You're Not Broken...Just Different - Chris Culling

good afternoon my name is Chris Collins and I just want to thank everybody for taking your time out of your day to come and see me today before we get started I have the obligatory sponsors that we'd like to thank for making this besides possible and just so you know this is one of two slides that I have for my talk so the last one will come up at the very end with some resources so this will not be Death by PowerPoint um and also uh I'm because I'm talking about mental health I'm not a medical professional so anything that I say is is just a recommendations from me based on my life experience I'm selling so uh and Chris culling um I'm a senior technical success manager with a company called gigamon and if you haven't heard of gigamind they're a networking and software company I work on their their threatened intelligent or their Network defense uh platform and uh they're gracious enough to pay for me to come to conferences to talk about mental health so um I'm also I've been married for 31 years uh to a woman who will eventually be sainted um three adult children my oldest works in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Washington DC my middle child my son is a army veteran who just started on his cyber security journey through Western Governors University and my youngest is the content manager for Black Hills information security um and I love to name drop her like that just because I like the cred that I get for being her dad um in addition to all that I'm an alcoholic um I've been sober for four years eight months and four days today [Applause] um and I was diagnosed five years ago with severe ADHD anxiety and depression at the age of 48. so for the first 48 years of my life I thought I was broken I didn't know what was wrong with me and anybody in here who's who is nerd the verse who has received a diagnosis and medication you know what before diagnosis and after diagnosis how life is and before I was diagnosed life really was very difficult and I made life very difficult for my family um ADHD affects the executive functional portion of the brain where organizing planning time management emotional control self-control working memory functions like that are degraded and medication helps to bring those functions up but being unmedicated you do things that you don't know what you're doing you just do them um habitually procrastinating uh constantly turning things in late missing appointments and when you don't know what's wrong with you oftentimes you'll self-medicate and the way that I self-medicated early on in my marriage and for a number of years during that time was to do everything that I could possibly do to try to sabotage my marriage and destroy my marriage I didn't feel that I could take care of myself let alone a wife and three changed and honestly during those years I didn't want that responsibility and so I would do things that would bring us to the breaking force numerous times but my wife God bless her stuck with me through all these years and um fortunately that our marriage is stronger than something so once I worked that out of my system I wasn't over trying to self-medicate and I wasn't a big drinker um maybe a beer dinner at it dinner or something but one weekend about eight years ago or something I brought home a six pack of beer put it in the fridge and my wife opened the fridge and it's like there's beer in the fridge I'm like yeah I figured I'd have some in there so I mow the yard or something I'll have a a cold beer at the end of the day or something she's like okay so that cold beer turned into two cold beers and then four cold beers and then the six pack and after a couple of months the beer just wasn't doing anything for me and so I moved to box wine and I was trying to numb I was trying to numb this the pain that I felt that I didn't even know where it was coming from because I just didn't I didn't know I was ADHD and move to box wine and the nice thing about boxed wine is that you can keep buying the same box of boxed wine if you leave it in the same spot in the fridge no one but you knows how quickly that box of wine Exempted and for someone who is working their way towards alcoholism that was a good thing because I would drink in front of my wife but I would also drink a lot not in front of my wife and at some point the box one just wasn't doing it and so I moved to Whiskey and run and and other Liquors and it got to the point to where I would come home after after working all day I get home before my wife I pour myself a drink I sit down on the couch and I would watch TV all night same spot on the couch and I wouldn't tell her I was drinking she didn't know I was drinking and pretty soon so that she wouldn't know I strength and I switched from the whiskey which was getting expensive anyway to buy them and most alcoholics end up drinking vodka because it's odorless and tasteless and you can drink it anywhere and nobody knows So eventually I ended up drinking bottom shelf vodka and at the end I was going through basically a fifth of vodka every two days uh I wasn't an angry drunk I wasn't going out driving I wasn't messing up at work but all I was doing was sitting on the corner of the couch every day for five six hours in the evening and just drinking away what I didn't know was wrong with me and it got to the point to where I finally one morning uh weekend morning in April of 2018. uh my wife had woken up before I did and I went downstairs and I knelt down in front of her and I put my head in her lap and and I ugly cried for like half an hour I just I cried till I couldn't breathe and when I could finally start talking and I explained to her what I'd been doing for the last couple of years and she was shocked yeah she had no idea no idea because alcoholics been really good at hiding their drinking um and and once she thought about it for a little bit she said Chris you need some help and I said yes I do so I started seeing a therapist and then I found a psychiatrist who had a psychologist who gave me a battery of tests and finally diagnosed me in 2018 with a severe ADHD anxiety and depression and it took a number of months to find the right mix of drugs to work in my brain with all those together but I got to the point where I could do what one therapist told me about which was which is skills and pills you take pills so that you can get to that your brain to that level of functioning where you can learn the skills from a therapist and apply this to your life in it took me about nine months after I had that talk with my wife I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and I ended up uh finally having my last drink in January of 2019 2018 excuse me um and the point of me bringing all this up is the fact that I was undiagnosed nerve diversion there are a lot of people who know that there's something different in their brain may even think like I did that I was that you're broken um I read just the other day so so there's to understand the neurodiversity you have to understand what it's not um so back in the early 90s the medical community came out with the term uh neurotypical and what they said was neurotypical folks they have brain Baseline of functionality right here everybody below that they're not typical they're not normal a couple years later neurodiversity was was coined to mean everyone else who was not considered neurotypical who had something that was different in their brain autism was the first first one that was part of and then the ADHD OCD bipolar disorder dyslexia all of those conditions were your brain is different than what they consider to be the normal brain and studies that I've read have anywhere up to 25 percent of folks they consider to be nerve diverse either diagnosed or not and when I started in infosec just four or five years ago and I started going through all of my alcoholism and my therapy and all this um you know I started thinking that okay now now I know that I'm I'm ADHD so now I know why I'm broken and I still thought it was broken and it was only in the last six months or so that I realized that that we're not broken our brains are not broken there's nothing to to fix if it was broken you could fix it and there's nothing to fix our brains are just part different and not only are they different but I I I added beautifully different to my slide because there are some amazing things that folks with neurodiversity can do that those normal folks can't in and I got to thinking that there's so many people in our industry folks that come to conferences like this who are drawn to this type of work and who are neurodiverse whether they know it or not and the percentage is much higher than 25 I believe I think the majority of us are nerd verse and I've been posting on on Twitter for for the last couple of years about my drinking and about my ADHD and I've gotten so many positive responses from folks that I decided that it's time to start talking about it and I I put my cfp for this talk out to eight different uh infoset cons hoping one or two would pick it up and I ended up getting a six they accepted it and one conference actually called me up out of the blue and asked me to talk and I realized how important the subject is um the the whole reason I'm talking is so basically I'm talking to the folks who are undiagnosed who know that there's something different about them neurotypical folks don't go around thinking that they're normal they just know they are they don't think I'm a normal guy yeah neurodiverse folks we we think about how different we are all the time we have since we were little kids and if you if you if you know that there's something that's different about you but you don't know what it is find some help talk to your doctor um better yet talk to a nurse practitioner because I've heard anecdotally that that nurse practitioners are more caring towards this type of issue than than doctors are uh talk to a therapist go online and there's any number of different tests online that you can take that can give you an idea as to whether or not you might be heading that way or you you might mean first um so the because there are so many folks in our community that are neurodiversed and there's so many of them I think that are undiagnosed I I personally think that the drinking culture that's been an infosec for decades uh cyber security hacking community whatever you call it that a large part of that may be due to folks self-medicating away their undiagnosed neurodiversity and foreign I've talked to a number of folks when I've shared on Twitter and it's it's starting to prove my my theory correct I mean that there are a lot of folks that do struggle with alcohol or drugs or other risky behaviors uh anything to to to get away from reality for a little bit uh and get away from from that Brokenness that you feel and so I'm I'm here to say that we're not broken neurodiverse folks are some of the smartest folks in the world um there was a company that did a study uh about 10 years ago or so I can't remember the company but they went out and specifically hired autistic folks a group of autistic folks and over the time frame that they worked with them they found that the folks with autism functioned at 110 to 140 percent better in production than their than their peers in the company but the sad thing is that only about 25 percent of folks with autism are actually employed and there's such a large population or of neurodiverse bugs that could add so much to so many different Industries if they were given the chance and so in addition to us figuring out for ourselves what our own personal issues are seeking help seeking medication seeking therapy I've been seeing a therapist once a week for years now whether I need to or not because I usually need to um in addition to to working on ourselves I also think it's very important for folks that are supervisors and managers to create an environment in their workspace where they talk about their own Mental Health issues their own neurodiversity if if they are um and if they're not they that they make the workplace an inviting place an open place a a safe place for their employees that do have issues to talk about those to bring them up um when I interviewed with Digimon four months ago I told every single person in the interview process that I was an alcoholic and then I was ADHD and suffered from anxiety and depression because I wanted to see what their reactions were and if that's a company I wanted to work for um if they would have reacted negatively uh I wouldn't have wanted to work for them but they didn't it was quite the opposite they were very very very uh inviting about that and very sharing about some of their own issues and we need to create that environment in our community not just in our community but in all communities where folks aren't afraid to come out and talk to their co-workers and their supervisors about the mental health issues that they're dealing with and it's especially important because it's an invisible condition it's not like you break your arm and you need to ask for a week off of sick leave or something when you wake up in the morning and you know you can't function that day to be able to call up your texture supervisor whatever and say I I needed the day off I need a mental health day because I just can't function for them to say not a problem let me know what you need that's that's where we should be in every organization because it's real I mean it's the burnout is just ridiculous in our field and folks need time off to take care of their minds as much as they do their bodies and so I think it's it's very important that supervisors managers learn about neurodiversity that they learn about the different strengths that different neurodeiverse conditions bring with them so they can assign folks that they know are neurodiverse to projects that meet their strengths so they can let them work the schedule that works best for them mentally and so that they can produce even more um if they're working in an office that they allow them to wear noise canceling headphones or dim the lights above their work cubicle as they have sensory issues um there's so many little things that supervisors can do to accommodate folks with neurodiverse conditions that would not only help that individual but would actually help the the team as a whole and so so I would challenge any managers or supervisors to learn about neurodiversity and about different types of uh neurodiverse conditions and to talk to your your team members and just ask them you know it that you know is there anything that you would like to talk about related to your mental health and you'll get no judgment from me um if somebody I've heard of folks going to HR to get the Americans with Disabilities Act uh uh you know get the letter and everything to give the supervisor so that if you have to do that then you're in the wrong company um it should be as simple as as talking to your manager and the two of you understanding where you're at um so excuse me this this has been for me personally this has been this I'm 53 and it's been a long 53 years um but I wouldn't today I wouldn't trade being ADHD for anything I used to hate it but now I understand that it's just I'm just different and everyone else with with the neurodiverse condition is just different and we can take those differences and we can wallow and you know self-pity and drink ourselves to death and destroy our marriages or we can understand them more understand the strengths that come along with them and play to those strengths and as supervisors we can help our folks play to their strengths and just in conclusion um before I take questions in AAA Alcoholics Anonymous we get these coins for a duration of sobriety I've got a four-year coin here that I carry with me uh just to remind me every day what you know my sobriety means to me um and for new folks that join AA if they've been sober for 24 hours they did it was called 24-hour trip and this can also be used to remind you that anything that requires 24 you just need 20 you just need one more day I just need one more day to do this um you know there's a trick that we use in AAA when we want to drink we tell ourselves I'll have that drink tomorrow and then tomorrow you tell yourself I'll have that drink tomorrow and tomorrow never comes and you never have that drink so it the book that one day at a time mentality can be used for anything that we're struggling with um and just so I've got a number of things if anybody wants one it's kind of my version of my sticker that I can hand out um just to help you get through that next 24 hours um and with that I just I want to thank you all for coming to see my talk and I will take any questions we may have so thank you [Applause] [Applause] and if there are questions um what I've done very successfully the last couple times I gave this talk was it basically turned into a group discussion where other folks in the audience chimed in to other folks's questions and comments because I I don't know everything I only know what what I've lived but there are other folks that have lived other experiences and so if anybody has any questions please and if anybody wants to jump in and and answer for someone no you know that's great please I uh I was recently diagnosed with the AC two months ago and it's it's all been a lot to learn um I don't know just it from from your personal experience what have been besides besides medication besides your therapy what have been the things that you have found to uh help support yourself uh bad times bad weeks are just in general like what are those sure any any strategies any sense so one thing I I've done and I continue to do is look back over my my fast and look at things that I did and while I was still me doing them and I was still responsible for doing them it gave me a little bit of comfort to know that you know there was something going on up here that really helped me to do that thing and so it allowed me to do some self-forgiveness for a lot of things in the past um not that absolves you from from doing those things but you understand the context in which you you did them now um and it's it's a continual growth process like I said when when I first when I first got diagnosed you know I wanted the highest dose medication I could get for every you know every pill the doctor tried my doctor started off at the lowest dose and I thought that the medication was going to fix me but but there's nothing to fix because there's nothing broken so it's it's it's it's it's it's relearning the fact that you're not broken that you just have a different brain and and that's that was really helpful to me is there anybody else that can speak to this is there any other questions yes thank you for your service thank you second did you separate from the military or did you retire if you have access to the VA and did you seek care through the private medical or through the VA so I retired from the military um and I didn't go through the VA uh because I didn't know that I had an issue um I just thought I was lazy I just thought I was procrastinator um once I once I started uh seeking help I just I did it through private insurance so so yeah so I can't really speak to what the VA does for that but I imagine that they do have mental health care wow I'm sure they do so yes ADHD congratulations if you couldn't hear it he's also four years sober and has ADHD [Applause] sort of first of all you know there's a traditional sure as soon as possible but do you think in the future do you want to do or be like I don't see silver or alcohol-free spirit-free places that people such as yeah and also experience in ways that aren't alcoholic so I know a lot of infosec conferences over the last couple of years have become very sensitive to this issue and are offering um dry events in addition to alcohol p