Quirky or Disabled?

* Rough Transcript *

Hello, hello, I am coming on super late this week for this week’s Embracing Intensity podcast. We had kind of a slow start to our day, and then we ended up taking a really long afternoon hike, which was great. So here I am after dinner, filming for this week’s podcast episode. And next week, I have an interview episode that I’m really, really super excited to share, and that is with Cosette.

Coco Leary, author of From Welfare to the White House, and it is amazing, so you’re going to love that interview. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about Things that might be a barrier to getting accurate diagnoses, especially if you’re gifted or twice exceptional. There was a conversation going around, I think yesterday, a couple conversations around whether the category or the label of highly sensitive person was something that might get in the way of getting diagnosed with some sort of neurodiversity.

So in this case, it was talking about autism or ADHD, but there’s a lot of other categories that would fit as well. And so a lot of people commented on how they really resonated with the highly sensitive person concept. and they really connected with it, but it, they kind of settled there and never got diagnosed.

And it got me thinking about how a lot of times in our attempt not to pathologize, not to label things, we have these other categories, these traits that might come up as part of a disability, and we use them. Sometimes they can actually interfere with getting a diagnosis, especially with people who are gifted, highly sensitive.

A couple other things that came up were things like multipotentialite or scanner, or uh, polymath. All of those are things where people are interested in a lot of different things. A lot of people with A DHD relate to those, and not all of them may be A DHD, but there’s a big overlap and also. In general, there’s a lot of things related to giftedness that people will kind of dismiss like, Oh, they’re just quirky.

They’re not really disabled. They’re just quirky. And it’s because they’re gifted. And that may be true, but I think we really need to look at the impact. So, I was identified as gifted when I was in fifth grade. And I knew that part, but it took until I dropped out of my first college to hear about ADHD.

And granted, it wasn’t very familiar in girls at that time. And so, especially girls. So there was a reason that people didn’t really understand it. But I think people were really quick to look at me as being reasonably successful. But at the same time, I did not feel successful. I compared myself to everyone around me, and I looked at the success that they were having, and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t figure it out.

So I had a really hard time with study skills. I never really learned how to do those things. And while I figured out after I dropped out that I probably had ADHD, it was really kind of, I lucked into it, because my dad found a book. And he really related to it, so he gave it to me and I really related to it.

And, of course, I’ve told my story in the past that I didn’t actually get a formal diagnosis at that time. I tried and then didn’t follow up on my appointment and lost all my paperwork. And so I just recently got diagnosed. But I was able to use the knowledge to help myself in a lot of ways. And what I find is those people who had no idea that they had ADHD or a lot of people who are autistic who didn’t find out until later, they felt like there’s something wrong, but they They can’t really grasp what it is, and oftentimes I see things like, highly sensitive person, people will just say, oh, you’re just highly sensitive.

There’s nothing wrong with you, and people kind of dismiss it because it’s a label that’s more palatable. than say ADHD, autism, that sort of thing. So people will say they’re highly sensitive or they’ll say their kid’s highly sensitive or whatnot because it’s a label that seems to be more widely acceptable, more palatable.

Same with giftedness. A lot of people will see the gifted part and they really They really hold on to that part, and they’ll, they’ll explain away other possible diagnoses that might be lurking as well as just behaviors that come up because they’re bored or they’re, you know, understimulated or what, whatever it is, and so they don’t actually get the diagnosis that they need.

And the problem with that is that In addition to not getting the treatment and support, it has a really, really negative impact on self esteem. So if you don’t realize that you have a disability, if people kind of dismiss it or use just general vague terms or try to lighten it, they don’t really acknowledge the executive functioning challenges, for example, that come with ADHD, then people don’t really understand.

Why it is that they can’t do certain basic things that they think they should be able to do. So, I guess that’s all to say that, that things like Highly Sensitive Person, Multipotentialite or Scanner, all of those titles, labels that you might see and you might use and you might relate to are great because they help you find connection, they help you find your identity and really explore things that light you up and, and that sort of thing and, and feel that connection with other people who relate to those labels.

But if you feel like it’s significantly impacting your life, if you feel like having too many interests is getting to the point where you just, you can’t. do anything productively, or that you’re so, so highly sensitive that you can’t do basic functional things, or that it, or that you’re exhausted, or that it’s creating fatigue issues, or that sort of thing.

It’s worth looking into deeper. to see if there’s something else going on because while we might not want to be super quick to label things or label people, labels can be extremely helpful in self understanding. So that’s my main message for today. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. If you’ve found times when some sort of a label like highly sensitive or that sort of thing has kept you from really getting at the core of some sort of a disability or some other thing that was going on.

Deeper. Have a great day!