Ep. 5 - Nichole's Story, Part 2: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Acceptance with ADHD

0:00:16 - Melissa

Welcome to THIS IS MY STORY, where everyday women share their stories of struggles and setbacks that have shaped their lives. I'm your host, Melissa Teutsch. In this episode, we continue our conversation with Nichole Smith as she shares about her ADHD diagnosis at age 37 and her struggle with self-discovery and learning who she is. Before we jump into today's episode, don't forget to follow us on our social media and subscribe to us. Wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find all our social media links, as well as more information about us, at ThisIsMyStoryPodcast.com.

0:00:52 - Nichole

My name is Nichole and this is my story. 

0:00:57 - Melissa

When I asked you about the setbacks and struggles that have shaped your life, you said by far my biggest struggle has been self-discovery, learning who I am and being okay with who I am. While in Tallahassee, I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 37, unpacking and processing something that has had a profound impact on my life has been truly difficult, yet rewarding at the same time. Can you share with us what led up to that diagnosis? 

0:01:25 - Nichole

Well, I always knew I was different. Back in the 80s, when I was a kid I don't really remember people being diagnosed with ADHD maybe. If so, they were given Ritalin and I didn't know anything about it. So I never thought of myself as having ADHD because I knew that I wasn't a kid who was running around getting in trouble because that's kind of how ADHD kids were labeled back then and it was such a. It never crossed my mind that I could have had ADHD. It just, you know, we didn't know enough. 

As a teenager I was super hyperactive, very chatty, unable to focus and not I was never the type to bounce in and out of my seat, but I was always super, super talkative In class. I couldn't shut up. If I had a friend by me, I was going to turn around constantly and my chemistry teacher in high school actually he was always moving me to a seat that he called the hot seat. He took me in almost every day because I literally could not shut up and I drove my teachers crazy and most people would just laugh during that time and I thought of it like everybody loves me. You know I was probably delusional. 

I probably got on a lot of people's nerves, but I was in my happy place and loved, loved life and I felt very energized all the time. I was just living my best life. But it wasn't until probably early adulthood that it. Yes, it was problematic for me in high school, but I didn't care. When I entered the professional world and it I was even less compatible. I might have been incompatible with the behavioral standards in a high school, but I was even more incompatible as a young adult with doing everyday adult things being places on time, just having it together. You know, being able to focus, being able to study. 

College was very challenging for me. I always made good grades in high school, but that was because I felt that high school was more of how smart are you and less about how much you study. And then I felt that college was kind of the reversal of that, because I was never a big studier, because I just didn't have the attention span to sit for long periods of time with something like that. I still didn't, you know, think ADHD. It's just who I am, I don't know. 

It wasn't until probably the last decade that, when ADHD became more, the diagnosis of it became more I don't know mainstream or once we started to know more about it, that I started to think, you know, maybe I have ADHD, maybe that explains a lot of things about my behavior, about all kinds of things. And there was also when I kind of piggybacked that on this. I also had a problem with figuring out and this is something common with ADHD is is having too many interests. I changed my major four times as a college freshman or I don't know, maybe maybe the first couple of years, but I did have four different majors and I would like, ooh, something shiny and dopamine hit of, oh, a new thing. And yeah, I've moved 35 times in my life. 

0:04:51 - Melissa

Oh, my gosh 35? 

0:04:53 - Nichole

35. The last time I counted. It may be more than that now. 

0:04:57 - Melissa

I thought we had moved a lot. 

0:04:59 - Nichole

Yeah. 

0:04:59 - Melissa

We've moved like 11 times in our marriage in 22 years. 

0:05:04 - Nichole

I would have to count how many times cutting. I've moved a lot, but I moved. I moved around a lot as a kid too, so almost on average one time a year, just about. So back in I guess the 80s and you could probably verify this too is there was a lot of we were always told. My generation, I feel, we were always told that we were special and that we were I don't know that our career, that we should follow our passion, and I think that's because generations before us worked so hard and did something that they hated for so long. And then we were told follow your passion. And I'm not going to say that was totally misguided, but I think the downside of that it made my generation equate our careers with our identity and who we are. 

And I know for me I felt and I'm unpacking this later as an adult, thinking back to my childhood and my behavior with ADHD and how I couldn't focus on things and I couldn't always get the best grades and everything. And part of what I felt gave me validation was once I was kind of able to just decide that I was going to be more academic. I did much better in grad school than I did as an undergrad, but just finding out what I wanted to do at that time and having teachers validate me and write. I had certain teachers who would just write little words of encouragement or like, wow, this is great insight you have here on my essays. It did something to me and I think that's what attracted me to English was that when I would write an essay and I would get these marginal notes that basically claimed that I was brilliant, it did something that it awakened, something that I didn't know was there. I never thought of myself as brainy or anything like that and say, when I'm receiving this validation, not only did I become more academic, but after I graduated, I became more like starting to associate my career with my identity and who I was, and I was always trying to figure out well, who am I, what am I going to do and how is what I do going to be a representation of who I am, because that's so important. 

That's a lot of pressure, especially on someone who, with ADHD, who from day to day doesn't always know, and I'm always like ooh, a squirrel and I might change my mind next year tomorrow about what I want to do for the rest of my life. So the pressure to know who I was and what I wanted out of life and to do that and for it to define me so much was just a pressure that I could never reconcile. I still feel like I'm not there, but I finally have arrived at a place where I think I'm okay with that. Now I still don't know who I am fully, but I think finding out who I am is no longer my goal, like it used to be. I know who I am. That person is always changing. That person is always looking for the next great thing, and that's a part of ADHD is constantly changing, like that's part of what we do. Things are always we're always chasing change in our heads. It's and it's not necessarily a deficit. 

We're at read an article and I have no idea if this is rooted in science. So please, anybody listening to this, don't consider this psychological advice by any means. But I did read an article once that I talked about how people who have ADHD, that we evolved certain humans evolved to have ADHD, that it's a coping mechanism, that people with ADHD are more adaptable. They are the ones who quickly react in an emergency, and so there are people who can just handle things like that much better than a neurotypical person can do. And so I've come through the diagnosis at the age of 37. 

Like you said, I've started to accept the fact that I'm not a static person who has to be figured out, and that's what I figured out. I figured out that there isn't something to be figured out and that me as a person, I'm always evolving and no longer chasing this magic career that I hope will define me one day, because I don't think that's gonna happen. Right now I have a job that I really, really love. I'm at it right now on a Saturday. I no longer when I leave at four o'clock, I'm done for the day. It's a job, I love it, I love my coworkers. 

But I think before a lot of times I felt that teaching, that I was a teacher and that I was a teacher when I left the school. 

I was a teacher on a Saturday and I was technically that's what I did as an occupation, but I made it so much a part of my identity that if I had any setbacks or failures on my job, that that was a reflection of my character and it hurt so, like when I left that one school, that was really bad for me. It was a personal failure to me and it hurt and it gave me a lot of crippling anxiety for a long time. But now I don't look at a career in the same way and I don't look at myself the same way, because I'm no longer searching for that magical answer that's gonna say this is who I was supposed to be, this is who I was destined to be, because I think that the person that I am is always evolving. And if I can just be okay in my own skin who that person is, I think I've had this sort of clarity probably just in the last couple of years, in this past year. This is kind of random hey squirrel, but when? 

What was that? Jenny and Georgia. There's this character, max. I don't know if you've watched Jenny and Georgia. 

0:11:31 - Melissa

But I've watched a little bit of the beginning. Who is Max? Again, it's been a little bit. 

0:11:35 - Nichole

Max is the best friend of the young girl. Is it Jenny or Georgia? Jenny? It's her best friend who lives there, neighbors, okay, yeah, she's very, very hyperactive like that. I'm pretty sure they have a lot of neurodivergent characters on that show and I'm pretty sure she represents ADHD. They don't call any of them out except, no, not even. There's one character who seems to be autistic, but they never mention it. But there are a lot of characters who represent different neurodivergent minds and I really related to her because she got on my nerves in the very first episode and I was like, oh, this girl is so annoying. And then the longer I saw her I was like she's me. 

0:12:25 - Melissa

Is this how everybody feels? 

0:12:27 - Nichole

about me when they first meet me. But my, you know Meredith McKinney. She's my best friend from back in Monroe. She has told me before that I'm an acquired taste and that when she first knew me that I got on her everlasting nerve. But so the girl-. 

0:12:45 - Melissa

Well, Nichole, you've never gotten on my nerves. 

0:12:48 - Nichole

Oh, thank you. At least you got the adult version. 

0:12:50 - Melissa

Yeah, I did have the adult version. Yeah. 

0:12:54 - Nichole

But the girl and Jenny and Georgia like, the longer I watched the show I was like this girl. She fully and she's high schooler, but she fully embraces who she is and her friends embrace her too. So, embracing my ADHD and embracing who I am. I don't have to always be quiet, I don't always have to, you know, in some contexts maybe maybe I shouldn't blurt out something in the middle of a formal assembly or something like that. But I also have come to terms with being okay, with just saying the crazy random things that I say that shock people. That's part of who I am. 

Meredith says that she always cracks up because I send her these random text messages. I didn't realize that I was even doing that and she'll. She pointed out and said I love how you do this, but just send her random text messages of just a funny thought that I have and she'll say that it's just so incredibly random. It won't be related to anything that we've been talking about, but she loves receiving those text messages and it's finding a friend like her who embraced all of me and my husband does too. But it's when you live with someone. It's a little bit different If you can win somebody over who you don't live with, that's a harder feat, I think, because they don't know you for who you are as much as your own family. So to be able to win over people on the outside, that feels like an accomplishment. 

0:14:22 - Melissa

John Hayden, my 10 year old. We think he's ADHD. We're thinking he might have ADHD. Yeah, we think John Hayden might have ADHD. He's a huge talker huge and he's super smart. He has been hyper focused on presidents and presidential history and history and geography for a couple of years now and it makes him and he like is not really great at social cues and so it makes it really hard for him to make friends. 

He's just in a different league than all the kids around him and it's, it's a heart for him. And I have to tell him constantly those are not your people. 

0:15:02 - Nichole

You're going to grow up and you're going to meet people who will be your people, who will like you for who you are exactly how you are that perspective, because it's it's so common, I think, for parents to to get their child, to try to get them to calm down and to fit in, instead of having them pause and think about how one day, they will find their people. It's great that you have that perspective and that's I don't even know how you have that perspective. Like, where did that perspective come from? You think? 

0:15:35 - Melissa

I just I remember in high school just having this maturity in realizing this is not the end, all be all, like there is life. There is a full life after this. This is such a tiny part of life and I don't, you know, whatever happens in high school, like, so what if that girl doesn't like me? So what if that guy doesn't like me? This isn't my life, like I'm going to leave here and I might never see these people again. And you know, this is just a tiny portion of my life and I don't need to put so much focus on what happens now. And so I've just always kind of kept that mentality with my kids, with trying to put into perspective if something happens, this is just temporary, right, like there is so much life ahead of you and this doesn't define you, and I know it's so easy to get hung up. 

I mean, we all have this emotional baggage from bullying. You know, like I went through bullying, it's still. It's still. It created trust issues and me, like I don't really have any close friends now, like it's just my husband. And you know, we've also moved a lot because it's hard to make a friend as adults. Yeah, so you know, I still probably need some therapy because of stuff from high, from middle school, junior high, high school. But I just tried to always keep the perspective this is going to pass and this is not. This is not. You know what life is going to be like, like you know. So I just always have said that to my kids Like this is just one year, this is just one thing. Like these people, you're not going to even you're going to grow up and you're not even probably going to have these people in your life. 

0:17:19 - Nichole

So let's not, let's you know I'm down by that. Yeah, my son has ADHD too and he, like John Hayden, talks incessantly and has these hyper focus interests. He moves from thing to thing to thing and he will talk someone's head off about that interest. Yeah, ad nauseam and um. But he's been lucky to where he's had a couple of friends that I think also have possibly have ADHD, uh, and they they can stick together pretty easily and um and relate to each other. But it it hasn't, I wouldn't say it's been a problem for him because I think, like me, he's oblivious, not very self-aware. So John Hayden could be more self-aware and paranoid about frenzy. Thatcher. Just assumes that everybody loves him Cause he gets that from it. 

0:18:13 - Melissa

Yeah, Unfortunately, John Hayden is very self-aware. I mean, even though I, we are constantly like social cues, you're not reading our social cues. We're obviously getting annoyed with you. Know, we want to move on from this topic, we're tired of talking about it. He, he does seem to be self-aware, that he says no one likes him, but he does have it a one friend that I feel like accepts him for who he is. So he does have this one friend, thankfully. 

0:18:40 - Nichole

And it's harder, especially, uh, if he's really smart. I mean that's like a double edged sword. I mean even people with ADHD who are, say, gifted they call them twice exceptional because it's it's doubly hard for them to make friends because they're if they get put into certain classes or something like that, because of their ADHD they're away from, you know, mainstream classes. But then if they get into those classes and they're surrounded by people with a lower IQ, they don't feel like they belong there either. So it's really really tricky to cause like that. Or he's incredibly smart, but he also has ADHD. Luckily, if people are annoyed by him, he doesn't have a clue and that one. 

Um, he'll just. He'll just talk and never even have a clue. If anybody is annoyed ever Cause he doesn't pick up on those social cues, so what led you to get the official diagnosis? 

I think it was just from like, grading papers was always really, really hard for me and I think I just had enough, like, if I could get a diagnosis and I could get some medication, I think that would help me get through these essays. Uh, and it did help a lot. Um, I did start medicating and I felt like it. It improved my quality of life because I was able to focus on the things that I needed to get done. It didn't it didn't take away who I was. That's what a lot of people say about their. They're afraid to put their kids on medication because, but I'm, I still am who I am. It's just that I'm able to get through some of the tasks a lot easier than what I was before. Um, it doesn't get rid of the ADHD. I still have a lot. I still have a lot of symptoms, I can still out talk anyone but but it helps make everyday things a little more manageable, I think. So it was just a desire to to be a better teachers. Where it came from. 

0:20:44 - Melissa

Yeah, so, are there any techniques, any resources, anything that you're using now that you think help you to manage better? 

0:20:55 - Nichole

Aside from being medicated, uh, one thing that I do that and this helped me in high school too, cause I was. It's weird that I've always received this feedback from people. People have always told me that I'm very organized. People that I work with have always said that, have always said that, and I always found that really bizarre because I don't think of myself as organized. But once enough people started saying it, I started paying attention and it's more of a coping mechanism for the chaos that's inside my head, cause right now, like the ADHD, brain is always swirling and moving and constantly thinking and ooh and distraction and ooh, something's out the window. You're just in in your own head all the time and there's rarely a feeling of boredom because you're just. You're okay with sitting in an empty room, and waiting rooms are the best because you just sit and you're inside your own thoughts and then, before you know it, they're calling your name. I don't really feel bored just having to wait on something. I'm totally fine just staring at a wall, because there's always a movie going on in here. So, as far as strategies, though, something I started in high school was keeping a calendar, and I know that sounds really obvious, but now I have my current job, which I'm a communications coordinator, so I handle tools, communications or social media, everything and everything has to be extremely organized, otherwise it would all fall apart. I'm on a very tight schedule. I'm extremely busy all day. I think that's why I enjoy it so much, because I'm always, always moving, always doing, always, until I leave at four o'clock and then I'm just like I crash. But one thing I do when I get to work in the morning is I pull up my calendar because I have a super busy schedule all day. I set alarms for everything I have to do all throughout the day. If I have to be somewhere at 10 o'clock, boom, I set an alarm. If I have to be somewhere at 11, I have to set alarms to go to lunch. Otherwise, because I hyper focus, I'll get so centered on one thing like part of what I do, I write articles. 

This is a funny story, oh God, I'm having a squirrel moment, but it's okay. I love a funny story when my computer I would get really, really into writing an article and my computer would just suddenly go off and I would lose the article because it wasn't saved. And I got so frustrated like why is my computer doing this. It just goes off randomly. Well, so I called our IT department. Our IT guy came over and he's like oh my gosh, Nichole, you have it plugged in to the top outlet. He said all the top outlets are motion-sensored, so if you're really still, your computer's gonna cut off. 

0:23:45 - Melissa

I'm like no. 

0:23:46 - Nichole

I didn't know that, and so I realized that it was always happening in the middle of me writing an article. But it's when I'm writing an article that I'm so hyper-focused that I don't move a muscle, and it has to be, for I don't know, like 30 minutes of no movement or something like that. 

0:24:05 - Melissa

Wow but. 

0:24:06 - Nichole

I was so hyper-focused that I wasn't moving enough to activate the electricity in my office. So then I moved the plug to the other one. But I have to set alarms to go eat lunch, because I'll be so focused on my work that I forget to eat. So I set an alarm for this meeting, this meeting, this deadline, all the things I've gotta do throughout the day and I probably drive everybody crazy because my alarm's always going off. But I have to do that, otherwise I would forget everything or I would be late. 

And I am another thing, and this is a coping mechanism that I developed at some point, I think in college I used to always be late for class. You can ask Dr Sloan. I remember I think this was when I changed, if she's listening to this I was always late for class because I would get so engrossed and when I was doing I'd usually study between classes I would get so engrossed in my assignment or whatever it was that I would completely lose track of time, and then I would go to class late. And then I remember Dr Sloan. One day she made a comment about me being late and I wanted to please her so much because she was probably my favorite professor ever, I would say easily, and when she called me out for being late I was like, oh my God, dr Sloan doesn't like me being late. And I think that actually changed me for the rest of my life. 

To this day I am an extremely punctual person. I'm never late for work, but that's because after that I developed the way to avoid being late is to be extremely early and it's the only way I can be anywhere on time and that is to like with our interview today. I started trying to log in at one o'clock just to make sure that everything it's probably rooted in anxiety. But it's the fear of being late and that feeling and that awful no, no, no running late that led me to always be on time but always being early. So every job that I've had I'm never late, like ever. I mean. There are always extenuating circumstances, but for the most part I'm at least five to 10 minutes early and that's how I cope. So alarms, calendars arriving super early, I'm always looking for ways to improve the deficits so that it doesn't hinder me as an adult and get me fired. 

0:26:34 - Melissa

So learning or putting a name on it that it was ADHD, even though you suspected it all along, did that make you feel lesser? Then Did that change what you thought of yourselves in terms of I have something wrong with me or I'm not normal, even though normal I hate that word because no one's normal. 

0:26:54 - Nichole

But you know, I don't think that. I don't think I ever felt that way about it. I've always known that I'm not normal, even before I knew I had ADHD, because I remember in high school I just always thought I was weird, you know, or just that I saw the world differently, or that I was somehow a genius, like a secret genius. You know, I probably think too much of myself, but I remember in high school sitting at the lunch table with my friends and I would just say something random and it was always entertaining people and the more it entertained people like I got off on that, you know. And so I'd try to be even more random and just surprise people, because making people laugh gave me a dopamine hit, which is what is lacking in people with ADHD is we have low dopamine. That's why a lot of times, like if you know somebody with ADHD and they're really funny, but they're also not laughing at their own jokes, they're very dry with it. That's how I am. I'll say these random things and I have a completely straight face, but that's because I don't actually find it funny. I'm just really good at making people laugh, and so when I say the thing, and they're laughing, laughing, laughing. They can be funny all day long and I'm probably not gonna laugh at all, but I get the dopamine hit from making them laugh. And so I was always saying random things in the lunch table and I had a friend who said I would just love to open up Nichole's head and see exactly what is going on inside her head. And I remember when she said that like I felt super human, like it, just I felt special, you know. So I've always felt like. I've always felt like I was weird, that I was a secret genius, that I somehow understood the world in a way that other people didn't. So I don't think I looked at it as a deficit. When I was able to put a name to it. I don't think anything really changed it just kind of, I guess, solidified. But what did change was after. 

I think it's been up and down. There have been years when I thought back to high school and been embarrassed by how I behaved, not because of having ADHD, but just how I acted, and feeling kind of embarrassed for my past self. I'm like, oh, why did I act like that? I'm a little more mature than I was then. But having the diagnosis, once you have the diagnosis, it's kind of like when you get a new car, you start noticing that car everywhere. Once I had the diagnosis, I started seeing ADHD articles all over the place, like in my Facebook feed, my. You know the Facebook and Instagram reels. You scroll through those. Most of those are related to ADHD, at least in my feed. 

Because it's the algorithm yeah, they know, get out of my head but all that ADHD content that I started to see it made me feel less alone, I guess, and a part of me, yes, felt special, but a part of me felt alone too. And knowing that there are other people out there who experience some of these same things and they're talking about their symptoms and I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know that was an ADHD thing, I just thought it was a me thing. One thing is like a hyper awareness, a hyper awareness of time. I remember being a teacher and I'd be riding on the wall and I'd be in mid-word or riding on the board not on the this is the wall, but riding on the board and being in mid-word and looking at the word and being like really aware of the word and stopping for like a few seconds and thinking in just a few seconds this is gonna be a full word and staring, and then I look back at my students and I would have this and I've had a lot of teacher friends with ADHD who have told me this that they have this hyper aware moment where they're looking at their class and they're like this is so weird. 

This whole setup me up here talking to you and then you're receiving the information. We have this agreement that we're spending our day and we're all just sort of okay with it, but why? And I'm writing the word and I'm like, in a few minutes, this word is gonna be complete and in the next class period, that word is still gonna be on the board and I'm gonna look at it and I'm gonna think to my past self that this word was once not a complete word and all these things are racing. So it's very, very weird. It's a very weird space to be, but when you start looking online at all the other people, you're like, okay, I am in fact weird. However, there are other weirdos out there too, and that makes me feel better. 

0:31:58 - Melissa

Well, my boss was telling me, her son's doctor told her that after going through COVID, after COVID kind of the initial wave of it, of the quarantine that ADHD diagnosis is diagnoses, how do you say that? 

0:32:15 - Nichole

Whatever, yeah, diagnoses yeah. 

0:32:20 - Melissa

That they went from something like 7% of people to 14% of people, so like double. And the whole premise of him saying that was that he was like even if you're gonna test not taking your medication, go ahead and get it filled because there's a shortage. But that was just crazy to me. So was COVID hard for you, like? I'm guessing a lot of people went through COVID and were like, oh gosh, I was sitting at home with my thoughts and I realized I might need some medication? 

0:32:53 - Nichole

No, but actually because the thing and I guess it's I'm not gonna speak for all people with ADHD, because even because my husband has it too I don't know if he wants me sharing that, but there's it manifests itself differently in different people, and so my husband and I, I think, are the poster children for two very different kinds, and I don't know what those kinds are and I don't know, but we have very different symptoms. Things that he relates to, that he sees online about ADHD I don't relate to at all, and the things I see he doesn't relate to at all, cause we're always sharing ADHD content and we're always like, well, that doesn't sound like me, and he does the same with mine. So I think there's like, there's like two different ways past you can take. But anyway, what was your? I don't remember what your question was. What? Oh, covid? Yeah, so for me, my husband gets really antsy in downtime. He has to always be doing something, whereas for me and he might have enjoyed parts of the downtime too, I don't know, but I loved the quiet of it and the I don't know I did not struggle at all, and I know some people did, but for me it was so nice to be able to better. 

I know for some people they had a hard time compartmentalizing work from home life during that time and that was a source of stress for a lot of people. But for me, we would all do our work, our homework, at the beginning of the day and then around noon we were all done and we would go out, we would play tennis, we would take walks. It actually, in a lot of ways, brought us a lot closer together as a family. We weren't going out and doing things, we were just doing things together. So, yeah, I don't know that my ADHD was helpful for any of that, but, like I told you before, if I'm sitting in a waiting room, I'm in my own head and I'm kind of not bored because there's so many things going on in my head and every time, like I would go to the grocery store. So we didn't even go to the grocery store most of the, but I remember in the very beginning we did go to the grocery store and everybody was wearing a mask and it felt like the apocalypse. 

But at home I was reading some. What was it? Third box was that the book that they later made a Netflix movie out of. But I was reading that and it was this very it kind of felt post-apocalyptic-y in a way. I think that worked and so yeah, so like I was kind of living in this little fantasy post-apocalypse. That's kind of where my thoughts were, and not that I was okay with living in the apocalypse, but it was something that kind of brought us all together during that time that maybe I fixated on a little bit. I don't know, it's weird. 

0:35:43 - Melissa

Final thing has your ADHD diagnosis changed your goals for the future? 

0:35:49 - Nichole

Well, just, I think they inherently just having ADHD inherently changes everything always, just because, like you're chasing not, one of the things with people with ADHD is they're always chasing novelty. And so, yeah, I mean it'll change my goal every day. I might be totally okay with something one day and then the next day I'm ready for something new. I may have a job for five years and I know any job that I've had for a very long time that maybe the last year of that job became really, really mundane and I felt trapped and I had to get out, not because the job was particularly bad, mainly because I needed novelty. And so I think having the diagnosis, knowing that about myself because I don't know that I was able to articulate that novelty was what I needed and wanted. But now that I have the diagnosis and know that a person with ADHD seeks novelty, knowing that about myself, I've become more okay with not having everything all figured out all the time. I feel like I'm a very stable person in terms of I have a secure job, I check a lot of adult boxes, but at the same time, there are something like we don't have our own house yet. We live in campus housing. There are things about our life that we have not yet figured out and I think old me would be really depressed about a lot of those things. But the me that has come to embrace change and recognize that I need novelty in order to not feel bored and to not feel like I needed change, that I need to embrace my need for change and that and to be open to change and opportunities. I think that's a lot of people. 

When I talk to my friend Meredith, like I, what I envy about her is her stability. She's been in the same job since grad school and she checks a lot of adult boxes too. There's a part of me that craves that I've always craved just this steady, solid, to be a steady, solid person, and she has told me that she is envious of. It seems like I've had a very adventurous life to her and I think that's hilarious that she would feel envious of, because I feel like it's just been chaotic in a lot of ways. But I think that if I had had the same thing, a part of me thinks that that's what I want, but if I had always had the same thing it might have driven me crazy. 

So new me or current me is, has learned to embrace sort of the constant, the need for change and the fact that it has changed. I could look back on my life and say, god, it's been so crazy living in 35 different places and three different states and however many different jobs I've had. But I've, you know, I've come to a place where I'm more okay with my past too, cause it could be for some. I think, looking back and seeing that many careers, that many locations could be a source of embarrassment for some people, and I have felt embarrassed at times about that. But I think, had I had something different, that it could have been very different for me and I don't think I would have the clarity that I do now. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Well, thank you so much for having me. 

0:39:49 - Melissa

Thank you for joining us today on. This is my Story for part two of Nichole's story. If you missed it, be sure to check out part one of Nichole's story, where she shares about job sacrifices, facing the trials and challenges of teaching in public high schools and the strength it took for her to leave a teaching position after just three weeks. If you'd like to be a guest on our show or know someone that has an inspiring story they'd like to share, please visit us online at ThisIsMyStoryPodcast.com and fill out the contact us for. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to hear more inspiring stories, make sure to hit the subscribe button, and don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. This has been Nichole's story. What's yours? 

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