Leanne Maskell
Leanne is an ADHD Coach. Since being diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 25, Leanne has published 3 books, worked as a mental health & disability legal policy adviser at the Law Soci...
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Who are you?
Hi, my name is Leanne Mosco. I'm an A DHD coach, author of A DHD and A third, and the founder of A DHD works. And today you can ask me any questions you want about A DHD.
What is ADHD?
A DHD is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with high levels of, I can't remember what I was going to say. A DHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and it's typically associated with being very physically or mentally hyperactive, impulsive, not being able to pay attention. And I think it's often confused with a mental illness or kind of a problem, but actually it's more of a part of who you are. So if you have it, it means that you are neurodiverse. It just means that your brain is differently wired to other people, and it's just part of you. So I think of it like my hair colour or my eye colour rather than an illness or a problem that I've got. However, I guess that's where the disorder part comes in, because to be diagnosed with A DHD, you have to have two or more parts of your life, like work or relationships that are significantly negatively impacted over a long period of time.
What are the symptoms of ADHD?
There are different kinds of symptoms for A DHD and they come up in people differently. So for example, it's very different than girls and boys, but usually it's associated with symptoms of being hyper. So that might be physically or mentally impulsive. So not thinking before you make decisions and not being able to concentrate. So that would be the attention part. For me personally, I find that it's more, rather than attention deficit, it's like an attention problem in managing a management problem of your attention because you can be really, really hyper-focused on what you're interested in because we have a different nervous system to people. So that means if we're really interested in something, I can write a book about it or we've written a book about A DHD. Whereas if we're not interested in something that we really, really, really hard to concentrate. So for example, one of my symptoms is that I just can't change my bedsheets or do my washing because it's so mentally taxing, because we're often looking for stimulation and having our brains moving, doing something, being on the go all the time. But I think the symptoms that are kind of medically listed and not quite accurate because a lot of them, I don't think they mentioned emotional symptoms, but that can definitely be one of them as well. Trouble managing emotions in different situations. And I think it all comes down to the fact of having a really serious problem. So one of the symptoms is being disorganised or forgetful, and whereas other people might lose their key, we all might lose our keys from time to time, or we all might be a little bit messy. I probably have had to pay a lot of money over my life for new locks maybe once a year because I've lost my keys or my room when I was younger, actually I was broken into and the police thought that the burglars had trashed my bedroom, but they hadn't actually trashed my bedroom. It just looked like that. It was like a floor drove. So yeah, so I think it's these symptoms that can appear on the spectrum and we can all have them like being distracted when we're talking to someone. But when it's a DHD, I do think it happens to quite a serious degree, but also actually saying that this is my A DHD for you. But there are lots and lots of positive things as well. So often we are like, well, we've definitely been scientifically linked to being extremely creative, thinking very differently, being very, very passionate about what we do and really, really genuinely caring and being quite empathetic to other people. So I think there are lots of different symptoms. Usually if you have lots and lots and lots of ideas and lots of energy, that's a good symptom as well. But the difficulty might be following through with all your ideas and actually getting so stressed out and overwhelmed by them. Hopefully that is a good A DHD explanation for you of the symptoms of A DHD, which are basically loads.