The complex experience of 2E adults with ADHD with Linda Roggli

Linda Roggli is one of the speakers at the Let's Talk 2E Conference For Adults, hosted by Julie Skolnick.

Her live presentation was titled Free to Be ADHD (and 2e).

The site for the Conference summarizes:

Linda Roggli is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), award-winning author and founder of the A-D-Diva Network for ADHD women 40-and-better.

She is an internationally-recognized expert in midlife and senior ADHD. She co-founded the annual ADHD Women’s and ADHD Parents’ Palooza, two weeks of online conversation with 30+ ADHD experts. (adhdpalooza.com)

She also created the popular ADHD Get Organized program which features live organizing sessions.

Linda’s book Confessions of an ADDiva: midlife in the non-linear lane won first prize for women’s issues in the prestigious Next Generation Indy Book Awards competition.

She chairs the webinar committee for ADDA. She lives in Durham, NC with her slightly OCD husband, one OCD cat, four adorable ADHD Shelties and 15 cackling hens.

Owning an ADHD brain has its challenges — time blindness, trouble with initiation and completion, impatience, impulsivity. And they are magnified with the ‘gift’ of 2e at work and home (“If you’re so smart, why can’t you keep a job?”).

With strong heritability, it also impacts parenting (“I’m sorry I forgot to pick you up after school!”).

The paradox of high intelligence coupled with high distractibility is difficult to explain, even to ourselves.

But many ADHD adults, especially those diagnosed in later life, admit they have managed their lives by out-thinking everyone else in the room.

There is a high price for this hyper-vigilance — anxiety, exhaustion and eventual burnout.

Understanding the complex interaction between ADHD, executive function and giftedness is the first step toward creating a life that is authentic and richly rewarding.

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Learn more about speakers and recordings of the Let's Talk 2E Conference For Adults. 

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Transcript

Julie Skolnick  
Hi and welcome to the Let's Talk 2E Conference For Adults. I'm Julie Skolnick. I am your host and the founder of With Understanding Comes Calm through which I guide parents and mentor 2E adults and train teachers on how to bring out the best and raise self confidence in gifted and 2E people.

Because we don't outgrow our giftedness or our 2E-ness, which is why we're here. And in this session with the wonderful Linda Roggli she'll talk to us about 'Free to be ADHD (and 2E). 

Linda is a professional certified coach, award winning author and founder of the ADDiva network "for ADHD women 40 and better" - I love how she says that. She is an internationally recognized expert in midlife and senior ADHD. She co founded the annual ADHD women's and ADHD parents Palooza - I have spoken at both and they are a total blast and incredible amount of information brought to you. 

She created the popular ADHD Get Organized program featuring live organizing sessions, and her book "Confessions of an ADDiva: midlife in the nonlinear lane" won first prize for women's issues in the prestigious Next Generation Indie Book Awards competition. So without further ado, welcome Linda Roggli to Let's Talk 2E Adult Conference.

Linda Roggli  
You know, when I created this presentation, it's the first time I've done this talking about 2E, although it comes into my conversation often. But it's not really the first it's the first time I've really put these two together. And when I was talking about it, it really is a paradox. 

And as as Julie mentioned, we don't really understand this ourselves to tell you the truth. So let's talk a little bit first about ADHD - giftedness, we're going to leave to the experts, and that's Julie. But we're going to talk about ADHD specifically. 

So ADHD, some of you know that you have an ADHD brain. And some of you know your kiddos have ADHD brains. And some of you suspect that your partner or your spouse has an ADHD brain, but they don't really believe it, actually. 

And the rest of you are secretly wondering Hmm, do I have an ADHD brain too? It's a question mark. Right. So let's find out a little bit about ADHD. And you can see whether you fit in to any of those boxes. 

You know, there's a book out there called "You mean I'm not lazy, stupid or crazy?" So a lot of folks think about ADHD in terms of exactly those words. 

ADHD is like screw ups, right? ADHD is like having trouble in school. ADHD is like your space cadet, I can't even think of what's wrong with you can't you even you know, stay, pay attention. 

And most importantly, a lot of times ADHD is associated with failure, a profound sense of failure, which just goes right to the heart of everything we're going to talk about today. 

But the thing is, that those descriptors don't always apply to high IQ, ADHD folks. 

We are the honor students. We are the ones that you know, we may do at school at the last minute, but we're getting our book reports in there. We're getting the A's were in the gifted programs. 

I was in the gifted program when I was in elementary school for heaven's sake. 

So it doesn't sound like anything that would that would be familiar to us. As a matter of fact, when someone said you have ADHD, I laughed at them, like, No, I can't have ADHD, yhat's a little kids, right. 

However, I learned a lot more about that. So what we ended up doing it because we do have the things that go along with ADHD. 

As we mentioned, time blindness and impatience and impulsivity, we begin to kind of protect those things. Because we have a reputation for being really good at what we're doing really good, especially at school. Usually, that's where we tend to shine. 

So we begin to craft this super persona, at least for the outside world that we look like we have this. 

The problem is it's got this very soft underbelly that we have to protect all the time. So what we ended up doing is becoming our intellect, my intellect is my identity. 

No one can know anything else. And as long as I can help think everyone else in the room. I'm fine. The problem is we can't always do that. There's a reality behind that facade. 

Late night last minute hyperfocus just as I did for this presentation, and Julie knows that we get anxious, we're really afraid that we're going to be found out - it's the imposter syndrome, trying to put up a facade so that no one sees behind it. 

It's It's the classic Wizard of Oz thing: "Don't look behind the curtain" - and then in the things that we ended up producing, the performance, it's never quite as good as if I'd had more time. But of course, we did have more time. The problem is we didn't use it wisely.

And just to mention time blindness, since I'm not going to really talk a lot about that today. Time. Mindless means two things. One is not knowing how much time is passing, so that you underestimate the amount of time things take. 

But it's also not recognizing, like when you're in hyper focus, you don't even know what time it is, you're you are in hyper focus, and you think it's been an hour, all of a sudden, you look up and it's been four or five hours later. 

So time blindness - isn't this the thing that makes us late to appointments, and it also makes us scoot in at the last minute, and you know, feel like, Oh, I thought I could do this. But no, I needed more time. 

I have to tell you a couple of stories, just I just want to mention a couple of things. One of the things about ADHD, I love this. And this is actually from people whom I from whom I have heard the the people in my in like, like client base, if you will. 

The woman was leaving her garage, and she was so afraid because she was so forgetful that she actually put a post it on her steering wheel that said, don't forget the baby. She had just had a new baby. So it was like new on her list of things to do. Right. 

There was another woman who worked in a laboratory. She ran pregnancy tests, and everything was just going just fine. Until she ran a pregnancy test on male specimen of urine. Yeah. 

And just so you know, thank goodness, he wasn't pregnant. That was good news, right? 

We often have chaos, which is the can't have people over syndrome. This is one of the pictures from one of the people in my organizing group. And I will tell you, I'm showing you the before picture, the after picture was much, much better. It was just beautiful. 

And I also had a doctor in my in my practice that was behind on 243 charts. And she was trying to catch up. Because she was an excellent doctor. She was really good at what she did. 

But the paperwork was killing her. And of course, when you're a doctor, you do need to chart so that you know what the heck is going on with your patients. 

So in case someone else is that patient, they also know we get along with making telling Little White Lies, because we are going to catch up. Yes, I'm almost done with that. Yes, I'll do it next week. It'll be it'll just be fine. No problem. 

But we actually cover up the truth with our life because we're afraid that maybe we won't catch up. So there's that constant fear, again, of being found out. 

One of the women that emailed me some years ago called ADHD, her dirty little secret. She had to hide it all the time. And she was on alert all the time. 

So this is what hyper vigilance looks like. We are afraid that we are going to be found out. So we are we are trying so hard to make sure that everything is perfect. We have to be alert all the time. 

We have to be just like this dog just alright, I'm on baby. It just it has to be it has to be perfect. And no one can look behind the curtain or under the petticoat or under the table. 

It is just we're so afraid that that we're going to actually but bottom line is this disappoint other people, but also in the process disappoint ourselves. 

We become really obsessed with details. And that's ironic because ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, you think attention deficit would be Oh, we don't pay attention to those details. 

But actually, attention deficit disorder is completely misnamed. It actually is attention to everything. 

I talk about the fact that ADHD folks, what let's talk about neurotypical people, without ADHD, you may view the world at about a 60% angle. ADHD folks view things with 180 or wider angle, which means we are taking in so much more than anyone else's. 

We are the ones that are going to notice that your tires flat as we walked through the parking lot, just as a matter of course, just Well, yeah, one of those little things, we're going to notice that you've changed the color of the room immediately when we come in. 

And we're going to be obsessed with that because we need control. I've certainly been accused of being controlling in my life, and I realized it was really all about the ADHD. 

So we want to maintain structure, and we want to maintain control. The problem is that it's really exhausting.