Transcriber: Yoko Emori Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Think back for just a second to elementary school.
Remember that kid who was shouting out answers
without raising their hand?
The one who was constantly fidgeting in their seat
or asking to go to the bathroom five times just to escape?
They were the one either daydreaming off in their own world
or interrupting,
inserting themselves into everyone else's conversation.
Well, that kid was me.
Between kindergarten and third grade,
I spent the majority of my school day in the principal's office,
banished by the teacher for disturbing the class
in one way or another.
I was your classic ADHD kid: hyperactive, impulsive, inattentive,
distracted by all things shiny, and overall, a bit of a pain in the ass.
People had negative reactions to my inability to sit still
and my desire to do twenty things at once, and I noticed those negative reactions.
But due to the obliviousness that often accompanies ADHD,
I didn't fully understand the connection between my behavior
and everyone's frustration with me.
Ronald Fairbairn, an influential psychoanalyst, said
"It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God
than to live in a world ruled by the Devil."
I love this quote
because I think it beautifully explains why children blame themselves
when they have difficult or painful experiences.
It feels safer to think of oneself as bad in a good world
than it does to face the injustices and unpredictability
of the world as it is.
So the message that ran through my head as a kid
when teachers and peers seemed so put off by me
was that the way I interacted with people and the world was wrong.
Luckily, I had one teacher, we all called her "Miss T,"
who had a different perspective.
Rather than seeing me as obnoxious and unmotivated,
Miss T saw me as someone who takes in information differently.
Unlike most of my teachers, she liked me,
and she empowered me to seek accommodations
that would allow me to learn.
She let me skip around in the lesson book,
she encouraged me to draw while I listened,
and if I got really impatient, she let me take a lap around the yard.
(Laughter)
Of course, it was helpful academically to be spending more time in the classroom
than the office.
But perhaps even more beneficial was that I began to see myself
as someone who was capable of learning,
and someone who was worthy of being taught.
She helped me realize that sometimes I should seek to change my environment
instead of myself.
Over time, I found creative ways
to mitigate my more difficult ADHD symptoms,
and I surrounded myself with patient people
who did not equate my occasional annoying and impulsive behavior
with my character as a person.
Special thanks to my partner, who has learned not to take it personally
when I leave a room without closing any of the drawers or cabinets I opened.
(Laughter)
Along the way, I also discovered that some of my symptoms actually serve me
in unexpected and extraordinary ways.
I realized that I can concentrate on many things at once,
I can switch focus quickly between tasks,
and under the right conditions, I can achieve a kind of hyper-focus.
And when that happens,
I can accomplish a lot more in a small amount of time
than would seem possible.
I've heard it described by others with the same ability as "bending time."
So then in graduate school, I decided to do my doctoral dissertation
on ADHD and success without the use of medication.
I wanted to explore three ideas:
One, that medication should not be our only line of defense against ADHD.
Two, that when given the opportunity to tailor one's learning environment
to one's learning needs, rather than the other way around,
success is quite possible even with ADHD.
And three,
that for some people with ADHD,
their symptoms can act as a super power of sorts,
and allow them to do certain things
that those without ADHD would have trouble doing.
So I interviewed adults with ADHD,
all of whom were very successful financially and occupationally,
none of whom took meds at the time for their symptoms,
and all of whom believed
that their ADHD had contributed to their success in some way.
And I spoke to them about their struggles as children and adults,
about the techniques they had used to deal with their struggles,
about who had helped and supported them along the way,
and about how they felt their ADHD had helped them succeed.
Now, let me just say, interviewing people with ADHD
about ADHD, when you have ADHD -
(Laughter)
it's an interesting task.
We definitely took some unexpected detours.
But it was also unbelievably enlightening and validating.
I heard some truly inspiring stories,
and I learned all kinds of brilliant ADHD hacks.
One interviewee bought himself a treadmill desk.
And he puts on music and he sets his treadmill
to the same speed as the beat of the music,
and he does his work while he dance walks on the treadmill
(Laughter)
because it helps him focus.
(Laughter)
So I recorded these interviews and I transcribed them
and I coded them for themes.
And what I found was that the common thread
between all of these successful people with ADHD who don't take meds
and who feel their ADHD helped them succeed
was that at some point they were given, or took for themselves,
the space and encouragement to find environments
that would be flexible to, or even celebratory of,
their way of being in the world,
rather than trying to force themselves
into rigid systems
that were not built with them in mind.
One interviewee remembered, at age nine,
convincing her parents to let her watch TV while she did her homework,
even though her older brother wasn't allowed to,
because it helped her focus.
Another interviewee told me about a time in high school
when his teacher assigned the class to read a chapter per week out of Hamlet,
and he went home and read the entire book.
And he came back the next day, and he said to the teacher,
"Look, I read the whole book.
Doing it a chapter at a time, does not work for me."
And so they spent two hours talking about the book,
and they discussed the themes, he proved he read it,
and for the rest of the semester, the teacher let him glue together
a 3D model of the Globe Theatre in the back of the classroom.
(Laughter)
The other thing I realized as I was coding these interviews
was that the most painful and difficult parts of each person's story
were not about dealing with the symptoms,
but rather the feelings of badness and incompetence and loneliness
and shame that they had about themselves.
It seemed as though the stigmas they faced
for not fitting into the traditional system
were more harmful to them than the disorder itself.
And that having support from parents and peers and partners
to be themselves, to try different things, to figure themselves out
and then ask for what they need,
having that support was more predictive of success
than the elimination of their symptoms,
because they learned to see themselves as unique
rather than bad or broken.
Which brings me to the title of this talk,
"The trouble with normal: my ADHD, the zebra."
By zebra, I mean two things:
The first has to do with the old saying, "A zebra can't change its stripes."
Now, a zebra is a lot like a horse
in most ways,
except it has certain distinctions that give it an edge out in the wild.
Supposedly their stripes help them with temperature control and camouflage.
A zebra in a pack of horses
is not necessarily going to fit in very well.
But that doesn't mean that it should rid itself of its stripes,
nor could it, if it wanted to.
Like a zebra's stripes,
ADHD is one of any number of non-normative characteristics
that evolved for a reason and that serve a purpose.
It was helpful when we were tribe members
needing to alert the herd of peripheral danger.
And it's still helpful for things like multitasking,
creativity and brainstorming.
It's less helpful sitting completely still in a classroom for eight hours a day.
The other thing I mean by zebra is that a zebra is both black and white,
two seemingly opposite things that are true at the same time.
The human mind has some trouble holding black and white simultaneously.
It's tough to see one person as both good and bad.
It's uncomfortable to be in touch with the fact
that if you have love for someone, then you also have hate for them,
and vice versa.
And it can be strange to think that any human condition
that is a weakness was at some point, or can at times be, a strength.
When it comes to ADHD, we've been all over the place.
It's a disorder - medicate it!
No, it's just a cluster of symptoms of other things.
And then more recently, it's not a disorder at all -
it's a difference in cognition.
In fact it's a super power. We should embrace it.
But I can tell you,
after all the interviews and research that I've done
that it's all of these things for different people at different times.
I know for me, it felt like a super power
when I would come out of what seemed like an almost hypnotic state
and realize that I'd just written twenty pages of my dissertation
while simultaneously eating dinner
and binge watching the third season of "Breaking Bad."
(Laughter)
But when I stepped into the street and got my foot run over by a car
because I didn't look both ways because I was distracted
by an interesting dog on the other side,
(Laughter)
it felt less super.
So ADHD is my zebra.
But it's definitely not the only zebra.
There are plenty of personality traits
and configurations that are outside the accepted norm,
ways of being in the world that are both beneficial and detrimental,
but for which the societal stigma can be more harmful than the trait itself:
introversion, emotional sensitivity, vulnerability, sometimes autism,
procrastination.
These are just a few that come to my mind, but I know there are many others.
Albert Einstein famously said, "Everyone is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to ride a bicycle,
it will live its whole life believing it is stupid."
As a psychotherapist, my daily life puts me in contact with a lot of people
who have spent their entire lives trying to mitigate, medicate
or eliminate traits that, in and of themselves,
might not have been so harmful to them
if they had been received with love and warmth,
or at least patience and acceptance
by their parents and teachers and peers and society as a whole.
I also see the way people armor themselves with painful defenses,
and become false versions of themselves,
adopting personas that don't feel natural or authentic or comfortable
in order to fit into the world as it is.
Of course, we do need to be able to adapt ourselves to fit into society.
There's plenty of research that's been done
on why we pressure those different than us
to be more similar, and why we give in to that pressure.
In small doses, shame is a feeling that signals to us
that we have stepped outside of acceptable social norms
so that we can adjust and fit in.
But shame can be a toxic thing, and it becomes a weapon
when we stigmatize others' difference
just to feel more safe within our sameness.
It's also important to recognize that being able to adapt your environment
to your needs is a privilege that not everyone has.
Not everyone is in a position to choose an occupation
based on what works best for them.
Not everyone can afford a treadmill desk.
(Laughter)
There are plenty of people with ADHD and any number of other traits
that are seriously struggling,
and they do need medication or special care.
But if there were more empathy,
for that very fact, there would be less shame.
And with less shame comes more confidence and more ability.
As the population increases exponentially, and the landscape of what it means
to be human changes and expands, it's unrealistic to think
that any one of us, or any particular group of us
is in possession of the right way of being.
There are so many types of normal, and there's beauty in the abnormal.
Living in a world where we've medicated or shamed away every outlier
is not exciting to me.
What's exciting to me is a world full of eccentric, self-assured,
interesting people who know that they were born with intrinsic value
and something important to offer,
and who have the support to figure out what that something is.
What's exciting to me is a world where the default
is to love and celebrate people as they already are.
Because when you love someone for who they are,
and you appreciate them
for all they've done to get themselves to this moment,
you'll be amazed at how quickly they transform into an even better,
more authentic version of themself.
Miss T did that for me all those years ago.
And you can do that, too, for each other, for yourself,
and for the wild, untamed zebra that exists in all of us.
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Cheers)