Episode 15: ADHD, Trauma and Joy: Why Neurodivergent People Need More Than Coping

In this episode of the ADHD Wise Podcast, Jannine explores the powerful connection between ADHD, neurodivergence, trauma, adversity and joy.

Many neurodivergent people grow up knowing they are different. Misunderstood. Excluded. Misread. Corrected. Shamed. For some, those experiences become part of a wider picture of trauma, complex trauma, adverse childhood experiences, school exclusion, masking, burnout and poor mental health.

But this episode asks a different question.

What if neurodivergent children and adults need more than coping strategies?

What if joy is not an optional extra, but part of what protects us?

Jannine talks about ACEs,  Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the importance of positive and protective experiences, including play, belonging, connection, safety, curiosity and joy. She reflects on her own experience of growing up different, entering the care system at 14, being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, and later recognising the impact of trauma, dyslexia and autistic traits.

This is also an episode about children’s right to enjoy their childhood, adults’ right to enjoy their adulthood, and why neurodivergent people deserve lives that contain more than survival.

From coaching adults who have lost their joy, to supporting children who are struggling with school attendance, to pretending to be a T-Rex in a supermarket with a child who needed play more than compliance, this episode is a reminder that positive experiences matter.

Because reducing adversity is essential.

But so is intentionally creating joy.

Topics covered include ADHD, autism, dyslexia, SEND, ACEs, trauma, CPTSD, masking, school exclusion, school attendance difficulties, neurodivergent childhood, mental health, coaching, parenting, education, resilience, protective factors, play and positive childhood experiences.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you so much for joining us on ADHD Wise Podcast. If something in this episode has helped you, made you think, or given you language for something you've been living with, you can support the podcast by following or subscribing, leaving a review or connecting with ADHD WISE on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Every share, review, comment and follow helps the podcast reach more people and helps us create conversations and resources that support neurodivergent people, families and professionals. Thank you. Your support really does mean the world. Welcome to ADHD WISE Podcast. I'm Janine Perryman, and this is a space for open conversations about ADHD and neurodiversity, bringing together lived experience, professional insights, and the questions that help us move forward. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here. Hello and welcome to episode 15 of ADHD Worth Podcast. My name is Janine, and today I want to talk to you about the very serious subjects of adversity and trauma relating to neurodivergence. And also though of joy as a protected experience that actually helps us to recover from the adversity, but also is protective when we're in those situations. So, for example, a child who's experiencing a or a series of adverse childhood experiences is more likely to have the resilience against that. And I mean resilience in the right way, not the wrong way, if there are also positive childhood experiences and protective childhood experiences. And joy is kind of like one of those things I want to lean into as a source of that. Okay, so I don't want to just talk to you for however long just about the negative stuff because that's not going to make you want to stay here. And it doesn't really solve any problems. Although it's good to highlight those problems, but we then need to move through to what next. Now, as a as a child, I would say that I had quite a lot of adverse childhood experiences. That was what my struggles were put down to. And actually nobody looked further because it was too easy to put it down to my parents' divorce because back then that was a rare thing. And so my parents being divorced, that was what my struggles were put down to. And even when it came to getting a diagnosis at the age of 41, they still did a lot of work to work out to what extent my struggles related to that and to what extent they're related to neurodivergence ADHD. In that particular case, I was diagnosed ADHD with autistic traits at that time, since diagnosed dyslexic, and have had some preliminary stuff done which shows I am autistic too, even though I don't have a formal diagnosis for it. So these things have all brought adversity to me. And I chose to be a different adult to the ones I experienced. And I'm going to give you an example of that. Last weekend, or the weekend before, actually, a friend of mine came up to to stay near me with his children. And we had a brilliant couple of days going out and doing touristy things in my area and doing things that autistic ADHD children like to do. I had a fantastic time, absolutely loved it. But one of the things that sticks with me is on the second day when we had to go to the supermarket and the children moaned about having to go to the supermarket. But they were moaning. Anyway, we went in and this my my friend's child said to me, Let's pretend we're stalking them like they're prey. And I went, Oh, what like we're T-Rexes? And I was like, and so basically I went into child mode and was basically playful. So me and this child are then stalking his brother and his dad around a supermarket as if we are T-Rexes. And so is the child then fed up and misbehaving in a supermarket? No, he's playing in the supermarket with an adult who's playing alongside him. Now, if I stop and think about how other people might perceive me playing with this child in the supermarket, I must have looked really weird. But who cares? Whose judgment am I concerned about in that situation? Because why should I be concerned with anybody's judgment? At the end of the day, the right thing to do in that situation was to play with the child before me. And actually, it was really good for me as well. Really, really good for me because I just tapped into all of that good stuff that's in me that is just around play, being in the moment, being creative, having fun, and so it worked. As I say, I grew up without that sort of playfulness really. My parents would have been much more concerned with how things looked versus what they were actually like. I was very misunderstood at school and in every other environment that I was in, and I'm gonna say it was a challenge. Um, I didn't fit in, I didn't belong, I didn't understand why I didn't fit in, and therefore I couldn't even mask in order to fit in. And I went through this phase in my twenties and thirties where I became aware that people liked me when they first met me, and then they would go off me, and then eventually they would like me again. Now, when I got my ADHD diagnosis, suddenly that made sense because I was it took me a while as one picket, and I was like, oh, I would have been masking in the beginning, and then the mask would have dropped off, and then they would have thought prior to that I wasn't being authentic. And then they see this different version of me, and they decide they like this version of me, but I don't even realise that I'm masking, I'm just doing that subconsciously. And of course, now as a an openly neurodivergent person, I don't do that pretending to be somebody else. I am actually quite a playful person. I get into deep and meaningful conversations very quickly and easily, which not everybody in my social circle likes. It definitely makes me unpopular with some people, it makes me Mama. I'm alright with being Mamite. There's nothing wrong with being Mamite. There's enough people that like me that it doesn't matter if some don't. And that's where that sort of sits. So going back to ACEs and the fact that adverse childhood experiences, we know neurodivergent children are more at risk of adverse childhood experiences. And the impact of these adds up. And it's not the case that a child who's had 10 adverse childhood experiences feels it more necessarily than a child who has had one. It's a cumulative effect, yes, but it's also about the resilience and the depth of the situation and all sorts of other things besides. You cannot predict how a child will respond to any adverse childhood experience. And I just want to say all school exclusions are potentially an adverse childhood experience, especially the permanent ones, the short-term fixed ones, maybe, maybe not, but the school placement breakdown, as I prefer to call it, I'm going to say that's always an adverse childhood experience, or always has a high risk of being received by the child as that, because ultimately when a school placement breaks down, we're quick to blame the child versus actually looking at the whole situation. And in no other breakdown of a relationship, we can blame the child, but we do when there's a school placement breakdown, which I think is correct. But then this the whole thing around the positives, and that's why we're talking about joy today. So our children are eventually going to be adults. And as they move into adulthood, the impact of those aces, of those adverse experiences, doesn't go away. The negative messages, the jury is out on how many there are. There's there's documentation to suggest it's something like 20,000 before the age of 10 or 12, depending on who you're asking. But the reality is that even if we don't necessarily know the number, I think we probably should try to work out what the number is. The extreme additional negative messaging that children who are different receive. Children with ADHD, children who are autistic, children who are dyslexic, children who are different in any way whatsoever are experiencing, are going to have an impact on who they become as an adult. So if you're listening as an adult, this is really relevant to you because you would have received all those negative messages going through. And that might not be something outrageous like someone being absolutely horrendous to you. It might just be the subtle rolling of eyes, the just realizing that people are off with you, feeling confused, feeling excluded from whatever. These things all add up. And as neurodivergent people, we would have experienced more of them. All of the adults that I have ever spoken to in my coaching life, and all the ones I have screened for their neurodivergent profile, have all talked about negative things that have happened to them as a result of their differences. And some of them are definitely trauma-related. A lot of them are more adversity related, not trauma-related. But actually, a lot are more what you'd call the CPTSD, the complex trauma, because they are small events over a long period of time. So these things build up, and that's where you get your CPTSD from, potentially, depending on the extent of things. But at the worst case scenario, you've got somebody who's got CPTSD or PTSD as a result of the adversity they have experienced as a result of being different. And we have to be very mindful of that because this is so prevalent. And I'm big, big on saying that in the coaching world, if your coach isn't trauma informed, they can do more harm than good. Because the reality is you've got to be able to work out what's what's going on for the individual in front of you and being able to say, this bit is relating to advert to neurodiversity, this bit's related to trauma. And you may not necessarily know, but you can recognise the two things are in play in the same person at the same time. And so that balance between the two. And if you can help a person, not through therapeutic means because coaching isn't therapeutic, unless you're a therapeutic coach, there's that whole thing around helping the person to help themselves, to see why they're struggling in order to help them to struggle less. And that can be really, really good and meaningful work. So if you are a person who recognises it that what I'm saying to you in yourself, that's kind of the point, is that you're looking at it and you're going, Yeah, that both of those things are true for me, but I haven't yet found anybody who can get the two things together. A good coach should be able to put the two things together and be able to mark those things through. But they will also, a good coach will also know where they end. So they will also be able to say to you, This is the point at which you need to go and get some therapy around this because ultimately that's not what we do in coaching. The other thing that comes up a lot in coaching is well, where is the joy? So, say for example, I've got someone in front of me and they're talking about difficulties in the workplace. I'm like, where is the joy in your workplace? And where is the joy in your personal life? And if there is joy in one, the other, or both, they're usually doing pretty well. And they're just with me to deal with the thing that's in front of them, and then they don't need me anymore. The ones who stay with me longer are the ones who haven't got joy in their lives, whose stuff has built up and accumulated and is weighing heavily on them, and they tend to stay longer. And part of that journey is to stretch them into finding their joy, to allowing them to be a child, to allow them to be themselves, to allow them to be playful and to think about what's going to make you smile and make you giggle, make you whatever it is that's going to bring you joy. What are those things? Because society is really heavy right now. Um, I listen to the news. Well, in fact, I try not to listen to the news. I listen to a news podcast actually, because that's that then gives me a dose of news without giving me too much, because I actually find it really, really heavy. So I listen to a pop podcast and it is really, really heavy, but they also make lighter things and they also balance it off with something that is um joyful. And the news used to do that, but actually the news I think is increasingly just about clicks, and that isn't that's not really working for many of us because we've been in a situation where we aren't experiencing the joy. And similarly, when I talk to children, particularly children who are not attending school, so you're children who are struggling with school attendance. I'm like, what brings you joy in the school day? And sometimes they'll say, um that lesson with that teacher, but there's nothing else, we pick into it. Or they'll say lunchtime with my friends, or they'll say my music lesson, or they'll say one thing, but actually a lot of them say I can't think of anything. I cannot think of anything. And then the other thing that's scary about this is that it's like, okay, so where is the joy in your home life? And I remember because this this really stuck with me. It was actually a couple of years ago, a family were talking to me about their child who was struggling to attend school and he always loved cricket, but he'd stopped wanting to go to cricket, so he was no longer attending his cricket because he was disconnecting from things, which is a sign of mental health struggle. So he was then disconnecting from his joy. And I'm like, that's not good. If you are so fed up from your school day that you can't even engage in the after-school activities that bring you joy, that's not healthy. And we see this in adults as well. So this is this is a this is the case across the board for adults and for children. If there is not enough joy in your life, you will not have enough space, resilience, etc., for the rubbish that life will life at you because it does. Life is hard and the the things will keep on coming at you. And if you don't have that joy, it will really, really bite you. So if you are struggling with your mental health, the first thing I want you to do is take a deep breath and say, what brings me joy? What brought me joy before? You know, what do I need to do in order to increase the joy levels in my life? Because if you can do that, you will start to experience some resilience around the other things. We still have to do the difficult things. If you want to thrive in life rather than just kind of stick skip by, you are going to have to do difficult things too. That's a lot easier to do if you also have joy in your life. Do you feel there is more going on for you or for your child, but you are unsure where to start? At ADHD WISE, our neurodiversity pathway offers a cross-neurotype assessment for adults, children, and young people. Cross-neurotype means we look across a range of neurodevelopmental profiles and differences, including ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, language and communication, sensory processing, executive function and regulation. The pathway includes WISECLIR, which helps collect detailed information from you about everyday experiences, strengths and challenges. It also includes KRAOS, which gives us an evidence base based on activities that you perform online that shows us things like attention, memory, reasoning and cognitive processing. We then build this together with a semi-structured interview so that we can triangulate the information and build a clearer picture of what may be going on for you. The aim is to help you know where you are, what might be contributing to the challenges that you or your child are having, and deciding on next steps, whether that be a diagnostic, support in school or in work, coaching, adjustments, or simply better understanding yourself or your child. The Neurodiversity Pathway is about clarity, direction, and helping people be better understood. You can find out more at adhdwise.uk and look for the Neurodiversity Pathway. So I spoke at the Autism ADHD show in London on the 19th of June, and by the time this is released, I would have spoken at the one in Liverpool as well about education and looking at Autism ADHD different in the classroom. And one of the things I talk about there is the fact that we're supposed to allow children to enjoy their childhood. And that shouldn't even need to be said, but the reality is we do seem to have forgotten that children are supposed to enjoy their childhood. And contrary to popular opinion, children are supposed to enjoy their education. Children learn. And I please remember I am an ex-teacher, a send specialist teacher. Children learn better when they are experiencing things and when there is joy, comfort, psychological safety, relatability, dopamine in and serotonin in this mix of what they are doing. They will learn much better when there is joy in the classroom. When the teacher is enjoying teaching, the child will all children will enjoy learning more overall. And if the teacher is not enjoying teaching, our children who are really struggling already will be the first ones to feel it because they are reliant on their dopamine. Because children of ADHD in particular have typically lower dopamine. There's a bigger story than that, but we're not talking about that particularly right now. But just recognizing there is there are lower dopamine levels in our ADHD children, and therefore they are going to notice, even if they can't quite pinpoint it when the teacher is not enjoying the teaching. And we have sterilized teaching. We have made it this blanket thing, and it's not really all that surprising that children aren't able to grab hold of it and do something with it. And we're doing similar stuff in the workplace. So, you know, our our our way of working, etc., uh the lack of flexibility is increasing at the moment. It was, it was, it was the case that we were moving more into inclusive practice. We're seeing a massive pushback to this is how it's always been done, this is how we're going to do it, which actually just means that our neurodivergent people are at a disadvantage. I do think we'll see the flip the flex back to the constructive way of doing things again. But I think it's going to be a while till we get to that. But just want to remind everybody progress never happened without pushback, and we are definitely in the pushback stage. But eventually we will push through this because what we were doing and the movement that we made was a positive one and it was the right one. So keep going. The fact that everybody thought it was a good idea to push back on us is a good sign that we were doing it right because otherwise they'd just be ignoring us. So going back to the supermarket, I will never forget that day. And actually, it woke me up. I feel like because of that day in the supermarket and that whole weekend with my friends' children, I feel like I remembered who I am. I feel like some of the adversity that I'm facing at the moment, it's tough I've had particularly, I'll talk about it another day. But I've had a difficult situation in my domestic life that has had an impact on me and my ability to be able to think, you know what, Janine, life goes on, you'll be okay, etc. A lot of that is because I've I've been reminded of who I am and what matters to me, and that that joy is a fundamental part of what I deserve to have in life. And messing around in a supermarket, I don't care who's judging me. That's their problem. That's not a me problem, it's a them problem. So that's the whole thing around that. Adversity in our childhood does not have to mean adversity in our adulthood, but the reality is that it tends to move through. Most of us need some sort of therapeutic support, most of us won't get it. Um, most of us need coaching, most of us won't get it. I'm a big believer in self-coaching and having a dash of actual coaching at the same time. I'd say that's kind of uh a really good sort of balance because most people can't afford what coaching costs on a one-to-one basis. So there is all of that as well. So we are building resources around um self-coaching at the moment so that we can help you with that. But the my north star for this one is it isn't just that we need to be reducing adversity and the opportunity and the risk of trauma, etc. It is absolutely that we need to be increasing positive childhood experiences, protective childhood experiences, and also positive adult experiences and protective adult experiences. This is so, so important. The thing the things go together, the individual is better supported, better equipped to deal with the negative when they also have the positive. And we do actually deserve to thrive. And I think I well, I was 41 when I got my ADHD diagnosis, or 49 when I got my autism. No, when I got my dyslexia and my CPTSD diagnosis. I deserve to know sooner. I deserve to have had that support sooner. And so knowledge is power. Knowledge helps. Understanding why something is a struggle isn't automatic to it, struggling less, you struggling less. I spoke about unmasking in another podcast because we tend to make a mess when we are uh working out who we are underneath the mask. Um, so that is that. Definitely, we definitely want some coaching around that, but just recognising that you are entitled and deserving of thriving. And it is possible to thrive with ADHD, but I'm not going to do the toxic positivity because we also have to acknowledge this life, this life being different is incredibly challenging. And I've said before and I'll say again, the biggest difference between ADHD and the rest of the population in terms of public perception is that we are all, every single one of us, a strength of a big bunch of strengths and challenges. But the strengths and challenges associated with ADHD as a neurotype, as a way of being, are not socially acceptable. But they come it comes with strengths as well. So the biggest struggle is the social construct around this. So to th to recognize that not being good with time, concentration, attention, impulse control, emotion regulation, there's not actually anything inherently wrong with those things. But in a society that judges and uses shame as a moderator, it's massively, massively detrimental. So the social constructs that are in place at the moment that we could do something about In terms of making it easier for the likes of myself and you, if you're listening, to thrive. They need to be, they need to be worked on. But as we said, there's a pushback against them right now. So we we've got to help you to survive the now, to cope with the now of this situation. So the first thing I want you to do if you're thinking about this is what's joyous for you. What is joyous for you? You can get caught up in all the negatives because there are loads. I want to hear those, but reality is we need to moderate those with joy. We need to moderate those with positive and protective experiences. Adult and child, this is what we have an inherent um uh an overarching responsibility to do for ourselves or for people like us. If you're the parent or if you're the teacher or if you're the professional, this is what we have to do. We have to help people refin their joy. I was speaking to Joe Roberts um about a project that we're going to try and sort out, which is we can we we're very outspoken, myself and Joe, about the difficulties in the workplace and in education around what inclusion actually looks like right now. And we're very unhappy with some of the things that are happening politically. I don't think there's any secret about that. But I was saying to, I was listening to a podcast about New York and what's happening there at the moment. And New York, by and large, at the moment, is a really joyous place to be. People remembering what they love about their lives, about their communities. And I want to encourage everybody to think, okay, let's be more New York in this context. Let's just find the joy and remember that our children are beautiful. They are joyous just as they are, even while they're winding us up. There is joy in our children. And if you can't find it right now, I hear you because I can definitely think back and remember there were times when I couldn't find the joy of my own children. But there is joy in our children. And we have to grab it and we have to have to do something with it. I remember speaking to somebody who said, speaking about his his recently his recent adult children, sorry, his children are in the early twenties, and he said he's looked back and cannot remember a single day where he really enjoyed his children. I just want to say that's not about his children. That's to do with his own stuff and the own his own picket fence dream that he'd created that his children weren't able to fit into. And I wish I had known sooner, because I'd have liked to have worked with him sooner to find the joy in his children. So, you know, the reality is that if you're struggling to find the joy in your children, you may need someone to help you to find though the joy in your children. And I know I did, because I remember my my my really good friend Ruth, when my children were younger, every time I spent time with them, it was about spending money. We'd go somewhere, we would do something, it would be a farm, it would be a day out somewhere or whatever. And she taught me the simplicity of just grabbing a picnic basket and a and a picnic blanket and just going and sitting and being and having lunch with your children in a field. And particularly neurodivergent children who like to run around, particularly your ADHD children, this can be incredible. And it's also not overwhelming for your autistic children. It doesn't require any massive reading, etc., for your dyslexic children and your sensory processing children and everything else. There's going to be challenges in this because sitting on grass, for example, sitting on sand, for example, might be difficult for some children. But find ways of making it work that means you can find the joy in your children. Because they deserve that and you deserve that. And sometimes as parents, we need that reminder that that's what we're supposed to do. And do this as an adult as well. So what is going to bring you joy? So if you've got any children, ignore that bit of what I've said. But just go and or don't. Do what I did this weekend, because I've got children, but they're grown up. I borrowed somebody else's. I had somebody else come up and stay, and I just enjoyed their kiddos. And life can be that simple and straightforward. So expect me to talk more about joy over a period of time. Notice when you're sort of seeing things come up, because I'm going to talk about joy a lot. Not toxically, not neurodivergence is joyous. It isn't. It is hard. It is breathtakingly hard. I am living in a hard phase right now, so please understand I am not suggesting any of this is easy. But it is worth it and we're worth it. And every neurodivergent person, just like the rest of the population, has the right to thrive. Okay? The right to thrive. Joy is part of thriving. Are you, or is anyone thriving if they haven't got joy in their life? It's like an ingredient in a cake. If it's not there, it's not a yummy cake. And it's definitely not a yummy life if there's no if if if you're missing an ingredients from it. So we've got to make sure the ingredients of joy is firmly embedded into our lives because it is the is a partial antidote to the trauma and the adversity that unfortunately we are at a higher risk of. That is the way it is, and that's a sad fact, but it is a fact. My animals, by the way, are a source of my joy. I have two dogs right by us right now. I am set I am in a different room because this room has air conditioning in. Yes. Um, so find the joy. Remember that joy is something that is actually something we're supposed to have. All right. It's not a permanent state. You move in of it, you move out of it. You're not supposed to be happy all the time. That's not healthy either. Um, but just recognizing that in the highs and the lows, if you don't have joy, you haven't got that moderating factor, you haven't got protective factors, you haven't got positive factors, and therefore the adverse factors will have a bigger impact. On that note, I just want to repeat again don't just reduce the adversity, intentionally create positivity and protection against adversity. Positive experiences are really, really important. I would love it if you felt like sharing something with me, like a picture of you being a T-Rex in the supermarket. Um, or something like that. And I wonder if you asked your children or your friend's children whether whether they would what they would do to react to that, because my friend's children looked at me and went, he went, he looked at me and he went, you're, you're, and I went, what? Weird? And he went, something like that. And then later he said, You're fun. And I want to be fun for children because children need and deserve fun. Children are supposed to enjoy their childhood, and you are supposed to enjoy your adulthood. Okay, I'm gonna leave you there. Hopefully that's helpful and feel something that's relatable to you. Thank you for listening and see you in another episode. Thank you for listening to ADHDWISE Podcast. ADHD WISE exists to help bridge understanding and support for people exploring ADHD and broader neurodiversity. If you would like to know more about us and our services, please visit www.adhwise.uk. Follow ADHDwiseuk on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Take care and we'll see you next time.