The complex life of being 2e gifted, neurodivergent, ADHD with Aurora Remember

Aurora Remember is founder of the Embracing Intensity, with programs which help you "identify and use your neurodivergent strengths, while supporting your challenges.”

This audio is from a video version of her Podcast 205: Twice Exceptionality - When Giftedness Meets ADHD.

Topics:

~ Why the topic of twice exceptionality, or 2E, is important to me.
~ Why it’s important to talk about twice exceptionality.
~ Why it often goes overlooked.
~ How to recognize when you might be both gifted and ADHD.
~ Common themes from assessing 2E ADHD students.
~ Strategies that might help if you fit this profile.

See the video, plus links to Embracing Intensity Membership and other resources, in article:

Living better the complex life of being 2e gifted, neurodivergent, with ADHD.

https://thecreativemind.net/8410/

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Transcript

Aurora Remember  

Hello, I'm Aurora, I'm a school psychologist, and also the host of the Embracing Intensity podcast and community, and a neurodiverse Coach.

I started to focus on twice exceptionality, because of my own personal experiences, and realizing how little information there was out there for 2e adults. 

So twice exceptionality is being both gifted and disabled. And so of course, today because we're talking about ADHD, I'll focus specifically on being gifted and ADHD. 

So I'll share a little bit about my own personal experience, which started really from when I first started in kindergarten, and I was pretty young, and they tried to hold me back because they said I was too immature to go on to the next grade. 

Really, I was just kind of all over the place. And I talked a lot and I asked too many questions. But fortunately, my parents really pushed to keep me moving forward, which was a really good thing, because I would have been probably extremely bored if they had tried to hold me back. 

My entire elementary school, I really felt like, I know teachers like me, I was in a very authoritarian type school setting. And so I actually remember distinctly the very first teacher that I thought actually liked me, and that was in fourth grade. 

And I also remember, I'm pretty sure that was the same year that it was the one year that I actually got Citizen of the Month and all my other friends got it pretty much every year. 

And so until fifth grade, I was unidentified for either giftedness, or ADHD, because I was in a Spanish Immersion program. And the test was an English. So it wasn't until fifth grade, that I was able to move forward. 

And in fifth grade, I tested so high that the psychologist or counselor said that I needed to get out of that school and into a full time gifted program. So at that point, they had had me in a second grade reading book, because I wouldn't do the busy work in English. 

And when they tested me at the new school, I was reading at a sixth or seventh grade level. So I was actually reading higher than my grade level, but they had me three or four books behind because I wouldn't do the busy work. 

And that would be sort of the emblem of how my education would go over the years is that I could do the advanced stuff, but the basic busy work stuff was the hardest. 

And I think that's something to be really aware of that's a common theme that I find with twice exceptionality in general is that oftentimes, it's the more complicated things that come easier for us. And the more difficult things for us are actually the things that others find easy, which makes it very confusing.

Because they they'll look at you and say, Well, you can do this thing that's so complicated, but you can't do this basic thing. And they think that it's a contradiction, but it really isn't because there are two part different parts of the brain. 

So by the time I got into high school, I had a really great middle school experience. But then I was at a high school full of really high achievers, and I became very resentful and angry, and I had no idea why it was that I was an underachiever. 

I just knew that I didn't fit inside that school box. And when I went on to college, I actually ended up dropping out my sophomore year, I had a major physical breakdown, I couldn't, I had all sorts of health issues that led to things like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. 

And it was the stress really, of everything that was going on, caused a lot of physical problems. 

So when I dropped out of college, the first time my dad gave me a book on ADHD, and it was the first time I'd even heard of ADHD. And I didn't know at that point, there wasn't a lot of information about it. And there was definitely not a lot of information for girls. 

And so when I read that information, it really resonated and I was pretty sure that it was me but by that point, I had actually started to kind of figure out what was working for me. And in grad school, I actually found some new strategies. 

And so I was able to work within the system and move on to become a school psychologist, which has a very structured and it's very based on deadline and urgency and so I was able to go through many years as a professional in that way. 

However, the stress of it would leave me so that every summer I needed that three months to recover because I was so exhausted. 

Austin and I didn't really make the connection that it was my, the challenge and taxing on my executive functioning to keep going in that urgency driven environment was really contributing to my chronic pain.

And so that is why I finally got diagnosed at 45. Well, almost 45 I'm 45 now. And so this just this past year, I finally got actually diagnosed. 

So, why is it important that we understand what twice exceptionality is and how to recognize it and what to do about it in ourselves? 

Well, there's a couple of couple of possible outcomes that might come if twice exceptionality isn't recognized. 

One of those things is that for some kids, their giftedness can mask their ADHD. And because of that they get through and people will dismiss their issues. 

And like me, they may end up having some chronic pain and fatigue. And as René Brooks of Black Girl, Lost Keys says, oftentimes people confuse intelligence, with executive functioning. 

And they think that they're the same thing, but they're not. And that's something that's really a challenge when, especially as we get older, and we don't have those structures of school to keep us in line, we have to rely on urgency and external deadlines and things that are really taxing on our system, that's can cause a lot of stress and other health issues. And eventually, we may not be able to keep up. 

Another possibility is that our ADHD might mask the actual giftedness. 

And this is something I've seen both with group testing that's given for kids for giftedness because a lot of a lot of the kids who are highly distractible, don't do well on those group tests. And so they are not necessarily representative of their true true potential. 

But even one on one testing, even when we give a kid a test in a one on one setting, it still might not reflect their ability if they're easily distractible, easily bored, unmotivated. 

I had this one kid that I tested a while back in eighth grade and his math teacher recognize the characteristics of giftedness in him. But he had tested in the solid average range with no major spread in his previous testing. 

So we didn't weren't even planning on on testing him at that point. But we did. And I really hyped it up and made sure that he was viewing it like a fun challenge. And I could really see this kid had some major gifts. And he had this drive for figuring out puzzles and challenges and all of this stuff that he was super excited about. 

And when he was excited about it, he scored in the superior range. But when it was a task that he felt was kind of boring myth, then he scored in the average range. 

And so it was so clear that his attitude contributed to how he performed on the test. 

And so when I talked to him about that, after the test, his science teacher said he was like a different kid, because suddenly, in the science class, he was actually approaching it like a challenge. And doing really well, where before, he saw it as a boring task, and he wasn't doing well at all. 

And so just that one tweak was able allowed him to really meet his potential in that class. 

And it's so important that we recognize that because this is a kid who was having so many behavior problems in the classroom, because he just was so hyperactive, and he would just do these impulsive things that were just way out, you know, and disruptive. 

And so they put him in a more restrictive English class. And that's probably about the worst thing you could do because he actually would be even more bored in that setting because what he needed really wasn't less challenge. It was actually more challenge. 

And then another possibility is that our disability and our giftedness actually what appear on the surface to wash each other out.