FOUR WOMEN‟S PERCEPTIONS OF LIVING A LIFETIME WITH ADHD by Ana Popovic A project submitted to the Faculty of Education in conformity with the requirements for EDUC-898 Queen‟s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada April, 2011 Copyright © Ana Popovic, 2011 ii ABSTRACT This project is written as a reflection of how „we‟ think, „we‟ being adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Although the project follows conventional methodology in terms of data collection and research, the presentation of my data does not follow conventional style. This style is in tribute to my main audience, ADHDers themselves and the people who know them well, as ADHDers are far from conventional. ADHD is a genuine disorder, both physiologically and psychologically, that is not biased towards age, gender, or race. The aims of the project were to create an interesting resource that: addresses the reality of female ADHD, provides an empathetic point of view for future students struggling with similar issues, and gives a voice to my participants. Through this project, you are introduced to four adult women living with and learning about ADHD. Candidates participated in an individual retrospective 1-hour interview and a follow-up focus group session. Interview data were then compiled into a series of biographical and autoethnographical stories: their stories and „our‟ story. In writing these stories, I gained an understanding into the common experience. I found that the four women share common struggles and common landmarks along the path of understanding their own ADHD and finding success with it. Four common themes emerge throughout their stories that lead to a metamorphosis. Starting with diagnosis, they are able to identify strengths and integrate them into their passions. Through this process, a personal definition of success emerges. The integration of self-understanding, innate strengths, and personal passions brings the women onto the road of personally- defined success, the course of which is guided by interests and abilities. Although I am not yet ready to create my own version of success, I now finally have insight as to where to find it as the meaning of success is my definition to make. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So here lies the beginning of the end. The beginning for you as you glance through this work and the end for me as I write these last few words. Working through this Master‟s project felt like a very long, lost, and lonely journey. It has definitely given me an appreciation for what the term „writer‟s block‟ might mean and how much time and energy it actually takes to think about things. Spending so much time in one‟s own head can take a person to the craziest of places! But, as I step out of my cave and slowly puzzle together the pieces of this experience, I realize that, although it was definitely a long journey, I was never lost nor alone at any step of the way. There are many amazing and incredible people who stuck it through with me the whole way without my even realizing it. These people knew me better than I know myself, understand me better than I understand myself, and forgive me better than I ever forgive myself. John Freeman is a man who saw my potential before I even walked through McArthur‟s doors and continued to see my potential as I was ready to leave again and again and again. He always pushed but never so hard that he‟d push me away and he‟d always encourage but never in a way that was exaggerated, fake, or insincere. I know that every word from John is true so when he tells me I can do something, I find it easier to believe him than to believe myself. Larry O‟Farrell, although never having met me, also sees this potential that I‟m only now only starting to consider myself for maybe the first time. Ben Seewald: I don‟t think that I can justly and adequately express my gratitude to you. I can undoubtedly say that I would not have completed this project without your unwavering support and persistent faith. I still don‟t see and probably never will see the world the way you do. It amazes and inspires me, as you do so with all the people you encounter. You have an incredible gift and capacity for bringing out the best in people. This is truly your strength. I could write endless thank-yous and that still it would not be enough. Know that you are AWESOME! Graduate colleagues and loving friends & family … I can‟t believe you people have and continue to stick by me through both my brightest days and my darkest hours. It is these times in particular that reveal and reinforce who the people are that care about you the most. Thank you for your continued friendship. And finally, I would like to acknowledge my participants for, without their trust, and honesty this project would not have been possible. It is, after all, their words. iv For the people who love me anyways. And for those who believe in me even when I do not. You give me more than I can ever give back. Forever thanks. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... v PROLOGUE: MEET ANNABELLE ............................................................................... vii What You See Isn‟t Always What You Get .................................................................. vii Towards a New Identity and Self-Understanding .......................................................... ix INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 EM: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD .................................................................................. 6 FAITH: RESILIENCY AND STRENGTH ...................................................................... 16 ELLE: LOVE WHAT YOU DO....................................................................................... 27 KAY: ONE AND THE SAME ......................................................................................... 38 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 51 What I‟ve learned from My Participants ....................................................................... 51 Getting the Diagnosis ................................................................................................ 51 Identifying your Strengths ......................................................................................... 52 Articulating your Passions ......................................................................................... 54 Defining Success ....................................................................................................... 55 Integration .................................................................................................................. 56 What I‟ve Learned about Myself .................................................................................. 57 Growth as a Decision Maker ..................................................................................... 58 Growth as a Writer .................................................................................................... 58 Growth as a Woman with ADHD ............................................................................. 59 vi EPILOGUE: A LETTER TO MY TEACHERS ............................................................... 61 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 64 APPENDIX A: INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ........................................... 72 APPENDIX B: FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS .............................................................. 75 vii PROLOGUE: MEET ANNABELLE Who is Annabelle? Annabelle is the result of years of not knowing who you are and what you‟re about and figuring out how to cope. She is a character created based on the stories of four fantastic women speaking to their lived experience of a lifetime with, until lately, unidentified Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is the core story they share. Despite adversity, however, these women have all exhibited remarkable resilience and the drive to move forward and become, by all social standards, quite successful. The core story presented here is one of great success despite challenges, one of personal acceptance despite continued struggle, and one of great hope to continue growing, learning, and succeeding. We‟ve all experienced blunders and frustrations at key points in our lives. We‟ve all had ups and all had downs. In essence, we have all experienced our own Annabelle, chronically or not. It is these „Annabelle moments‟ that I ask you to recall and relate to. What You See Isn’t Always What You Get At school Annabelle can be that quiet little girl in the corner we have all encountered and some of us even have known. To some she‟s almost too quiet and shy. She„s the dreamer who is always looking out the window. Or she can be staring straight at you but her eyes tell another story of her being somewhere else. She‟s one who lives in her own little world. To others, however, Annabelle is more than just this quiet spaced- out kid. She can be an incessant chatterbox with a reputation of talking too much and saying things that are inappropriate to the context. Her body can move as quickly as her mouth, be it shifting, tapping, or writing quickly (and often illegibly). Despite these two presentations the story is the same; she never really caused a lot of trouble and did relatively okay in school. Regardless of being quiet or rambunctious, these students are very similar. They learn differently. Everyone learns differently but the issue is that these students ideally learn in a way not typically engendered by the school system. She‟s what many call a „big viii picture‟ thinker, a very visual thinker, who needs to see the whole thing to understand it. She is typically very hands-on and experiential in her process. Desks, unfortunately, do not lead to a lot of novel experiences. At work she‟s that scatter-brained employee who always runs late to meetings. Her desk is either pristine, almost obsessive, or pandemic, almost explosive. She forgets the time, the dates, and the deadline. She loses files and reports when you need them and finds the ones that you needed before. Annabelle farts around the office unproductively for three days and then has to work 72 hours straight to make up for it. She pulls it off, she gets the job done, but to the expense of everyone‟s stress and her own health. When she‟s interested in what she‟s doing, Annabelle‟s a tyrant. But she‟s otherwise slow to start and never quite finishes. We see her as lazy. What we don‟t recognize is that, cognitively, she needs to be interested in what she‟s doing if she‟s ever going to learn and to succeed. This is where she gets into a lot of trouble because of the resulting inconsistent performance. We all need to do things we don‟t like, so why should Annabelle be the exception? She‟s told that she‟s spoiled, stubborn, or defiant and, you know what, she believes it. What we see externally is obvious, annoying, easy to catch, and also easy to dismiss. There are so many other students who chronically procrastinate. There are so many other students with appalling work habits. Their work is messy, their lockers are messy, and their desk is messy. Like them, Annabelle is always losing and forgetting things. She‟s disorganized but that‟s her fault. Annabelle is super sensitive, but that‟s shrugged off as a girl thing, at that time of the month. We all have our challenges; she just needs to buck up and get her act together. No sympathy. Often blame. What we don‟t see is the part that‟s most damaged; it‟s the self, her own core beliefs. The damage results from this consistent blame, both external and internal. Blame for being messy. Blame for being late, again. Blame for forgetting that thing. Blame for missing that instruction, again. With every reoccurring experience, with every registered fault, a message gets more deeply etched into her psyche: you are lazy, you are crazy, you are stupid. ix I ask you for a brief moment to set your judgment aside and remember a time that you‟ve felt the same way. You messed up that thing, you disappointed others, and you got mad at yourself. Now imagine: that feeling or experience never goes away. It‟s chronic, a whispered reminder that comes with everything that you do, often the wrong things that you do. That‟s Annabelle talking. Towards a New Identity and Self-Understanding For Annabelle, life is a series of hiccups, as she bumbles along from one experience to the next. Within these experiences, there are some great adventures and some serious blunders. There are many different jobs, many relationships, many different homes, and many different journeys. Annabelle is wild, is fun, is crazy, and is unreliable. To people who know her she‟s just this person who does kooky things but seems to be reasonably functional. Fun to be around, less fun to be with. To herself, those kooky things are normal for her, but not normal to anyone else. She gets the sense that she‟s different from most and does whatever she can to keep up. In the school context, the coping strategies seem to work just fine - be it burning the midnight oil, seeking help, or making lucky guesses - as she makes her way along. She got into college, successfully scraped her way through, and somehow got out on the other side with diploma in hand. The challenge here is choice. School is generally a very structured place with clear expectations and a well-defined path. The choices, compared to „real-life‟, are fairly minimal. While you have to choose your courses and you have to pick your major, once that commitment is made, the rest of the choices are made for you. Although college presents its own set of challenges and is far less structured than high school, the experience is still fairly central with your circle of influence small. Your primary role in life is student. But, as Annabelle grows up, so does the level of responsibility that she has to take on. Leaving the well-structured institutional walls, Annabelle is a successfully educated woman and contributing member of the workforce. By all conventional terms, x she‟s a success. Annabelle plays a number of roles in her life as both her circle of influence and level of responsibility increase. She‟s no longer just a daughter, a sister, or a student. Now she takes on the roles of a wife, a mother, a friend, an employee, a taxpayer, a home owner, a voter, a volunteer, and an emergency contact. The game of life has changed drastically, and those early coping strategies that worked through school only now start falling apart through life. Life changes from a series of hiccups to a series of repeated frustrations. Those things that are cute as a child and forgivable as a student become unacceptable as an adult. Annabelle lives in a world of dissonance between thought and action; the intentions are great but never the outcomes. The person she wants to be and knows she can be is not what is coming out on the outside. The eyes she sees the world with are looking through the lens of disappointment and failure, and a lifetime worth of patterned reactions that become part of her own character. A life filled with disappointment is not a life worth living. How would you react to a painted history of hiccups, disappointments, failures, and frustrations? Depression, depressive tendencies, anxiety, negative self-concept, and low self-esteem are legitimate internalizations that result. So, in this story, Annabelle hits a wall. She bumbles along in life from one experience to the next until she finds that she‟s come to a stop and doesn‟t know which way to go. But, this is not supposed to be a sad story. In this story, Annabelle is very lucky because she‟s not alone. Annabelle is lucky because she finds help and learns to look at life through a different lens altogether. The turning point for Annabelle was the diagnosis. Through the processes of internalization and acceptance, she was gradually able to shift her perspective from one of shame and blame to one of understanding and empowerment. Annabelle was lucky to find the right path to self-discovery. Female ADHD is still a very new and misunderstood concept both clinically and publicly. Despite being a well-researched area, ADHD, along with other cognitive differences, is still in infantile stages of understanding. Lucky for Annabelle, there is access to knowledge that can take her down the path to self- understanding, self-forgiveness, and self-healing. Through the diagnosis she has learned that she is not a bad person and can slowly work on changing that belief. She has