Since diagnosis I’ve noticed an improvement in my mental clarity. I feel like I can do more, fit more into my days and I notice a whole lot more than I ever did before. Having more mental clarity has allowed me to see the world beyond my immediate self in a way that I’ve never seen it before.
TL;DR – diagnosis has helped me find the capacity for deeper human connection.
Somehow through all of the brain fog that existed in my life & career to date I’ve managed to notice the kick I get out of helping others help themselves. It’s why I stuck with Cadets for over 10 years. It’s how I ended up teaching for a year at Dev Academy. There’s nothing I love more (other than my own immediate family and friends of course!) than teaching someone a new skill and then guiding them to use that new skill in a meaningful and productive way. To watch them grow and improve themselves. To harness their own inner power and apply themselves in ways they never thought possible. But so far that’s happened largely by accident. It’s happened by me being in the right place at the right time and with the right skillset. I don’t think I’ve ever consciously gone looking to mentor someone.
You might argue this doesn’t really add up to an “accident” and there was clearly some amount of thinking and planning behind the situations I found myself in. And I sort of agree with you. I ended up teaching because a very clever man had sewn a seed in my head years earlier about how good I would be at it. But it wasn’t a massive conscious decision on my part to join Cadets. I felt I owed a lot to the organisation as I’d got a lot out of it as a kid. I then met the right person at the right time and fell into it out of a sense of duty.
Interestingly when I actually applied for the teaching job I was asked about my “mentoring experience”. I told the interviewers I had none, certainly not in a traditional commercial sense. Thankfully, they decided to dig a bit deeper and allowed me to vocalise – much to my own surprise – the fact that I mentor and upskill people quite naturally. My experiences through being part of a volunteer youth training organisation (cadets) had honed those particular skills and I had non-consciously started using them with the developers I worked with.
I guess if I was to cast my mind back further, as a teen all I really wanted to do was teach. But I had envisaged myself as a school teacher, not as a technology mentor. Same same?
So I am a mentor. Dare I say it, a leader. That’s bloody tough to commit to writing because I don’t feel like a leader, except purely by accident. But now? Now that I’ve discovered more of myself and unlocked a whole bunch of mental capacity and ability for more critical thinking? Now it’s all I want.
I used to listen to my friends if they felt comfortable enough to talk to me about what’s on top for them. I’d smile, nod and sometimes repeat back what they’d said or more likely make a joke about it, just so they knew I was taking it in. But it was a surface interest. A socially accepted norm that I didn’t really understand. I mean, of course I understood the importance of making them feel valued, but I’ve always felt incapable of much more than just being a sounding board.
Since diagnosis I’ve had multiple friends contact me about suspected ADHD in themselves or one of their close loved ones. Me. Like at 2 months in I’m some kind of subject matter expert. Turns out my lived experience and heavily researched toolkit is actually quite useful for helping others. An expert maybe not, but I do have at least half a clue. So I listen. I chat. I offer answers to their questions. The normal stuff. But this is where it gets weird for me. I usually ask them questions. I dig deeper. I try to understand more about the situation so I can direct the messages I’m sharing. I honestly feel like I care. Is that just because it’s a topic dear to my heart? Maybe? But wait… There’s more.
A few days or a week might go by and I’m still thinking about them. I want to know if they’re progressing any. Having had time for our conversation to sit with them, I want to know if they found it useful. If they have any more questions. I want to help them further.
But what’s the motivation for all of this? Does it have any tangible benefit for me as a human being? Does it further my career? Does it put any more food on the table? Absolutely not. But it makes me feel connected. It makes me feel happy to know I’m being useful to the wider world. A wider world I barely even acknowledged until recently.
I’ve got a heap of work to do in this area. I can feel a sense of purpose and direction for the first time in… Ages? My life? For the first time in as long as I can remember, anyway. I want to harness it in a positive way, but I also want to find a way of doing it without burning myself out. Avoiding burnout is probably a topic for a whole other post though.
It’s fascinating to me right now that this exercise of writing about things “on top” for me simply teases out even deeper food for thought and more growth areas to explore.
Feeling empowered.
My ADHD Playlist 