4: be secondary to the other. So it meant what we
Speaker 4: were saying to people as professionals was you're only one
Speaker 4: thing and anything else is kind of a bit incidental,
Speaker 4: which is really what we understand now incorrect for those
Speaker 4: who have AUDHD, because have actually got aspects of each
Speaker 4: and that is part of what makes it the way
Speaker 4: their brain works.
Speaker 1: To make sure they get it right, Sarah's team conduct
Speaker 1: really thorough assessments three or four hours long, because with
Speaker 1: these diagnoses there is a lot to tease out.
Speaker 4: Our team had to upskill quite a lot around AUDHD.
Speaker 4: You know, we need to understand what this is because
Speaker 4: generally speaking it's been considered as it quite binary, like
Speaker 4: ASD and ADHD are quite separate things. The thing with
Speaker 4: AUDHD is that there's the diagnostic side, but then there's
Speaker 4: also the understanding site. You know, in my view, and
Speaker 4: I think this is where a psychologist really has a
Speaker 4: unique perspective in that we really are motivated by understanding
Speaker 4: an individual and what their experience is, and then we're
Speaker 4: kind of the diagnostic process is secondary to that. So
Speaker 4: it's not that it's unimportant, but actually developing and really
Speaker 4: validating somebody's experience is so much more important. And part
Speaker 4: of that is going, yeah, I can see where your
Speaker 4: strengths lie. That I can also see where the struggles are.
Speaker 1: Rich Rally has always been well aware of his struggles.
Speaker 1: In coming to Grips with his many diagnoses was an
Speaker 1: emotional rollercoaster, but he now recognizes his many, many strengths
Speaker 1: and there's a whole new understanding.
Speaker 2: My will got bigger because of it. My worldview changed
Speaker 2: all of a sudden. I under like, I can see
Speaker 2: where I stand in relation to everything else. I can
Speaker 2: understand why you would look at somebody like me and
Speaker 2: go that shit's fucking broken. I can understand that because
Speaker 2: of where I now stand, because I can see that
Speaker 2: when you're over there looking at me, I do look broken, right.
Speaker 2: I can write a master's thesis in a day and
Speaker 2: get a distinction for it. You give me a form
Speaker 2: to fill in. I can't do it. Can't do it?
Speaker 2: What's that about? I must be broken?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I still struggle with feeling bad about that. That's the
Speaker 2: challenge that we're up against light and that starts in schools.
Speaker 2: You go through a learning system that says, if you're
Speaker 2: not capable of doing this, you're bad, you're wrong, you've
Speaker 2: got problems, you've broken. It doesn't give you any opportunity
Speaker 2: or very very very limited opportunity to go. But look
Speaker 2: at all the stuff you are good at. Like school's
Speaker 2: changed a little since I went through, I mean, there
Speaker 2: are more opportunities for creative thinkers, but still within this
Speaker 2: really highly constrained environment.
Speaker 1: Rich and I have often talked about the diagnosis of
Speaker 1: oppositional defiant disorder or ODD. My daughter hit that label
Speaker 1: at one point. There are so many things wrong with it,
Speaker 1: and we'll go into those in a future episode. And
Speaker 1: as school days, Rich might have been a kid who
Speaker 1: was given the odd label bick in the day. Well
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, maybe he was a well behaved, compliant,
Speaker 1: high achieving student.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck no, I would argue with me, teachers, like
Speaker 2: constantly pushing against all those back, always, always, always pushing,
Speaker 2: even in an environment where if you pushed you got
Speaker 2: physically abused, like beyond the mental beauty, I mean, the
Speaker 2: mental abuse in that system was constant. Right, you're an idiot,
Speaker 2: you're stupid, you're dumb, that's teachers. You're a waste of
Speaker 2: space all the time. And then like you know, like
Speaker 2: if you push too org you get hit. Couldn't stop pushing,
Speaker 2: couldn't stop pushing. I'm still oppositionally defiant. If I'm in
Speaker 2: a system where I'm constrained and there were no valid
Speaker 2: reasons for it, I will push. But that's how progress happens, right,
Speaker 2: that's valuable to society.
Speaker 1: So yes, defiant, But in a way it says this
Speaker 1: isn't working. A refusal to accept the status quo. This
Speaker 1: is something I really admire in so many and you're
Speaker 1: a divisent people. Rich is also incredibly comfortable uncertainty. Sometimes
Speaker 1: such as the oxymoronic nature of AUDIHD.
Speaker 2: In the UK where I grew up, there wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot to do at the weekend other than go to
Speaker 2: the football. And you go to the football, and then
Speaker 2: there's all the extraneous stuff that was happening around the football,
Speaker 2: right the fight, in the violence.
Speaker 3: I loved that even though.
Speaker 2: I was tiny. I used to love just being in
Speaker 2: it because of the danger and the excitement and anything
Speaker 2: that was just rolled, like, rather than running away, I'd
Speaker 2: run towards it. It's like I still have that insa
Speaker 2: of me today. I'm really great when the shit's hitting
Speaker 2: the fun it's everything's calm. It's my best.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And yet so you're great with uncertainty and yet
Speaker 1: were you telling me a while ago about a workshop
Speaker 1: you were doing and the room changed? Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: really through.
Speaker 3: It throws me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If it's something where I've gone in with an expectation
Speaker 2: and it's changed, it will it'll throw me.
Speaker 1: So you've got a whole lot of other things that
Speaker 1: you're thinking about, and so you're like, well, at least
Speaker 1: don't know the rooms there, and then the room changes
Speaker 1: and it's like I was a fuck.
Speaker 2: It's like God, and I'm trying to It's not deal
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: It's just I.
Speaker 2: Can't deal with it in my normal way of dealing
Speaker 2: with it because it would actually me and a crisis.
Speaker 2: I'm amazing, but like it's not really for like musk consumption.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, like many autistic people or audyhd is,
Speaker 1: there is a passion for very niche special interests.
Speaker 3: I'm very weird.
Speaker 2: I can obsess about the granular detail if I'm interested
Speaker 2: in it. I've got deep interest in all technology ancient
Speaker 2: through to modern, very very very special interesting industrial chimneys.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're going to find many people that
Speaker 1: will jump on the industrial.
Speaker 2: I'll just talk about or steam trains or and I've
Speaker 2: got loads of them. And it's like I just thought
Speaker 2: that everybody had that, that they had lots.
Speaker 3: Of these like unusual.
Speaker 2: Small leash things that they were very very interested in.
Speaker 2: Everybody turns out now it's but it's I.
Speaker 1: Love it though, Like there's nothing better than someone that's
Speaker 1: passionate about something. Do I want to know every detail?
Speaker 1: Probably not. And I think it's weird. It's a struggle.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to describe.
Speaker 2: I'm like more than interested it, I'd be desperate, Like
Speaker 2: I say, it's that desperate to talk about them more,
Speaker 2: you know, I like I I mean, I think I'm
Speaker 2: bloody lucky where I live, right, I live, and ponds
Speaker 2: and b and there's there's two.
Speaker 3: Where I walk. The dogs are walk past two.
Speaker 2: Of the only like Edwardian industrial chimneys that are left.
Speaker 3: Probably in New Zealand, right.
Speaker 2: And I love walking past them, I like, and I
Speaker 2: do it deliberately because I just a light looking at them,
Speaker 2: and a light that they're part of the landscape still
Speaker 2: and that there's a couple of them that have survived.
Speaker 1: And I don't care about chimneys, but I love that
Speaker 1: you love them. Does it kind of give you a
Speaker 1: sense of joy?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many ponds and by residents even
Speaker 1: clock the industrial chimneys, but that passion for the chimneys
Speaker 1: is an example of the magic we often miss with
Speaker 1: different cognition, wonderment, finding unfiltered joy and things most of
Speaker 1: us don't even notice. But I think I'm walking with
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old Annavelle in central Wellington. We're at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the terrace, an area I know really well,
Speaker 1: or I thought I did. But walking with Annabelle is
Speaker 1: a whole new experience. She finds the boring captivating, the graveyard,
Speaker 1: the little house, even the guy washing the windows.
Speaker 5: I should not an interview. Walking outside this giv anything's
Speaker 5: look at.
Speaker 1: You might remember annabel from the first episode in this
Speaker 1: series when she talked about her sensory challenges. What I
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to celebrate then it was her wonderment.
Speaker 1: Spending time with her is life affirming, but annabel also
Speaker 1: apologizes and second guesses herself a lot, which is perhaps
Speaker 1: common for alldhds, and maybe also because the your just
Speaker 1: too much message is something she's had her entire life.
Speaker 1: I first met you last year at a little party
Speaker 1: and you get up to speak and you just kind
Speaker 1: of like, I didn't get up.
Speaker 4: I didn't get up.
Speaker 1: I sat.
Speaker 5: I was I was in a sack. Remember I was
Speaker 5: in a sack on the floor. Remember, Yeah, I wasn't.
Speaker 5: I wasn't standing up.
Speaker 1: No, it was it's so beautiful about it. You're in
Speaker 1: your onesie. Was it a onesie? I don't know.
Speaker 5: It was like a set it's called it was called
Speaker 5: a sensory sack. And I was like, this is the
Speaker 5: best thing because I climbed into it and its like
Speaker 5: I'm in backing the worm or something.
Speaker 1: So on that day, Annabel made an impromptu speech at
Speaker 1: an event she was in who sensory sack. She lay down,
Speaker 1: she totally forgot what she actually wanted to say, but
Speaker 1: it was a beautiful moment that has stuck with me
Speaker 1: because everybody there just embraced it. Everybody was grateful to
Speaker 1: her for just being herself, And I thought, why isn't
Speaker 1: the world more like this?
Speaker 5: That's so interesting because that was like the first sort
Speaker 5: of time I had kind of actually felt being around
Speaker 5: a bunch of people like who were also on your
Speaker 5: A division because that's not normal. I didn't think you were,
Speaker 5: you know, like, that's not something that we're taught.
Speaker 1: Is okay, we're taught, it's not okay. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: very rare for those like Annabel to feel truly comfortable
Speaker 1: to be their version of normal. Afterwards, did you go, oh, yes, okay, tell.
Speaker 3: Me about that.
Speaker 5: I just immediately went and I felt you absolute prefer
Speaker 5: you idiot. But that's kind of a commonality. I realized
Speaker 5: subconsciously that every time I contribute something to discussion, I
Speaker 5: always apologize after at the end of my discussion point,
Speaker 5: I'll say something like, but I'm probably totally wrong. I'm
Speaker 5: so sorry. That wasn't. That was terrible.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It just feels like that's kind of a safety nit hmm,
Speaker 5: because in case it is terrible, well that wasn't.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't. But that shows the stop, go, push, pull,
Speaker 1: speak out, apologize perpetual cycle that many audhds live with daily.
Speaker 5: I think for me, my brain is kind of like
Speaker 5: a giant contradiction. There's my ADHD part of my brain
Speaker 5: going I love novelty and new things and spontaneity, and
Speaker 5: then there's the autistic part going, you're insane, like what
Speaker 5: are you doing? That's you know, you panic blah blah
Speaker 5: blah blah blah. So it kind of externalizes and spontaneity
Speaker 5: only on Annabel's terms. Anyone else's terms, Annabel will melt
Speaker 5: down and panic. So it's kind of a huge contradiction.
Speaker 5: It's hard to kind of explain to people because they're like, well,
Speaker 5: but you're doing this, so why can't you use you this.
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you like predictability and structure. Yes,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you love spontaneity, and so
Speaker 1: it's almost within that structure, this conflicting brain. Yes, a
Speaker 1: brain that's kind of a war with itself. Sometimes tell
Speaker 1: me what that was? Sometimes all the time for you
Speaker 1: and your family? Oh yeah, my poor family. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit.
Speaker 5: I feel looking that respectively, I feel a little bit
Speaker 5: sorry for them. How do I put this? I was
Speaker 5: very difficult, but I wasn't intentionally difficult. I was very
Speaker 5: difficult because I couldn't articulate and I didn't realize why
Speaker 5: my brain was the way it was. So holidays were
Speaker 5: an absolute nightmare because you know, it's lifting me out
Speaker 5: of my routine.
Speaker 1: And did you have meltdowns as a kid.
Speaker 5: Yes, my parents have, you know, like along with me,
Speaker 5: learnt so much since my diagnosis, you know, because I
Speaker 5: couldn't control it. Used to go like, oh, Annabel, you're
Speaker 5: acting like a four year old.
Speaker 1: Psychologist Sarah Watson says, it's so difficult for far though,
Speaker 1: to understand that this is not about behavior. It's an
Speaker 1: intense internal experience.
Speaker 4: But it's not because I don't want to It's not
Speaker 4: because I'm being willful. It's not because I'm intentionally trying
Speaker 4: to be defiant, you know what I mean. The thing
Speaker 4: is is parents of those with AUDHD, once you understand
Speaker 4: the processes and what AUDIHD is, you're able to then
Speaker 4: come to see the behavior that your child is exhibiting
Speaker 4: as with compassion.
Speaker 1: So how did the whole AUDHD discovery come about for Annabelle.
Speaker 5: I don't think I ever suspected I was autistic, because
Speaker 5: in my head, the autistic stereotype was young Sheldon and
Speaker 5: autestic people couldn't have empathy or something like that, and
Speaker 5: they were blunt. And I was like, well, no, I'm
Speaker 5: not blunt. I'm almost too empathetic. I get way too
Speaker 5: involved in how other people are feeling, and if they're
Speaker 5: feeling sad, I want you to jump off a cliff.
Speaker 5: But it was after my ADHD diagnosis, and I remember
Speaker 5: in the report the psychologists had said that I had
Speaker 5: exhibited signs of autism spectrum disorder, but not enough to
Speaker 5: you know, had been ruled out earlier. And I kind
Speaker 5: of assumed that after my ADHD diagnosis everything would kind
Speaker 5: of fit together and there's like all this is answered,
Speaker 5: but there's still there's still this little part that I
Speaker 5: don't quite understand, and it was I don't know. I
Speaker 5: think also getting on ADHD medication allowed the autistic traits
Speaker 5: that had been overshadowed by the ADHD traits to suddenly
Speaker 5: come to the surface. And then my therapy, who I
Speaker 5: had been with since twenty twenty, was like, I think
Speaker 5: you're autistic, and so I started doing a lot of
Speaker 5: research and it was like, Okay, crap, because for me,
Speaker 5: autism seems as interesting. At the time, autism seems so
Speaker 5: much worse than ADHD.
Speaker 4: I get it.
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And to tell people I was autistic was way
Speaker 5: harder than telling people why I had ai ishue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because of the stereotypes. Yeah, because of the stereotype and
Speaker 1: it will probably take a long time to shake.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had any really low points in your life?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about those?
Speaker 5: You don't have to?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I think especially in high school, especially before I was diagnosed. Yeah,
Speaker 5: yet ten and eleven, which is like fifteen sixteen, And
Speaker 5: I realized now looking back, the issues that arose were
Speaker 5: because of an undiagnosed neurdivid and it was for a
Speaker 5: child told every day without malicious intent. People would just go, oh,
Speaker 5: you're so much in a belt like you're and there's
Speaker 5: never any malicious intent behind that. It's just kind of
Speaker 5: like a throwaway comment, but that builds up and eventually
Speaker 5: I was like at that point, I was like, well,
Speaker 5: I feel like people would be a lot happier if
Speaker 5: I wasn't here. And looking back, that was a result
Speaker 5: of undiagnosed autism and at atually and it was it
Speaker 5: just developed into like I had a lot of anxiety
Speaker 5: and a lot of periods of depression because I couldn't
Speaker 5: figure out what why I felt so I don't know,
Speaker 5: incompetent next to my peers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and why everything was such a struggle.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was like, why can't I pull myself together? And
Speaker 5: I didn't ask for help because I was like, this
Speaker 5: is not something that you should need help.
Speaker 1: Worth. Did you get any sort of anxiety or depression diagnosis? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I got, Yeah, my first diagnosis, actually, my first ever
Speaker 5: diagnosis was in year ten generalize anxiety disorder and social anxiety.
Speaker 5: When I was diagnosed with autism, the psychologist was like,
Speaker 5: I don't actually think you have anxiety. I think the
Speaker 5: anxiety that is that manifest as a result of.
Speaker 1: Well, I think all those things generalize. Anxiety, any sort
Speaker 1: of depression is not inherent. It's like it's caused by
Speaker 1: the fact that you're just as you say, years of
Speaker 1: not getting things right, of being too much of I.
Speaker 5: Think it's easier to go with that anxiety than to
Speaker 5: look and go maybe that's something else.
Speaker 1: So many people, especially women and girls, are diagnosed with
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression before discovering their brain differences. And it's
Speaker 1: not wrong. There are mental health struggles there. It just
Speaker 1: seems to take way too long to get to the
Speaker 1: underlying cause. For Annabelle it got serious as a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old. She was hospitalized with anorexia.
Speaker 5: It was never that I looked at myself when you're
Speaker 5: fat starve. It was more I needed something to control
Speaker 5: in my life. I didn't start intentionally starving myself. It
Speaker 5: was kind of like, Okay, things feel extremely out of control.
Speaker 5: What can I control? Okay, I can control my food
Speaker 5: and take and then it kind of spiraled from there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's the whole control thing. Feeling completely out of control
Speaker 5: is just finding something to leture onto.
Speaker 1: Did you want help?
Speaker 5: Well, I don't think there was anything wrong like I
Speaker 5: was like, I don't know, I just I didn't really
Speaker 5: see any sort of future, not in like a like
Speaker 5: I want to die kind of way. Just was like this,
Speaker 5: I just don't I don't see like I don't know,
Speaker 5: just I don't really see the point. And I think
Speaker 5: that was from, you know, my brain was starving. I
Speaker 5: just lost any sense of kind of care. It's interesting
Speaker 5: looking back.
Speaker 1: The anxiety and anorexia, then the autism ADHD discovery all
Speaker 1: happened in high school. Annabelle had one close friend who
Speaker 1: she's still type with today, but apart from that, friendships
Speaker 1: are terrible. Okay, teachers were great.
Speaker 5: I loved my teachers. I loved my school, genuinely adored
Speaker 5: my school, and I adored my teachers, especially during high school.
Speaker 5: I've realized I was kind of non as I don't
Speaker 5: know if you call it the class clown, but I
Speaker 5: was kind of like the doozy like whacked one. But
Speaker 5: I kind of developed this persona which I think was
Speaker 5: a shield in a way that people could sort of
Speaker 5: make fun of me, but like I'd laugh along with them.
Speaker 1: You put yourself out as the class clown, yeah, so then.
Speaker 5: People could like insult encodition much insult me or go
Speaker 5: like you're so you know, blah blah blah, and that
Speaker 5: would be fine because I would just laugh it off.
Speaker 1: Annabelle is a gifted student with an intelligent, inquiring mind,
Speaker 1: top of the class throughout primary school, but then the
Speaker 1: wheels fell off.
Speaker 5: I understood the content perfectly well. It was the whole
Speaker 5: realization that you need age appropriate executive functioning skills. So
Speaker 5: at that point I needed to be able to study
Speaker 5: organize myself, and I couldn't do those things. And that's
Speaker 5: when I started falling behind. And at the same time,
Speaker 5: because the things that I was struggling with seemed so
Speaker 5: superficial and seems so fixable, I didn't ever ask for help,
Speaker 5: even if I had just known that you weren't dumb
Speaker 5: for not being able to organize. There's just a perception
Speaker 5: that those are things that you inherently are supposed to
Speaker 5: be able to do.
Speaker 1: Oh, can I ask you something. We've done this whole interview.
Speaker 1: You've been lung on the floor, which is absolutely fine,
Speaker 1: But I'm just thinking when you were at school, it's
Speaker 1: not really you can't courage no, So how did you
Speaker 1: cope with having to sit in a cheer for I.
Speaker 5: Don't looking back, I don't know how I did it
Speaker 5: because I couldn't focus on the actual content because also
Speaker 5: I was, you know, in my cheer, and like, if
Speaker 5: you lean back on your cheer set up, you're going
Speaker 5: to break the cheer. And sometimes in some classes I
Speaker 5: go to the toilet like ten times just to walk
Speaker 5: back and forth because I couldn't sit still. And in
Speaker 5: classes where I couldn't do that, I'd sit there and
Speaker 5: I'd just doodle and doodle and doodle. But actually, in
Speaker 5: that last year of school kind of everything, like I
Speaker 5: had amazing teachers who let me lie on the floor.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I'm very lucky with the school I went to.
Speaker 1: Annabelle says she had teachers that changed her life, which
Speaker 1: is why she's now studying to be a primary school
Speaker 1: teacher herself. Relationships are so key to positive outcomes, but
Speaker 1: they're not always straightforward for those with AUDHD.
Speaker 2: I could quite happily spend all of my time on
Speaker 2: my own, not really having external relationships.
Speaker 1: Not coming to do interviews.
Speaker 2: And be okay, I don't need that kind of contact,
Speaker 2: but actually.
Speaker 3: I'd thrive with it as well.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of weird thing about being pulled
Speaker 2: two different ways at the same time. Right, there's never
Speaker 2: kind of a happy in the middle. I do actually
Speaker 2: crave human contact. It's like I miss it when I
Speaker 2: haven't got it, but only when I think about it.
Speaker 2: I'm very good at not thinking about it and turning
Speaker 2: it off.
Speaker 1: So really, you're a walking contradiction kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's odd. It's odd desperate for social contact. When
Speaker 2: I've got it, I was like, right, I want to go.
Speaker 2: What I've found is I really enjoy spending any time
Speaker 2: with people who think like me. It doesn't like conversation
Speaker 2: like this with you, even in this environment is not
Speaker 2: taking my.
Speaker 3: Spoons away, thank god.
Speaker 2: Right, exciting and fun and yeah, fills me up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I really enjoy conversations when you're atypical people as well.
Speaker 2: It's just it's hard to work because I'm constantly like,
Speaker 2: quite like what they're talking about?
Speaker 3: What like, what do I have to say next?
Speaker 2: The conversation sort of has to start at A and
Speaker 2: go through BCD all the way to ZE, right, And
Speaker 2: it's like with spicyer people, it's like you might go
Speaker 2: to A and then like just forget the alphabet and
Speaker 2: talk about something else for an hour and then come
Speaker 2: back to it, or maybe even not get back to
Speaker 2: it because you've forgotten about it and chill out.
Speaker 3: Like I love that stuff.
Speaker 2: It's like I love meandering conversations. I like the fact
Speaker 2: that they can go anywhere because it keeps me interested.
Speaker 2: And it's exactly it's how I talk, right, It's I
Speaker 2: go all over the place, and it's just a joy.
Speaker 1: It is a joy. Often those with an AUDIHD type
Speaker 1: brains shunned because their way is seen as not normal,
Speaker 1: and Sarah Watson says it's society that's missing out on
Speaker 1: their magic.
Speaker 4: Those with AUDIOHD have often felt really misunderstood. It's important
Speaker 4: that we understand now that that is truly special, truly unique,
Speaker 4: and an absolute blessing in many ways. And one day
Speaker 4: this world will come to enjoy what we know and
Speaker 4: love what we know as AUDIOHD. I'm sure of it.
Speaker 3: Self.
Speaker 1: Compassion, you nice to yourself? Are you kind to yourself?
Speaker 1: You're getting better, it's your journey.
Speaker 3: Try.
Speaker 2: I have riches scales good rich, by rich, and in
Speaker 2: my head at the moment, bad Rich is still kind
Speaker 2: of like slightly slightly winning. Good Rich is not balanced,
Speaker 2: and it drives me right. I use it to motivate me,
Speaker 2: but on the balance, do not consider myself a good person.
Speaker 2: And it's years and years and years have been told
Speaker 2: that narrative, and I don't know if I'll ever think
Speaker 2: about myself as a good person really because that stuff's really, really,
Speaker 2: really deeply baked in. But like I say, I've found
Speaker 2: a way of using it. There's a power to it. Right,
Speaker 2: How do I turn up and do these things?
Speaker 3: Well? That stuff gives me.
Speaker 2: That shit fuels my rocket engine, right, because I don't
Speaker 2: want my kids when they're fifty thinking the same thing.
Speaker 2: Whatever I can do to help that, I will do,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's still at the stage of perception
Speaker 2: where we've got deficits, disorders and that, and so whatever
Speaker 2: I can do to disabuse as many people of the fallacy,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to do it, and I'll never stop.
Speaker 1: If you like this podcast, please rate and review it.
Speaker 1: It helps people find it. No such thing as normal
Speaker 1: as produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. Nathan King
Speaker 1: is the editor. Owen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawke's our executive producers.
Speaker 1: Production assistant is Beck's War. The series is brought to
Speaker 1: you by The New Zealand Herald and team uniform and
Speaker 1: it's made with the support of New Zealand. On air,
Speaker 1: new episodes of No such Thing as Normal are available
Speaker 1: every Saturday wherever you get your podcasts.