{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Looking Through the Lens of Hopefulness","title":"What It Means to Have a Neurodivergent Brain — And Why That’s Not a Bad Thing","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3612,"description":"My podcast interview with Kit Slocum felt the most personal of many I’ve conducted. Maybe because she’s a neurodiversity coach who works with people like me — and she happens to be neurodivergent herself. Perhaps that’s why I kept saying “that’s me!” so often during the interview.Kit is the Neurodiversity Lead at Flown (flown.com), a platform built around something called body doubling — which I’ll explain later in this article — and she also does one-on-one ADHD coaching. When I saw her high energy-glowing picture on Flown’s website at 3 a.m. during one of my sleepless nights, I just knew she was the right person to have on the show.I spoke a great deal on the podcast because Kit was gracious enough to let me share my own stories, and she related to them. That doesn’t happen every day.Growing Up Neurodivergent in the 1960sI went to grammar school in the 1960s. Strict Catholic school. Uniforms. Nuns with rulers. And if you weren’t paying attention — or if your brain just didn’t work the way others did — you suffered for it. Literally. You didn’t get picked for teams, and you got a ruler cracked on your desk or your hand by a nun who had zero patience for a kid who couldn’t sit still and focus. For me, it was any attempt at math that humiliated me, and a nun who shook her head in disbelief when she saw my feeble answers instead of offering me help.I didn’t know at the time that I was neurodivergent with two of my monikers being ADHD and GAD (Generalized anxiety disorder). Nobody did. What I knew was that I felt different, I felt ashamed, and somewhere along the way I started calling myself stupid because there was no other explanation for my ineptitude. That label stuck with me for a very long time. If I’m being honest, it still sneaks back in sometimes.I barely graduated high school, then didn’t go to college until seven years later because my experience had been so bad I never wanted to see a classroom again. When I finally went back as an adult, things were...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/joBo8hADlNFQ1k5x5xAjt5HyXmwErinAxq4X1VdxZyw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82N2Jm/ODZmNjM3ODdlZGFj/OWVlZmJlYWRkZTM5/ZmUwNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}