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 Podcastis out a little earlier to help you make the most of the whole week’s worth ofevents. You can sign up at https://www.neurodiversityweek.com/eventsI hope you enjoy my ADHD chat with the lovelyJayne Leonard as we talk about what’s helped and is still helping us to befriendand celebrate our own late diagnosed ADHD brains.le grá (with love),EveiFULL TRANSCRIPTAnd yeah, I think just celebrate it, own it,you know, allow it, accept it. It's not going to change, so you might as wellwork with it and, you know, make space for it. Yeah. Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and welcome tothe Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I am so excited to be sharing newtrauma-informed and ADHD-friendly ideas for you to help you take better care ofyour Self, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant andmiraculous part of yourself, as well as the basic self-care, which we all knowcan be so challenging at times. I really appreciate you tuning in. If you want a deeper dive, you'll be gettingbonus content each week if you sign up to the Soul to Soul Circle. You can dothat for free or from as little as eight euros a month. And you can also findmore ideas in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas forEmbodied 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 NeurodiversityCelebration Week, which I did not write about in 365 Ways to Feel Better,Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, because when I wrote this, eventhough I'd had a brain scan that showed an abnormality that correlated withADHD, I was years and years away from self-diagnosis, let alone actualpsychiatric diagnosis with ADHD.But I think the whole world has woken up tothe fact that we are not all the same and it's a good thing and that there'snothing necessarily wrong with anyone. It's simply about differently wiredbrains and about conditions that support us rather than trying to fit roundpegs into square holes, in which case everyone comes out feeling like if you'renot completely normal, like what's normal, that there's something wrong withyou. And I'm thinking it's not that long ago that left-handed children would havetheir hands tied behind their back to force them to write with theirnon-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 howdifferent entire lives could have been had we known, but also if the world weredifferent and if the world were more set up. Even now, kids struggle havingaccommodations made for them even though the accommodations would supporteveryone, not just the neurodivergent children.  We wanted to just share a little bit about thethings we celebrate about our differently wired brains and what we'd like tosee more of for everyone. Yeah, I love this. I love this topic. It'sdefinitely something I really do celebrate. I think even before I even thoughtI might have ADHD, I used to love this part of me that could hyper-focus andget so much done and learn so much about a topic. I did really well in certainareas because of this. I used to call it my superpower and my friends, myfamily say you're like superwoman, but I almost like over-identified with that.So then, you know, the times when you have torest or you have the bit of the ADHD burnout, I would really berate myself, youknow. But now I think I've found the balance of I'm celebrating this, but alsorecognising I need the downtime as well, the recovery period. Yeah.  Just for those of you who don't know, Jayne isincredible. Not only is she a busy psychotherapist, she's Vice Chair, my deputyon the Editorial Committee for the Irish Journal of Counselling andPsychotherapy (IJCP), and she is doing her PhD. I don't know if youwant to say a tiny bit about your PhD and the amazing study you're a big partof?  Yeah, well, just very briefly, I suppose, as Iwas on your podcast before (episodes 28, 42 and 45) talking about food andmental health and wellbeing.So that's kind of the area of my study: How wecan use food to support us to feel better. And not just in terms of the actualnutrition from the food, but also our relationship with the food, therelationship it has to our culture, our identity, our social lives and thesocial aspect of food. And so, yeah, I'm doing a PhD on that. We'll see how it goes now. We'll see howincredible 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 afriend as well and knowing your schedule and just thinking, oh, my God/dess. And I also know that people hear some of whatI'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 deskdiary, I've used purple highlighter to like carve out like a long lunch breakas many days as I can for a longer yoga nidra. I've used like pink highlighter to take (most) weekends off becausefor so many years I was doing overlapping trainings in different types oftherapies 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 justfeels impossible. Yeah, I even booked a few nights away frommyself, you know, in Kerry last week, just so I could hyperfocus. And then I had the downtime after and it'sjust, yeah, I think celebrating it is working with this rather thanexpecting yourself to be either really super focused all the time or have itact like someone who has a neurotypical brain or whatever that is. It's justallowing it, working with it, like you said. Yeah. And like when you said acting likesomeone who has a neurotypical brain, I think like so many of us, we only knowour own brains. I mean, I grew up being called weird, but mostly in a friendlyway. And I washappy to identify as a weird, but I think understanding where it's like, lifecould have been so different.  But things like around nutrition, I rememberlearning a good bit as part of my yoga therapy training, and how important itwas for developing brains. And like, I remember back then, in my 30s, thenthinking, oh, it's too late. I should have been eating better. I was vegetarian from the age oflike 11 or 12 and I didn't like vegetables. And I was pretty much malnourished. I had a growth spurt when I wentback to eating meat for a while at 17! I've been vegan now, since 2017. And I do eat much better but there is stillthat 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 myfood. And like,sorry, loved ones who happen to be with me. But it just tastes so much betterlike 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 tohave protein with breakfast. Like before we started our recordings today, wholemealtoast, peanut butter, little bit of Vego (vegan chocolate spread) and mushedbanana. And it'slike, I spent decades being told by everyone, I should be having properbreakfast. When I was at school, I might have ice cream for breakfast orbourbon 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 thinkcelebrating is even like saying, ‘Oh, well, that demand avoidance actuallyserved me in some situations. Yeah. And recognising now like, nope, I'm giving myself that proteinnow, like at 49, I hope to have many, many decades to come and I'm doing what Ican to rectify that. And it is never too late, actually. It's never too late to start eating well...