Late Bloomer --- Overcoming Inhibition: Part 1

Part 1. Change of Focus

I could start my story anywhere.

I’m the same and yet different from other people. Everyone, I believe, has some form of physical or mental challenge in their life. What’s rare about me is that I’ve had an opportunity to be my own case study in human relatedness, and I have gained considerably from it. The journey has been so dramatic to me and those who knew me as a child that I am driven to share what I have learned.

It has been 16 years since I began to understand the way I process words, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. In 1993, at the age of 40, I was accepted into a master’s program in which the curriculum centered on human communication and mental life. Immediately after starting my studies to become a speech and language therapist, I learned that I had an attention disorder. Then I gradually came to the understanding that accompanying my ADD are a nonverbal learning disability, an anxiety disorder, some sensory integration dysfunction, and a math disability. Those are the labels. The journey of self-discovery was begun.

It was a unique series of life situations that led me to the field of communication sciences and disorders. I had loving adoptive parents who sent me to good schools; in 1985 I married a man who loves and supports me; we have had good jobs and financial security; and we did not have children to send to college. These circumstances put me in a position to change career directions three times over my first 18 years of work whenever I became bored or frustrated.

How desperate was I in 1993 to commit to a full-time, two-year, 100-credit program so I could embark on a fourth career? The details of that decision can wait. The good news is that I got hooked on my new field on Day One. I became completely engrossed in the vast and rich information surrounding me, information that was fascinating on the surface alone but also, astoundingly, resonated with my personal experience.

During my master’s program I walked a double path: I was an A student, far more intense than most of my younger colleagues. At the same time I was also quietly learning about myself as an adult who had grown up in the '60s with undiagnosed learning and cognitive differences.

In the past year I have again devoted time to continuing my journey of self-discovery. I’ve done more reading and thinking, attended a comprehensive “virtual” conference on ADD. And for the first time I have benefitted from the gift of talking about it all, sharing ideas and questions with two friends my age who just learned that they, too, grew up with an attention disorder.

The outcome of these two periods of focused—obsessive—self-analysis is the belief that I have uncovered some truths about the way people are and the way we interact with each other. This belief comes from recognizing that I’ve experienced two entirely different ways of being due to my neurology.

I am one of those people who was born with a mind and body that over- and under-react to the world, seemingly on a whim. This is accompanied by a deep, pervasive fear that has inhibited and isolated me to some degree for my entire life. Yes, I have lived what some people call a full life. Slowly, step by step, I’ve gained comfort with a wide range of experiences. But only now do I understand why my days can feel so arduous. And only since taking retirement almost three years ago have I had the luxury of time to learn how to make and be a real friend.

So I’m breaking out of my relative isolation, and I’m having many successes. Ongoing projects are to strengthen my spiritual life and heal my battered self-image. And to write. I’m thinking of a series of snapshots of important or typical experiences, along with my thoughts and beliefs about them.

The purpose in sharing my story is to help explain the way people “just are.” I firmly believe our behavior comes from our neurology as much as our psychology. I want to foster tolerance for those who appear different. I want to suggest reasons for things people do that we might not understand.

I also hope that by sharing my story I can inspire others whose natural focus is inward rather than out towards the world. I encourage you to persist in learning how to relate to others. If you can succeed, it will be worth every second of confusion, frustration, and humiliation you endured when things went wrong.

Incomprehensibly, the rewards of genuine human interaction are taken for granted by those who come by their friend-making skills naturally. I think everyone should know just how much is involved. It’s my way to give back for the great fortune I’ve been given. Maybe readers will learn to see themselves and others through a new lens.

Let me know what you think.

“We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.”

–Albert Einstein