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- Strongly agree.
- Strongly disagree.
- Somewhat agree.
- Somewhat disagree.
- I would agree.
- [Both] Disagree.
- I create like so many stupid rules for myself.
For college, I was like, "I have to go drive 20 minutes
to get like a coffee, and once I get the coffee
then I can like shift into like focus mode,"
even though it's not true, but it works for me.
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- [Announcer] I've always known I have ADHD.
3, 2, 1.
- Yeah, in elementary school and middle school,
I was a good student.
I was quiet and I sat at my desk.
In college, I started to realize something was wrong
when I started failing classes,
and I was like, "Why am I not good enough?
Why can't I focus? Why can't I sit in a library and study?"
It felt like something was wrong versus like a diagnosis.
And then, finally, last year at 28,
I finally got diagnosed, and like every piece
kind of like came together, and it finally felt like,
"Oh, nothing's wrong with me.
This is just who I am."
- So I never knew I had ADHD,
but I knew that I struggled to keep up a lot in school,
and it led to me being pretty depressed
between 15 and 16.
And nothing was working until I had one doctor say,
"You know, I actually think you have ADHD,"
and then that really just like changed my life.
- You're asking if we were aware,
and I think that's the problem with me
where I was informed at a young age that I had ADHD,
so I didn't even understand what that was.
I thought I was just like everybody else,
so I was very oblivious to it
even though I guess I was informed,
so I might need to be over there.
I didn't recognize, but I guess I'm over here.
- I have a younger brother who has like severe
like hyperactivity ADHD,
but for me, it was never suggested
because it wasn't like physically manifesting itself
so nobody thought to be like,
"Oh, maybe that's what's going on."
And then when I was diagnosed at like 23,
I was a little bit mad.
I was like, "Why didn't anybody like see this?"
And when I started reading about it,
that's when I found out that like it manifests differently
in like women versus men.
- When I hear that question, it's not about me
understanding that I had ADHD.
I think it was more the world.
My depression came not because I had ADHD.
It was because the schooling system
and the world around me was trying to put me
into these boxes.
So my depression came because my teacher said,
"You are gonna be a failure in life
because you're not able to do well
on this three hour standardized test."
- [Announcer] Medication has helped me manage my ADHD.
3, 2, 1.
- Well, I didn't know how to answer this
because I'm not on medication 'cause I'm deathly afraid
of what it would do to me.
Even though it probably would help
and I should just test it out, I just haven't yet,
and so I don't know.
- I didn't know my brain could be so quiet.
- Yeah? - I was like,
"Wait, that's normal."
The medication was like putting on
a pair of glasses for the first time in my life.
I was like, "Whoa, this is actually the world,
like, this is how people live?"
- All the time?
- I'm like, "What the heck? I'm so jealous of that."
- I think this is hilarious
'cause I hate meditation. (laughs)
But because I hated it was the reason why
I was able to end up focusing.
I hated it so much that I was like, "I'm just gonna focus."
I had the counter-measurements
and my mom also helped me along the way
so that I wasn't reliant on the medicine.
But I still have tendencies,
but I remember everything that I was taught
and I applied them so much to where it's kinda like
it kinda eased me off of the medication 'cause I hated it.
- Medication for me is what I used to help
get back on the horse so to speak.
If things kind of spiral out of control,
try my best to basically build a house
with a strong structure.
ADHD, you're building a house on quicksand,
so sometimes the medication hardens that quicksand
for me a little bit.
Yeah, that's my experience with medication.
- I was diagnosed later on at 27 years old,
and so the first time I took medication,
I finally realized like
"Oh, this is what it feels like
to not get brain fog after 20 minutes."
I said agree because I've been able to learn
certain things and how to navigate without medication.
I do much more meditation to slow down my brain.
Now, the reason why that's beneficial for me
is that would work even if I'm not on medicine.
- [Announcer] My family helped seek out my diagnosis.
3, 2, 1. (participants giggling)
- My mom definitely takes like mental health serious.
One time she told me that I don't have personal space.
I didn't know what that was, so maybe that's the reason why
she got me diagnosed very early.
- My parents are a little older,
they had me when they were older,
so I like to say that they tried their best,
but they maybe didn't have the tools
to help me when I was younger.
It wasn't until college when my grades started dropping
that they started to notice that something might be wrong.
When I finally got diagnosed and I told my mom,
she was very supportive and she was like,
"Can I do anything? Can I help with anything?"
I think it's just having the tools available for parents
to know kind of what the signs are
even if they're not super apparent.
- For me, my parents still don't think...
My dad was in a civil war in Nigeria.
He has a PhD. I have three older brothers.
They had all As, merit, scholarship,
and my parents were like, "Yes!"
And I'm a triplet,
so I have a twin brother and a twin sister.
All three of us, we just,
we're not very good in school.
What was lucky was that we all ended up
getting sports scholarships.
So my parents were able to find success in me,
not through academics, but through sports.
But they would still say today,
"No, just work harder. Just focus.
You just need to make sure you're not on social media
and have your phone next to you."
- Similar to you, I'm Vietnamese,
so older generations than me
they've gone through war periods, right?
So to them it's, "We've survived a war.
What's this issue about you not being able to focus,"
in fourth grade math class, for example.
But over time, we seeked help together,
and then actually I found out my father has ADHD too.
He just floated through life managing it his own way.
- [Announcer] I have developed mechanisms
to cope with or manage my ADHD symptoms.
3, 2, 1.
- Especially with school, we went online
to like Zoom university,
like the last year of my college education,
and I was like, "There's no way this is happening."
And so I was like, "I have to invent some sort of system
for this to work, or else I will literally not graduate."
I create like so many stupid rules for myself,
but it works for me.
And so like for college, I was like,
"I have to go drive 20 minutes to get like a coffee,
and once I get the coffee,
then I can shift into like focus mode,
even though that's not true."
But I tricked myself, I Pavloved myself
into thinking that way.
It works, and I feel like I'm so stubborn that I'm like,
"I'm just gonna live my life with these
like stupid little rules because that's what helps me,
and I don't care if that's not the way
that like other people do it, it works for me."
- Zoom university was a struggle at first
just trying to figure it out.
I actually have the same,
I have like little morning rituals where I would wake up,
make myself a tea, and just spend 20 minutes
looking at the plants,
and also I found sticky notes to be my best friend
and my enemy at the same time
because sometimes those sticky notes pile up.
- Yeah, I also have just like,
I live and die by my calendar on my fridge.
If it's not on there,
I'm never going to your birthday party.
It has to be on the fridge on the calendar.
That's not good 'cause then if I'm on vacation
or I'm not able to look at the calendar,
or I forget something,
then it's just gone outta my brain forever.
- I call it like the light bulb trick
where if I wanna study,
I have a specific lamp that I turn on,
and every time it's on, I just know this is focus mode.
I don't do anything else.
- [Announcer] ADHD is becoming more common.
3, 2, 1.
- I am seeing like apps like TikTok,
everything's getting very shorter.
You're being shown like so much information at once,
and like your attention span is obviously
gonna like get shorter as you're exposed to that.
- I think ADHD has always been there.
On social media, especially people are starting
to create more of a safer environment
to talk about mental health.
That awareness has brought more people getting diagnosed,
and because of that people might think that,
"Oh yeah, everyone has ADHD."
- And now, they have some people on social media
being like, "Signs that you might have ADHD,"
and they're so much more than just like,
"I can't sit still."
It's like so many other things,
so more people are like, "That might be me too."
Women are getting diagnosed more now,
like they're listening to us, like doctors are listening,
and they're not like, "Oh, they're just like crazy women."
Now, it's like, "Oh, there's something going on.
It might be ADHD."
- When I first started going to therapy,
one of the first questions is
do you either work on Wall Street
or are you a college student?
I said, "No, I'm dealing with some issues,
I'd like to get diagnosed."
"Well, we don't do that here.
Tell me some of your symptoms."
"Oh, you have lack of focus.
Let's start off with 25 milligrams in Adderall."
It's like a revolving door.
Outside of the waiting room,
there's a bunch of other college kids
waiting to get their Adderall also.
- How most people are tested for ADHD
isn't through a brain scan.
So it's through questions and symptoms
that anybody can necessarily make up.
In addition, if you even look at
how marketing has been playing a role,
is our attention span is getting less and less and less.
And so I do believe because of that,
it will cause more people to identify as ADHD.
- I agree with that, and I realized
I think I'm on the wrong side.
I think this is why
'cause I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you're making a lot of sense."
I strongly agree,
and I one-up everything that you just said.
- We have information thrown at us 24/7.
I don't go on TikTok anymore, but when I'd go on TikTok,
I would get advertisements for like ADHD medications,
like no doctor needed, and I was like "What?"
- They're marketed towards like young women too.
There was a whole like study done about it.
- Yeah, I almost feel like they're trying
to profit off of people when in reality
I think it's more of a societal issue
of like society is just trying to push us
to be more productive past what is humanly possible.
- [Announcer] ADHD will prevent me
from accomplishing certain goals in the future.
3, 2, 1.
- I hope not. (participants laughing)
- I think if you had asked me two or three years ago,
I would've been like strongly agree
'cause I was like "Why can I not do X, Y, and Z?
And that's frustrating, and I think what's great
about getting like professionally diagnosed
and like kind of pointers,
I'm like, "Oh, I don't have to do those things
that I'm not good at."
It's a lot better of a mindset than having
like a very low self-esteem being like,
"Why can I do this? Why can't I do this?"
It's like, "I don't have to."
- No matter what circumstance I'm in
or what I've gone through,
I'm gonna figure out a way how to make it out.
Maybe I'm just hard on myself,
and if I didn't do well, I didn't blame it on ADHD.
I just thought I didn't figure it out
or I didn't try hard enough.
There's something else I could have done.
- I'm fortunate to have a lot of support
and different resources to help me
go through the ADHD journey.
You know, ADHD doesn't stop. It's 24/7.
- If you asked me when I was in high school,
I'm like 100% it was gonna affect me.
Now, as I'm almost 40, you know, I was lucky
to be a, you know, professional athlete,
I'm lucky to travel all over the world,
work at, you know, some amazing companies,
but my goal is no longer for me.
I have a 10 year old daughter
that's suffering from the same,
and I see some of the same stuff that happened to me
to her in school.
And so my focus now isn't towards me professionally,
I feel good, but my goal now is how do I make sure
that my daughter is able to navigate effectively
through the same stuff that I went through?
She will be fine, but I just wanna make sure
that she's able to navigate that through
her schooling career.
- [Announcer] Time to wrap up this episode.
Thank you, everybody.
(group clapping)
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