Stephanie Ihezukwu - My Journey Through Tech with ADHD

all right can you see it i think you can okay so thank you guys for joining me as he said i am a security analyst in my day job um however i have also struggled with adhd throughout my entire journey most of it was undiagnosed so this presentation is supposed to be informational um i'm most interested in the questions anyone has because that would be the most helpful but i'm hopeful that my presentation definitely gives you some clue into how the process has been going and what i've done with the process so a little bit about me um i've been in the tech industry for seven years total i was doing support roles at first

um and and then i transitioned to the security industry a couple of years ago um by becoming a a team of one a security team of one that was my first security role ever um i've been in the industry throughout but i was doing support first and then i transitioned into security two years ago and as he said before i am a level two security analyst for cisco actually um but i support duo um i blog in my spare time which i don't have much of these days at stephensec.com i also co-host a podcast um called cool snares in the room and i'm a speaker as you can see and also a psychology enthusiast so i

guess i'm one of the best physician people to have adhd because that kind of stuff interests me anyway so the inspiration for this talk um i was diagnosed with adhd last year uh the first time in like i think january or february somewhere in the winter time um after almost six years in the industry um if you know what being in the industry is about it's filled with learning both structured and unstructured you kind of have to be good with always being in a mode of learning um so something like adhd can definitely interfere with that as i'll discuss in this uh talk but also the pressure to always make sure that you're staying knowledgeable about certain

things definitely sticks to you and it was definitely something that affected me throughout my six years before being diagnosed which is why i hope that this talk is helpful along with that i had struggles with traditional schools and by traditional schools i mean brick and mortar you know you have a semester it's four months um you have one like three or four classes that you're doing at the same time but basically there's one structure for taking them those kinds of schools i struggled with heavily increasingly over the years and also i talked on twitter about my journey just lightly and a lot of people responded to it there's actually a lot of people in tech that have adhd or some sort of

neurodivergent um type of condition i guess if you want to call it that and i just feel like paying it forward is very important in my career people have paid for it and it has benefited me so i'm hoping that this will benefit somebody else out there so here are some disclaimers that i wanted to give to make sure i touched on um right at the beginning of the talk because i just feel like it needs to be said um i can't unfortunately tell you if you have adhd or not i'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist so i honestly don't know uh however if you do consult with them there are several different methods that

they have for diagnosing adhd so a visit would definitely clear that up but i just want to say i if those were one of the questions that you have i can't diagnose you also this is my story it may differ from other stories that you've heard or from your story and also what i share today may work for you or it may not work life is a journey and you kind of have to do the trial and error thing unfortunately a lot of us want to get away from that including me but you kind of have to try and my journey is ongoing i'm still learning but i don't have all the answers currently i have some answers but it's

only been about a year and a half in this journey so i'm definitely not going to have some answers that other people might but i'll do my best to answer them or point you in the right direction if i if i know what their direction is so those are just some things i wanted to touch on at first so what is adhd adhd is a neurological disorder that impacts the parts of the brain that help us plan focus on and execute tasks so you're thinking about your inner parent when you think about adhd and your inner parent basically going on vacation and never coming back other people can kind of function as your inner parent that's why

a lot of us don't figure out we have adhd or anything like that until college because it's the first time that you're truly on your own and and truly seeing if you've learned anything about survival or managing yourself while under your parents care um so a lot of us are you know using our parents as our uh executors of that part of our brain um and don't know that until we leave the nest and then it all goes to chaos so um and the graphic works now so i know the graphic did not work a few seconds ago so what is adhd continued um it varies in presentation you're going to hear a lot about subtypes and

things like that and also the research with with adhd as well as anything else is ongoing um so currently you may be hyperactive or inattentive or a mixture of both um hyperactive is probably the one that's most familiar to a lot of people when it comes to talking about adhd so with that you have inability to sit still you can't stay in line you interrupt people you may have to hum or have something playing or loud or make a noise when you're doing things that's kind of the hyperactive side of it and then you have the inattentive side which is more internal and more has to do with your brain you you can't concentrate you might forget

things um you may zone out when people are talking to you those kinds of things and the reason that that's a very important specification is because adhd itself is hard to diagnose um in a blanket way some people don't even find out until their 40s some people don't find out much later so you can go a long period of time without it and like i said before some people close to us can function as our executive function so we may not even know that we have a problem until either a person leaves our life or our circumstances change something like that um also it's definitely more difficult to diagnose in in girls too when young because they tend to

kind of be trained differently than than boys so a lot of times they might be overtold hey sit still you know things like that because you're a girl and that behavior can kind of trick or fool people into thinking that there isn't an issue because a girl might be more quiet um however may not be listening to what you're saying still um and it impacts 11 of children and 5 of adults the thing about this is that this is these are reported cases i'm not accounting for the large amount of people that go under-reported um adhd is under-reported uh for various different reasons um i chose this graphic because it was funny to me mostly because in society i think

things that we don't understand we tend to want to snuff it out instead of trying to figure out a way to utilize it its strengths i think with anything there's strengths in certain things like adhd a lot of people will tell you a strength is hyper focus meaning you can spend hours not eating not sleeping not doing anything but focusing on what you're supposed to and that that seems like a super car the only thing is you can't choose what it is that you hyper focus on so um i felt like that graphic is definitely appointed in terms of thinking about our society and things like this and how the reaction is there to that what adhd is not so common

misconceptions adhd is not a mental illness or a behavior disorder and it's not even a learning disability now it does affect your learning by the nature of adhd but it is not a learning disability and it's also not a person being lazy or not trying hard enough i chose this graphic because sometimes not all the time but sometimes that first step is very very high as you can see and you have no idea how how you're going to get there or why it's that high all you know is that you are at the bottom there and you're looking up at the top trying to see how you're going to get to that next uh that next level so

i felt like it was i felt seen the first time i saw this uh because that probably is most of my life figuring out how to get to that that first rung however a lot of us with adhd or any kind of undiagnosed neurological disorder a lot of us figure it out sometimes we can be very resourceful because we have to be and so we figure out a way to build rungs into the base of that and get our way to the top but sometimes and oftentimes it doesn't especially when um you're suffering through it like you're not managing it very well adhd is developed it's a developmental impairment of the brain self-management system but it doesn't have anything to

do with the aforementioned so symptoms of adhd certain and i also chose this graphic because that is a lot of my life but symptoms can be inattention lack of focus poor time management weak impulse control exaggerated emotions hyper focus hyperactivity which i talked about before both of those and executive dysfunction so i want to double tap on a couple of these um that i personally struggled with so lack of focus and attention that's definitely something that's been a struggle of mine especially when it's something that i'm not particularly interested in it can be difficult to pay attention because i could grab literally anything and follow a thought trail down that path i think a lot of us are are like this

and i want to make the distinction here because i actually didn't put this in any other part of the presentation so a lot of us might have a little bit of adhd with a lot of these psychological things we all have like little amounts of it um when it becomes a disorder is when it significantly impairs your life and there are other distinctions that uh the dsm-5 has for diagnosing or classifying what qualifies as adhd and what does not and then like i said ongoing research um but i just wanted to make that distinction uh that uh all of us could struggle with some of these at some point in time but if it's not affecting your life then

i wouldn't even worry about it however it definitely has affected mine inattention lack of focus and poor time management those are the most obvious and probably the most prevalent issues that i have i do hyper focus as well but uh it never really seemed like a super power to me i thought that was uh normal to be excited about something and just like spend hours on it um and we impulse control happens in and out but not really as much for me as everything else at least not not that i've not that i've recognized um but executive dysfunction is definitely a big point for all of us with adhd issues because that is the person

inside of you if i'm if i'm trying to create an image is the person inside of you that is basically saying hey do this and i know it's not fun it doesn't seem like wash dishes the dishes have been sitting there for a couple days you need to wash dishes i know it's not fun i know it's not what what you want to do however we've got to wash dishes that part is essentially missing or not functioning all the time in the intended capac capacity so a lot of times we might be productive only when they're we're avoiding something that we need to be doing that's more urgent sometimes we can just completely forget things like checking the mail

or going to the doctor or even a meeting that we scheduled so a lot of times things like that can happen and that is a result of executive dysfunction so uh just to go over what we've just talked about and and things that were not that were that are not covered in this presentation um adhd is something neurological however it isn't like a mental illness or a behavior disorder it is basically um an inability to manage yourself um the things that are not covered here but i feel like need to be kind of lightly touched on i'm first generation american uh with the nigerian background um uh so there's really no support coming from the nigerian community

uh namely my parents because that kind of thing is just not really talked about um there's also the religious aspect i do have a religious background as well and so growing up saying things like i'm having issues with concentrating or anything like that it was easily kind of dismissed as like no we don't claim bad things happen to us uh you know we trust in god and this is not even um talking specifically about religion being a problem in terms of or a barrier to having or treating adhd but more so saying that my whole perspective was shifted because i had a religious background um so it's not acceptable to claim things like i'm depressed or i have

attention deficit disorder like those things are just not said um also i am very resourceful i think that's something that is should be noted because when i started working with my current adhd therapist that is what she said and everybody's case is going to be different um i ended up being resourceful i don't know where it came from or i mean there's a there's a whole experience i'm probably uh missing on what contributes to resourcefulness or what does not or who would be resourceful and who does not however whenever you have something going wrong sometimes you can overcompensate without even thinking about it you just overcompensate and i think the over compensation definitely uh contributed to my high functioning in

terms of adhd so um where this falls in for me so where does adhd come in for stephanie i basically had a quarter life crisis which is very dramatic to say but i have no other words for what that was um i wanted to be successful i wanted to achieve things and not just for the sake of being successful but just because i am that committed to my work and what i do so i i did want that and it was evading me um i also was unsure of my abilities because by this point in time the only indicator you have in your early 20s is school as an indication of success it's not like you are expected to have

climbed any kind of corporate ladder at that age so the fact that i wasn't really successful in school definitely made me doubt my abilities and overall intelligence because i just couldn't get it together um which i'll explain what that looked like in a few moments i was also unable to accomplish long-term goals that require daily effort so my therapist at the time not at this time but shortly after this period of time my therapist called it called me a sprinter instead of a marathoner um and said that you know if the goal is short enough and and the reward is big enough i will probably be able to accomplish it but if it's long and far in the future my attention

span just wouldn't allow me to continue with the goal i'd abandon it and work on something else um also lots of pressure i had a lot of pressure on myself nigerians are notorious uh notorious about academic success and making it very valuable so i had a lot of pressure from family and the community to excel and i was not also i internalized some of that you know growing up i internalized anything that i wasn't able to do i internalized that as some sort of reflection on myself so all these things kind of happened at the same time which translated in my mind to i need to figure out what is going on um in a very dramatic fashion so

just to point out too how did adhd show up at work and i wanted to put this graphic there because i feel like a lot of people feel that if you if you are somebody with adhd people receive you as being late for the sake of you just don't respect other people's time or you just don't care or you're being disrespectful when it's often not any of those things um i just had issues with time management it would and i watched myself over time because sometimes you do things on autopilot you don't really know how you get to a certain place i would watch myself sometimes and be two hours early and watch myself just delay and get lost in the process

of getting ready and then be late or even if i was showing up to the parking garage 30 minutes early i wouldn't be watching the time and then i'd be 15 minutes late and so things like that would happen all the time where it seemed like i blinked and then time sped up and i was late so that that's how it felt um also i couldn't focus on conversations without playing solitaire i needed to do something with my hands which is probably the hyperactivity in order to anchor myself to the conversation otherwise i would pick any word of anything that you said and i would go off into my own like if you say issues then i would think about issues

uh tissue and then i'm thinking about oh well i need to pick up tissue after work and then i lost where we are in the conversation i think a lot of people that i've talked to that have adhd have the same experience so i couldn't show i couldn't focus on conversations without playing solitaire however it looks really bad to be on your phone while you're in a meeting or while you're on a zoom conference or anything like that so i struggled with that a lot as well and communicating that because again at this time i did not know i had adhd also i needed to be learning something new regularly or i would get bored and

disconnect completely from my work and i needed a fast-paced environment i couldn't have too much uh too much lag time or or idle time at work i needed to make sure that i was always doing something how it showed up in school was slightly different um how it felt was that what what the graphic on the left says uh i definitely uh ran away from homework sometimes in the beginning i was very much yes this is going to be different semester i'm going to do everything i'm attending classes i'm doing homework about a month and a half in i super wouldn't care anymore and i'd be like oh my god this is so endless like we're going every single day like

ugh i don't need to do this and then i'd stop caring stop going uh to class and then i'd procrastinate on everything something else would take my attention and then at the end of the semester i'd rush to get all the assignments done uh which got me in hot water with uh some some professors because obviously that was a crazy amount of work at the end of the semester when they're supposed to be dreaming about christmas or summer um and then i would have a lot of end of semester cramming and anxiety so i would just be cramming all night and all day and a lot of anxiety about passing because i didn't pay attention the

entire time so that's how it looked as as well as school and what did i do about it well i knew i needed help um i didn't know why i needed help but i knew i needed it so i started therapy and really was to fix myself get my stuff together that's kind of what i was thinking at the time and out of the gate she immediately prescribed me with generalized anxiety which i hadn't even considered i never saw myself as an anxious person however that's what she gave me at the time and then i spent time on things that were easier and had consistent rewards so things i wanted to go for a smaller win

so anything that was very short-term that i could do and accomplish i definitely would do that so i could get myself a steam up at that time but also it just felt better to not disappoint myself or anyone else by kind of shooting lower than i was capable of so at this point um i'm thinking something's wrong with me i'm thinking i'm frustrated with myself why can't i get it together what is going on and i'm also thinking my idea of adhd at this time is adhd is for kids you know it's not something that adults struggle with i only hear about kids doing and i always associated with bad kids because in elementary school it was

always a kid that would like get up out of the seat or not stop talking or whatever that would get it like a it wasn't an f at the time i i think it's a u is what you would get in elementary school for being unsatisfactory and so i always thought that adhd kids were just bad kids that just didn't want to behave because and this is from a kid's perspective i carried that into adulthood because that is the response is that the teacher is very hard on the kid that can't distill very much you know reprimanding the kid very much saying the kid is you know you're not behaving that kind of thing and so i always thought of it as like oh

i don't you know do that i just can't focus it's not like i you know but it's not explained that way and if you don't have adhd or have anyone around you with it that's the understanding you might carry well into until you die so the turning point for me uh was a massive case of burnout which is something that is prevalent in our industry um i was diagnosed with depression during the burnout i was placed on medical leave and then at the same time a couple months into the leave i got my first security job which was a security team of one very high stress job um however the issue started to compound and kind of be

highlighted because as a security team of one you need to have you need to have great control over your your what's expected of you over your responsibilities making sure you keep keep everything at the forefront of your mind and so if you have existing issues with that taking big goals and breaking them up and and kind of going after them one by one over time it's going to really show up for you in moments like this where i have a job where i it was definitely paramount that i was very structured i needed to be very structured i need to be on top of everything i was building everything from the ground up and so

that's when i really noticed that there was a huge issue and it didn't come up before because i had reactive work and reactive work you're just reacting somebody else is dictating how your the day goes based off of what they send to you um when you're in security not all of it is react you hope not all of it is reactive unless you're doing incident response or something like that so as soon as i switched to a project-based role i started to notice i'm in trouble here i'm not able to concentrate and it seems like it's getting worse is what i thought and so they tried me on some antidepressants because again they're going with the whole

depression theory um but nothing it didn't really help you know i it didn't help at all so that's where the graphic on the side comes the harder i try the worse i get i'm spending all this money going to therapy all this money i'm trying to get evaluated and nobody knows what is going on least of all me so finally i am diagnosed with adhd and i i tried three different times and i tweeted about it because um i felt like again there was a huge response from people on twitter about having adhd or some other neurologic neurodivergent uh disorder and so a lot of response and then just a lot of support and i think

when you're going through something like this and you can't really trust yourself all the way or you feel like you can't having support is very paramount um and so infosec twitter has definitely been helpful in being supportive of of those of us that struggle with adhd um but i shared it at that time because i first got diagnosed and and maybe you felt the same or maybe you've heard of somebody who's felt the same you first get diagnosed and they just kind of say oh do you struggle with like what are your symptoms and you're like oh i just have trouble concentrating the first doctor was like okay cool and just wrote me a prescription

like immediately and i was like i don't feel comfortable with this i think that there's supposed to be more here um however i really needed to concentrate again security team of one i had actually transitioned to another security team of one gig um which was again stressful um and so i really needed the assistance so i ended up taking the medication that they gave and it did help however i just felt like it was like i was like is this how people is how doctors do things like they just listen to you say i could say whatever and then they would give me whatever drug and then i would just be taking whatever so i felt kind of

uneasy about that when it came to around the summer time i tried a different uh doctor this one had a sheet of paper that had like different things and you just had to check off certain things so it would say do you have problems paying attention check you know like give it a rating or a scale is it one to ten or something and then at the end of all the questions you tally everything up and depending on what your score is you would be classified as adhd i also had an issue with this and maybe some of you are like shaking your head because you're like uh girl what are you why are you so why are

you so averse to these methods if that's the method that's the method however i just felt it was weird i mean i can't imagine somebody coming up to me and saying hey i have a security incident and i say okay well we're just gonna completely take everything down and treat it as an incident without any kind of like okay let me check and see and validate uh let me double check the logs let me like there's other things that happen before you then go into this is an incident we need to shut everything down everything needs to be unplugged you know you so i felt like they were just like they weren't really taking it as

methodically as i wanted um so the last attempt which is the one that i ended up keeping was a test and that felt more official to me and maybe i felt i needed to pay for something because i did pay for that test it was not covered by insurance and so i took the test and it was a very painful test as i say here in the tweet where essentially they tell you to click every time you see a green circle but you're going to see like a green circle a red circle or no circle at all and you have to pay attention for 20 minutes as they flash across the screen and every time you see

a green circle you're supposed to click and it was terrible i feel like it's the perfect test to see if you have adhd because it's it's almost impossible within two minutes i was already tired like i felt sleepy i couldn't concentrate i was like did i miss it did that and i would just click randomly because i'm like i don't know if i missed the green or if that was the red and and so by the end i was like oh man even if they say if they say that i don't have it i'm going to ask if there's something else because it was really rough and so i got a 67 percent and threshold

488 for being classified as adhd was 50. so i was like okay cool this i can take to from doctor to doctor and i have confidence that this is accurate rather than you just listening to me say whatever and and deciding to diagnose me um so i was placed on medication already before um however i was solid in it and tried different things from this point on because i felt comfortable with the diagnosis um so i put the side note of the medical industry is a mess and i think that it is at least in my experience um that was a very very interesting uh scenario or experience just for diagnosing adhd i felt like

it should be a little bit more streamlined so just a fun fact if you ever want to get diagnosed yourself you may struggle so where am i now um right now i am working with an adhd therapist i started a couple months ago i'm also taking medication when and if i need uh because sometimes i'm able to manage a pretty focused day and then sometimes i make it till about 12 and have done nothing so i do take my medication when i need and i still have to figure out which one works best for me so that's been a process i eat cleaner because of the research done that contribute where eating cleaner a cleaner diet kind of helps you with

just your brain chemistry in general so i have been eating cleaner i did whole30 and that kind of kicked that off i'm also developing a lot of personal systems for myself because someone with adhd that lacks executive function needs to have structure needs to have routine and this is what my current therapist is working me working with me through um whereas the old the other therapist uh we didn't have that kind of relation she wasn't a she wasn't specialized in adhd so uh there were other things that we were working on um and then i learned about i've been learning about living with adhd i've been learning about sticking to routines and what that means

and it's not just do it because because it's right or do it because grind culture you know grind or die it's really because without it i won't be able to live a functional life so here's some other things to note about where i'm at with it i have changed from something is wrong with me to nothing is wrong with me my brain just works differently and i simply support myself with actions that help me show up better in my day-to-day life i'm more compassionate with myself instead of frustrated i've dropped the internalized negative opinions of myself because i understand what's going on more and i'm still a work in progress every single day i learned that

as i was making this talk or developing this talk i learned so much about adhd on top of what i've already learned so there's no one-size-fits-all there's nothing you know that i might give that you might not be able to maybe something i would give you to you today you might not be able to use but i think it's fun to kind of try different things and look at it more as an experiment maybe that's the inner tech nerd in me theater hacker in me that wants to experiment with all this stuff but um it's been a very interesting journey and not all bad actually so some important resources that i've used um that have helped me to understand

adhd a lot better is the youtube channel she's got so many i feel like her name is jessica she's got so many different videos and they're very short so which is great for us that cannot pay attention that long um and they kind of help you understand what it is with tools and tricks that she's used you know a whole bunch of things the graphics to the left and some that i've used throughout the presentation are developed by certain people um this one in particular is danny donovan there's also another one adhd alien and then on instagram the adhd breed they all make graphics that kind of share their experiences or things that they know about adhd

and it just can help you feel seen without having to read a book um and then also websites there's uh the attitude magazine i enjoyed it completely it's it has a lot of resources on they're geared a little bit towards children sometimes however they do have resources for uh for adults as well and any advice so i have a couple things to say before i switch it over to questions i just really wanted to prioritize any questions that anyone had um but if you're curious about it if anything i said today kind of triggered you to be like i've had that experience whoa what is this i would say it doesn't hurt to take an

assessment if you have if you have to pay or whatever i think it's it was worth it for me i don't know if you're if your ailment or what you're struggling with is impairing anything if it's affecting anything in a very serious manner or in a manner that you don't like i think it's worth it to go through that route if you can do so also be your biggest advocate i that's what i was doing when i picked different ways of being assessed i wanted to make sure i felt comfortable with the assessment um the doctors will kind of say whatever because they're kind of like well i went to medical school listen to me but you have

to be comfortable for yourself because it is you that is treating your own adhd so making sure that you're okay with everything that's happening and you don't do anything before you're ready like i didn't take medication until i was ready i didn't even entertain the idea until i was ready or i tried other things before that point so making sure that you're just comfortable through that process is going to be important you're the only one that knows how you feel about anything and so if you keep yourself out of the equation you kind of rob yourself of being an active participant in your healing process also find a therapist that specializes in adhd this is something i didn't realize would

be that effective i thought a therapist is a therapist as a therapist that is not the case um in the short time i've been seeing this one there have been so many strides made like i have i hadn't been able to look at school work pretty much all year i passed two classes since working with her um and so that kind of shows the amount of care that goes into it she goes over my day-to-day with me my roadblock she's very well versed in how if somebody with adhd would react to something and through her she actually opened up my eyes that a lot of people get diagnosed with anxiety and depression but it's really

adhd and the anxiety depression is just the result of your life and how it looks with unmanaged adhd so that is something that i would not have had access to had i not found somebody specialized so that's definitely something i would say do also be resourceful i know i made the comment earlier about that some people having that naturally and some people having to develop that but not taking no for an answer is definitely something that has helped me in a lot of ways i've had great success in my career despite my challenges but that is because i don't take no for an answer i and even in my whole adhd kind of journey you don't take no for an answer you

don't take one thing you you consult different different uh sources to see what sticks um so that is definitely something i would say develop if you don't have it or utilize if you do and all in all don't give up on yourself like you know you can get through anything if you just are patient and willing to go through the process it sucks sometimes and sometimes it's frustrating because you don't know what the heck is happening however don't give up you can do it so key takeaways before i wrap up you need to be your biggest advocate like i just said take your power back um make sure having adhd doesn't mean that life is over you

can have adhd and still be successful i think a lot of people who are successful actually you'll find out that they have something that they're struggling with or that they've had to deal with um so it's not a disqualifier also you know you better than anyone else so make sure to get help when you need to don't let people talk you out of it and that kind of was my problem i had people talking me out of just even trying to figure out if i had adhd and saying oh you don't have that don't worry about it you just need to focus more you just need to sometimes it's not just you need to do

anything but get evaluated so make sure that you get the help when you need to there's no need to suffer in silence because someone else thinks that you're just not trying hard enough and last but not least there is nothing wrong with you thanks for coming to my ted talk

awesome job stephanie thanks so much for taking the time to present and and walk us through your your journey and experiences um just checking through the the discord channel here we've had a a ton of back and forth through the threads here um and we'll we'll dedicate a little bit of time to go over some questions from the audience for you sounds good i'll share my camera awesome so great perfect i can see you um all right so a few questions here um any advice for being supportive to colleagues friends or partners who have adhd i know you talked about it um a bit throughout your slides there but anything in particular um for advice that you can mention to

be supportive so the thing about support is that sometimes we are invested in the way that we want to support other people as opposed to the way that they need to be supported so making sure that you maintain the intention of why you're supporting throughout that is very key i don't have many people who have diagnosed adhd and are doing anything about it i do have people who have other things whether that be depression or bipolar disorder and being patient and recognizing that their actions don't have anything to do with you and are not in fact considering you kind of helps to take some of that pressure off when it comes to oh this person didn't

text me back or they're always late and i'm like a stickler for time or they forget everything that they're saying as they're saying it things like that just being patient in that moment and remembering that hey this is not a choice that this is like something that's built in it's as natural as breathing and that they actively have to work to be different so sometimes they're not going to be able to perform sometimes they don't have the energy sometimes they don't have the they don't know how to um so being patient and then also knowing that you're probably not going to be their healer you're not going to take away all their ailments um sometimes you're going to have to sit

through their uncomfortable moments of this really sucks and acknowledging that so i would say good on you for asking about how to support that's like a very good first step and not assuming that i know all the answers i know how to just i'm just gonna carry a whip and follow them around so not doing that is perfect and asking more questions is definitely perfect but sometimes you can ask them and they might not know how you can help but they will probably appreciate that you care enough to ask anyway so yeah awesome no thank thank you for the advice there i had a number of individuals on the chat here who has similar questions as

well um going on to some other questions um do you think there's a higher percentage of folks with adhd in our industry compared to other fields it starts to feel like that because uh people on my so now that i have spent time uh looking at the symptoms and how it how it presents itself there are people that are on my current team where i'm like oh no he has to there has to be some of that in there because you know i'm not even as bad as that um so i would say probably i think to to deal with systems you might have to be just a tad bit off of the norm or what's

considered norm um and i do know that whenever i talk about adhd too and and my responses or my symptoms a lot of people be like oh i do that too or oh that happens to me too so i wouldn't actually i would probably bet that there is a significant amount of people with any kind of neurodivergent thing going on um in our industry i i believe that to be kind of true sure no thank thanks for the uh for the insight um going to a few other questions here uh everyone in the chat is saying uh thank you so much steph uh you know truth speaking the truth i completely understand um let's see uh some other folks

mentioned uh just from a comment perspective um i didn't get diagnosed until my 30s but it explains so much hindsight in my life oh my goodness yes same do you think with technology ever changing and growing nowadays children growing up with with so many inputs uh tv iphones ipads etc um do you believe from your perspective nowadays that more and more children are becoming uh misdiagnosed that's a great question uh as in i guess you can't clarify so maybe you could share because i'm think so misdiagnoses and they are diagnosed with adhd but don't have it absolutely yep okay oh that's so interesting i don't know because i feel like people i feel like parents

now granted i'm not a parent so i just want to make sure that that's clear i'm not a parent i don't have children however i feel like parents don't want anything to be quote unquote wrong with their kid anyway so i feel like there's always a reluctance to accept that there's a diagnosis period especially at younger ages um because they haven't really developed yet and you don't really know which way that they're going to go and some sometimes things iron themselves out um so i would say probably not just because it's not like parents are like yay my kid has a hd wonderful i was waiting for this moment so i think because of that there might

not be misdiagnosis i think it would be more i think maybe teachers might say yeah i don't know your kid has trouble with concentrating your kid out trouble with this and the parent who probably would spend a lot more time with the kid or maybe see them in different kinds of environments may be able to say i don't know if that's truly the case and kind of keep an eye on it but i i don't know if misdiagnosis will go up per se sure okay checking in the chat here i have a another good question um from the user sushi dude um i've heard that there's less diagnosis of adhd in girls because they don't

follow the stereotype of adhd that encountered uh that's encountered with boys what advice do you have for girls and women to recognize that they might have that they might be neurodivergent that's very tricky because i went all the way to my late 20s before the diagnosis so i can't say for sure i will say though that i think as an industry and obviously like this is hard right but i think the psychiatry uh industry should probably be investing more in the signs that show up specific to girls or they've seen i think a lot of neurological disorders of any sort are typically typed for male anyway like they've been those have been the most researched those have been the

most obvious i guess to people um but i'm not actually sure that's a very that's a very tough question because of my own experience and how long i went without knowing and it not being an issue anywhere else but school and like anything that needed structure so i don't know other than paying attention more to what their what other people are doing or saying and seeing where they are so if a person's like oh it's so easy to study for that test and it took you five days um and you only read one line in the entire five days those types of things definitely shouldn't be should be taken a look at so it's really hard

other than talking about it regularly like with everyone all the time like making it a class where you just discuss things like that like a like an intro to psych disorders one-on-one on in high school i don't really know the answer to that that's a that's that's hard oh thanks thanks for walking through the question a lot a lot of good questions coming from the uh the group here for sure um let's have time for a few more questions um uh what if one of your comments uh i was really intrigued by um you were mentioning that um uh you were looking at eating cleaner i'm trying a whole 30. um how did this personally impact you um

within your um diagnosis so mood regulation is something that isn't talked about when it comes to adhd but it's definitely something that exists and a lot of people talk or there's a lot of research on food and how it affects especially when it comes to our intestines and our gut and and the health of that about how food effect can affect our mood so like drastically and our mood impairs our ability to be able to do other things and so for me i do have some a bit of mood regulation issues sometimes and when i feel bad it is a lot easier for me to give into my impulse uh my impulsiveness and just say i don't want to do that i'm

gonna play red dead too or i'm gonna i'm gonna watch this movie this new netflix thing that came out or i'm just gonna go talk to my friends for five hours like those types of things are a lot easier for me to get away with when my mood is lower so when i'm eating healthier i don't have those kinds of issues when i was on whole30 i actually didn't have many mood issues at all and that was enough for me to be like something in the regular bad food that i definitely was eating i mean i'm gonna own that it was bad food um something in there is not good for me and has very bad

effects on my mood which trickle into how i'm able to manage my adhd um i read today as i was just going over notes and stuff i read about how there are supplements like fish oil being one of them that help you naturally um combat attention issues so even that would be available in healthier foods rather than like you know you're going to find fish oil and swedish fish like so those kinds of things are definitely things that i think pop up when i think about that so that's how it helps me or how it's actually helped me recently um but it's gonna take me a little bit longer to come up with like multiple

points of how food and eating healthier has helped because i've just started this a couple months ago absolutely no it's great great insights yeah uh diet can have a a drastic impact on on many of uh ailments for for many different things so i it'll be interesting to see um and hear about later on um you know what uh what that has done for you that's awesome um i have time for about one or two more questions looking in the chat here does fatigue have an influence on symptoms that you feel sometimes so this is gonna sound strange but uh sometimes uh if i have caffeine i can get tired instead of be amped like

certain people and a lot i've seen now granted i'm fuzzy on this but i've seen that be mentioned when it comes to people with adhd that caffeine actually works can work as a downer it's too much stimulation or too little i'm not really sure but um i will say that and i'm having an adhd moment right now can you repeat the question no no not a problem uh does fatigue have an influence on sin yeah so i will say that sometimes i can feel tired i don't know and then also too for me um i have to do all of my mentally heavy tasks in the morning if i leave it to the night it won't get

done and i kind of connected that myself with uh human beings having decision fatigue as the day goes on um so the more tired you get or the more you're making decisions throughout the day your brain is like i'm over this and then just defaults to whatever feels easiest or the passive the path of least resistance um and so i think in that realm yes uh but in terms of like general just tiredness i don't really think that that has i've experienced that too much in connection with adhd at least not that i can recall sure yeah your uh your your last comment there um you know thinking about something for too long and you know i'm just

kind of over this you know on to the next uh some of the folks who are saying you know you just described all of infosec twitter seriously yes awesome uh i'll just give about another minute to see if we have any additional questions on here just scrolling through the conversations here here's another question um do you find you can read the same sentence or piece of work over and over again and then wonder why you're reading it or even there uh yes um and that's why sometimes when it comes to studying i will have to switch to video instead of something written because i don't know what it is about it but if i read something and it drifts into a

realm that i'm not interested in for whatever reason i can read that same thing and an hour can i've actually watched four hours go by and i read the same paragraph the entire time now granted i would go to my phone too but i was not getting anything done at all so i think i think yes is the answer a lot of a lot of people resonating with uh with this as well yes um awesome i think we are good on questions um the only thing i do not see in your contact information is your uh red dead two handle i'm sure there'll be others outside of myself that would be interested in playing with you but

um yeah that'll that'll wrap it up thank you so much stephanie for your time and and going over um your presentation and journey with us it was it was awesome thank you everyone who's listening thank you so much for for listening to me for asking questions for commiserating i appreciate it awesome thank you and um make sure you don't uh exit out of the window there i will take care of um removing you from the go to webinar thanks for reminding me because i forgot no problem that's what i'm here for thanks again stephanie thank you