"Diverging" full transcript

HANNAH HARRIS GREEN: It was a conversation that started with you finding a peanut butter cup wrapper that I had left out. 

MATTHEW: Yeah, I mean it wasn't specifically about the wrapper, just, a lot of times I think you just don't throw stuff away and sometimes I understand it, but sometimes it really confuses me because, why?

ALLISON BEHRINGER: This is Bodies producer Hannah Harris Green, speaking with her partner Matthew.

HANNAH: I know it's really hard for people who are not me to understand why it's so hard. Why, why doesn't she just do this? Why doesn't she just do that? And I'm like, it's literally because it just leaves my mind. I don't remember.

ALLISON: This issue of Hannah just forgetting to throw things out, put stuff away… It comes up a lot. It's actually been a struggle for much of her life.  There's this idea that if you work hard enough at something, you’ll get better at it. But what happens when you seem to be struggling more than the people around you? Like there’s something just out of your sight that keeps tripping you up?

Hannah had always thought there were certain areas of life that she was just really bad at. But recently, she’s realized it’s more complicated than that. She’s been searching for the snag that’s tripping her up, untangling it and asking herself: How do you balance the desire to grow and improve with the desire to accept yourself as you are? 

From KCRW, this is Bodies. I’m Allison Behringer. 

HANNAH: I think a fundamental part of who I am is that I'm messy. I want the good things about me to matter more than that to you. 

MATTHEW: No, they do. All of the wonderful parts about you matter so much more to me than any of that stuff ever could. I don't think that stuff is inherently fundamental to who you are. 

HANNAH: I don't know if that's true. I think it is how I am. People have been telling me to be different for a long time, and I haven't managed to be. I want it to be okay if I am intrinsically messy, I want that to be okay. 

MATTHEW: Right.

HANNAH: I want you to still wanna be with me. 

HANNAH: Since I was a kid, I’ve often felt like I have a dirty secret. Like literally dirty. Like there was actual loose sauce in my backpack, getting everywhere. Melted Hershey bars would get all over the inside of my desk at school. I spent a lot of time trying to hide my little messes from people. 

I knew it was embarrassing and gross to live this way. And of course people would tell me to be more careful. But even if their advice made sense while they were saying it, remembering it later was a different story. I just could not.

Because my mind was usually somewhere else entirely. In a universe of my own with its own priorities. A universe where open lids and unzipped zippers were irrelevant. 

I'm seven years old, walking home from the bus stop.

I carefully make sure I step on every crack in the sidewalk… hoping that rhyme about breaking my mother’s back is bullshit. I’m trying to make the ridges of the cracks align with just the right spot on the arch of each foot. If it’s not the same on both sides, I feel uncomfortable, unsatisfied. Kinda like the feeling of having something in your eye. 

At seven, I was happy living in my weird little head with its weird rules. I didn’t try to fight it. You see, my mind was a fantastic world of wonder when I let it run free.

In bed at night, I’d lie awake for hours, way past my bedtime, creating movies that played between my eyelids and my eyes. Wild, romantic stories, just as vivid to me as Disney movies. I had this mermaid Barbie with a jeweled gold tail. I created a version of her in my head with sharp fangs. Trails of blood would spiral into the ocean from the necks of her victims. She was both a villain and a sucker for love. When I’d finally drift off, my sleep was so restless, I’d wake up with my hair in knots. My mom would joke that I put my hair in a blender at night time.

In elementary school, classes felt easy and teachers loved me. They mostly overlooked the things that confused me. Like, I could not tell the difference between left and right for years after everyone else got it. Morgan, my twin sister, would try to explain it, holding up each of their hands, but it felt like they were speaking a language I didn’t know.  

When I started middle school, things began to change. No more recess. And for the first time, I felt like I was imprisoned at my desk. My teacher would yell at me for doodling. But when I had to hold my body still, my mind would rage. 

One day, she insists that I take her to my locker and open it in front of her. It’s full of crumpled pieces of paper: some trash but also things I want to keep that happen to be wrinkled and squished. She removes each item and gleefully proclaims it to be useless. I stand there quietly, for what feels like forever, not knowing what to say.

I had my own little messy world of my own messy things. Why did anyone else care? 

I'd always been a loud, enthusiastic student. But after that teacher, I decided it was better to be more invisible. 

I’m 14, and a freshman in high school. When the bell rings at 7:20 am each day, my mind feels like a sleepy soup. I get yelled at for cradling my head in my arms and dozing off at my desk. 

I’m in a magnet program. The school says we’re all special, gifted, and that if we put everything we have into this education, we’ll be rewarded. But over and over, I find myself to be deficient. And a question emerges in my mind: What am I doing wrong? Why am I floundering like this? 

Each day I rush to class with loose papers spilling out of my arms, sometimes trying to redo my forgotten homework as I walk. I’m constantly combing my mind for things I might be forgetting… which makes me forget other things. It’s a self-defeating cycle. 

And then, one morning before school, I take one of the big mugs in the kitchen and fill it with coffee. I’d heard that coffee is supposed to make you jittery, but instead it made me calm, focused. It allowed me to more easily sift through the dozens of conversations happening in my brain at once. 

I start filling a thick metal thermos with coffee before I catch the bus every morning. But even with the coffee, in my dullest classes, paying attention was impossible. And I’d notice my mind wandering – often to other girls. I’d sometimes catch myself in a staring contest with this shy and athletic girl. But I didn’t want to make more trouble for myself. So I decided that my little crushes were meaningless.

I went from getting mostly As to sometimes getting Ds. My parents both worked incredibly hard and expected the same of Morgan and me. I tried to push through, and study harder. But as much as I'd stare at my textbook, I could not get the information to transfer from the pages into my brain.

I figured this must be hard for everyone. And that if I put in enough effort, someday it would get easier. In college, everyone and everything seemed messy – I blended in. I could mostly choose how I spent my days, which made it easier to focus and learn. 

But soon, life came crashing back hard.

I turn 22. I graduate. I get a few cool journalism internships and scholarships, but I can barely make money. I crash on my sister's couch. I think I'll be there for a few months, but it takes over a year for me to move out. 

Friends my age are getting steady jobs, apartments. I don’t even have a bedroom. I’m an adult without any of the trappings of adulthood. Dating is hard. I feel so ashamed any time I have to explain that I live on my sister’s couch. It's easier to get involved with people whose opinions I don’t really care about. 

I have this continual feeling that the life I want is slipping through my fingers. 

Things get better in fits and starts. I make my way out of the closet. And then finally, I meet my first girlfriend. Being visibly, unequivocally out feels better than I could have imagined. But I’m so grateful she wants me that sometimes I put up with a lot.

She likes to make me squirm. As an adult, I still need symmetry on both sides of certain parts of my body, like I did as a kid with the sidewalk cracks. If someone or something touches one side, it creates this urgency to feel the same sensation on the other side, almost like an itch that needs to be scratched. 

But when my girlfriend touches me, she sometimes leaves one side of me hanging, just to tease me. It’s serious to me, but she seems to think of it as a game, not a real need. When she pressures me to move in, I’m nervous but I do it anyway. I’m forgetful as ever.  

She scribbles the words “Lights off? Doors locked? Keys?” onto a Post-it note and sticks it to the front door. She probably thinks she’s being helpful. Still, whenever I see it, I’m furious. This brusque list of my flaws, from the person who was supposed to love me. 

Eventually, we break up. I move from LA to Chicago, where I can afford my own apartment for the first time. After years of white knuckling my way through sleepless nights and nearly-missed deadlines, I’m shocked to find myself on stable ground financially. I’m getting better jobs, better money. Feeling more confident in my queerness. Though my laundry is still just as likely to mildew in the machine before I remember to put it in the dryer.

A month after arriving in town, I meet Matthew. 

When I matched with Matthew and agreed to go out with them, I didn't think it would go very far. It had been years since I dated outside the lesbian community. But they were so cute and their messages were so thoughtful and sincere, I thought, “Okay. I'll meet this person.”

And we liked each other a lot, immediately. The more time we spent together, the less I tried to hide the parts of myself I found embarrassing. He was mostly easy going about my mess. And when I told him about my need to be touched evenly on both sides, he kind of understood it. 

What I didn’t know at the time was that Matthew had a hunch about me, but they weren’t sure how to tell me.

MATTHEW: But meanwhile, I was going out for drinks with Ingrid and I'm like, “This woman I'm dating is the most ADHD ass person.”

HANNAH: Really? 

MATTHEW: I was like, Oh my gosh, I've been itching to say this because I can't really say it to her, but I am so sure that she has ADHD.

HANNAH: Matthew has ADHD himself. ADHD stands for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” ADD and ADHD used to be separate conditions, but now they’re considered the same condition. Matthew had noticed some similarities about how we live. We both have a hard time focusing on chores.

MATTHEW: I know for both of us, I think organization is something that's pretty hard. It can be hard to get on top of it. Sometimes little bits of half finished tasks, oh, maybe you got half of the dishes done or part of the things put away. These are kind of things that any old person could struggle with. But sometimes it's not just any old struggle. Maybe it's indicative of something sort of under the surface.

HANNAH: Even though they related to a lot of what I was going through, sometimes Matthew would get exasperated with me. 

MATTHEW: This is a woman I love with all my heart. It takes two seconds to put the cereal box back, put it back.

HANNAH: It was hard to hear anything about my mess without feeling like I’d been shrunk back 

into a little kid getting a scolding. He might have just been telling me I left the cereal out. But to me it felt like he was saying I wasn’t worth being around. 

A few times, Matthew gently told me that it seemed like I was experiencing what's called executive dysfunction and that I should talk to someone about it. Executive dysfunction means you have a hard time managing your thoughts and whatever tasks are at hand, so you often forget to finish what you've started.

Matthew wanted me to face the possibility that I have ADHD head on. But I was hesitant. I’m bisexual. I have a mixed racial background that even I struggle to articulate to people. I didn't want to add some mental disorder to the mix as another label for others to question and dismiss. Especially one that some people think is fake, like it’s just an excuse to be lazy.

But Matthew said their diagnosis had really helped them.

MATTHEW: With ADHD there was so much that was advantageous about really understanding how it affected me because I could plan around it. Because untamed, it just seems like just this constant overwhelming and being unable to play to your strengths and know your weaknesses.

Week after week, I thought about bringing up ADHD In therapy. And week after week, I’d run out the clock talking about something else. When I finally did get around to it, she began asking a series of questions.

"Were you a good student when you were a little kid?" she asked. 

"Yes," I said.

"Were you a big reader?" 

"Yes.”

“Did you eventually fall from grace in the eyes of your family and teachers, who figured you just needed to work harder?”

"Yes.”

She asked if I found boring tasks extremely painful. I said, “Well yeah, doesn’t everybody?” She said that if I have ADHD, chores and mundane tasks are much more painful to me than to other people. I was shocked. This was just another session with my therapist, but it felt like I was talking with a psychic. 

ALLISON: We’ll be right back after these messages.

ALLISON: We’re back. And heads up, the second half of this episode contains discussion of the aftermath of sexual assault.

HANNAH: Right after the appointment with my therapist, I texted Matthew, “I probably have ADHD, lol.” Soon after that, I was on the phone with them, crying. The idea that so many of the things that had been so hard for me for so long were actually to some degree out of my control made me really, really sad.

That when people had wondered why I was like this, why I couldn't simply be different, better, that there was something they weren't taking into account. That they might have understood me if they knew. That I might have understood me if I knew.  

Matthew told me, “I’m nothing but proud of you right now.” They sent me a bunch of memes, including one with two Spidermans pointing at each other, each blaming the other for something. One was labeled, “Not getting anything done because I’m too overwhelmed,” the other, “Being too overwhelmed because I haven’t gotten anything done.” 

This conversation with my therapist was not a formal diagnosis, but it was the moment that I understood that I do have ADHD. That I am one of many women whose ADHD went unnoticed during childhood. Because the stereotypical image of a person with ADHD is a hyper little boy, ADHD in people with other genders is often missed.

And I could see that at every moment in my life, it had been a part of the reason certain things were difficult for me: I simply have different capacities from other people, and these are hardwired into my brain. According to some researchers, the idea of ADHD being a “deficit” of attention is kind of misleading. It's really attention dysregulation.

To me, this means your mind works in extremes. Either you’re extremely focused or not at all. You’re passionately interested in your project at work or what someone is saying, or you’re bored as hell and just waiting for the end. And you don’t always get to choose or predict how your brain will respond to a given situation. Things that seem tedious, which for me can include zipping up my bag for example, fall to the back of your mind – sometimes so far that you can’t remember them even if you want to. 

Learning about ADHD, looking at TikToks, Reddit threads, blog posts and YouTube videos, I’ve found so many things I thought were unique quirks of my own personality are actually common to lots of people. I’m not the only ADHDer who needs symmetry on both sides of their body. There are YouTube videos about dealing with insomnia and sleep issues related to ADHD. 

These similarities go way beyond the official checkboxes for ADHD. In the real world, ADHD has been found to overlap with so many other conditions. People with ADHD are more likely to have dyslexia, depression, anxiety, autism, bipolar, OCD and PTSD.

Trying to figure out what’s going on in your own mind… it can be frustratingly complex. And if there are other things going on with you, the possibility of ADHD might not even occur to you. Which is what happened to me.

For most of my adult life, I thought there was a different reason that so many things felt so hard. 

Throughout my 20s, I was sexually assaulted a handful of times. I knew intellectually that sexual assault is always the perpetrator’s fault. That anyone who is willing to cause someone years of pain in order to take a few moments of pleasure for themselves is the guilty one. And that in a better world, you’d be able to walk into a sexual scenario with anyone and correctly assume that you’ll be safe. 

Therapy helped me to begin to internalize these beliefs, but it also made me realize that saying “It’s not my fault,” is one thing. Getting that fact through every layer of your subconscious is quite a bit harder. Even as I was working to heal, my life was unstable, and the small victories were all I allowed myself to think about. Enough work, enough money, enough hope, to get through one more day. 

As I started to process my assaults in therapy, I never sought a formal diagnosis for PTSD. The thought of talking to yet another person about my worst memories was daunting. And I kind of just knew I had it. A stranger brushing against me on the bus could send me into a panic.

I would try to understand what was happening. I’d read articles about dating after rape, or about the effects of PTSD. But my mind was cloudiest when I was thinking about everything that happened. It was hard to get the information to stick. Most of the time, I thought that this was just my life now. I thought struggle was just what I deserved. 

For about the last decade, I thought working through my sexual traumas was the one thing I needed to do to improve my mental health. So I didn’t look for other explanations about why things were difficult for me. People talk about trauma as a dividing line in your life. It creates a “before” and an “after.” It changes you. But I had been so wrapped up in the after, I didn’t think to connect it to the before. 

Soon after my therapy appointment, I came across a Venn diagram of ADHD and PTSD symptoms on Twitter. I felt a sinking feeling as I recognized symptoms from each bubble of the diagram and from where they overlapped in the middle. 

Like “inattention.” After my assaults, I would find myself staring off into space, lost in a soup of despair-filled thoughts that formed no narrative. But even before the assaults, my mind had wandered. 

Insomnia is also a symptom from the middle of the diagram. I remembered how after the assaults, I’d sometimes lie awake at night because I was half convinced that my roommate’s footsteps might actually belong to an intruder, versus when I was a kid, lying awake, absorbed in fantastical stories of my own invention. 

As I dug deeper into the ADHD-PTSD connection, I found one big study on the topic. The lead researcher is Dr. Andrea Spencer. She’s a child psychiatrist and vice chair for research for the Psychiatry Department at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. 

ANDREA SPENCER: It's very unlikely for anybody to come to psychiatric care.with one singular problem. 

HANNAH: What are the similarities between ADHD and PTSD? 

ANDREA: So, I think one perspective on that is there aren't that many. 

HANNAH: She said that on paper, the official diagnostic checklist of ADHD and PTSD symptoms looks very different. But they can resemble each other more in the real world.

ANDREA: If you're having PTSD symptoms and flashbacks and anxiety and fear, then you may not be paying attention. The other is, you know, people with ADHD often do have difficulty with mood regulation. It's not part of the diagnostic criteria, but it's really common, and it's a really common symptom of PTSD also.

HANNAH: And Andrea’s research shows that connection between ADHD and PTSD goes beyond these similarities. She found that people with ADHD were four times more likely than people without it to have PTSD. And people with PTSD were also more likely to have ADHD. In other words, if you have one, you're more likely to have the other. That’s partly because the symptoms feed into one another. Researchers aren’t exactly sure why, but it’s likely that the brain wiring of someone with ADHD makes them more vulnerable to PTSD.  

HANNAH: Does PTSD make ADHD worse or can it make it worse? 

ANDREA: Definitely. It definitely does. And we found that in our meta-analysis that every time the two were present together, both were worse. 

HANNAH: So my PTSD wasn’t just potentially disguising my ADHD, it was exacerbating it also. Because PTSD and ADHD both make it harder to focus on what’s at hand. If you have ADHD, your baseline ability to focus is worse than average. 

And then if you have PTSD on top of that, you might also be distracted because you’re dissociating, or because you’re constantly on the lookout for threats. And understanding that – it’s helpful. It allowed me to see why I expected so little for so long. 

Just recently, I looked up the diagnostic manual’s criteria for PTSD. And this line stuck out to me. One symptom is quote, “Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world.” 

My belief that all I deserved was struggle, and that struggle was all the world would provide, it meant it barely occurred to me to look for bigger, long term solutions to my problems. I see now that my ADHD and PTSD tangled me in a web of defeated thoughts, and blocked me from finding a way out. I didn’t have a way to put together that my hopelessness was not actually the result of my own worthlessness. 

Andrea said diagnosing and treating ADHD is half the battle. But that psychiatrists should also be on the lookout for overlapping conditions.

ANDREA: Once ADHD is diagnosed, you really need to do a deep diagnostic evaluation for other things too. And that tends to be in clinical practice, not the way it rolls, right? The way it rolls is like you make a diagnosis and you're done.  

HANNAH: Talking to Andrea, it was hard not to fantasize about a world where healthcare is holistic and easy to access, when in reality getting even one diagnosis is arduous. I had to get on multiple waitlists to find a psychiatrist who would help me manage my ADHD. Finally, after many months I had a psychiatrist, an ADHD diagnosis and a prescription for Ritalin. 

At first I was deeply suspicious that taking medications like Ritalin and Adderall would make me unrecognizable to myself. My wandering mind causes me problems, but it’s also endlessly entertaining. 

Even my need for symmetrical touch is something that feels uniquely mine. Who would I be without these things? But then I learned that like coffee, these medicines are stimulants and they affect people with ADHD differently. 

The first day I tried Ritalin, Matthew was my guide. I felt it hitting very quickly. But it wasn't a high. It was everything around me slowing way, way down. Even with painfully boring tasks, I felt a lightness while I worked. In a meeting I noticed one of my hands resting on my leg still. I wasn't shaking one leg or rocking back and forth or playing with something at my desk. 

But the biggest change I noticed had nothing to do with work. That day I ate lunch with Matthew and Morgan, we had jibaritos in the park. I laid back and found myself just staring up at the canopy of trees. Not analyzing them, not trying to increase or decrease my focus on them. Just seeing them.

When I first started taking medication, I kind of hoped it would mean I didn’t have ADHD anymore, at least until my dose wore off at the end of the day. But it definitely isn’t a cure. I still have to stop myself from starting a bunch of different tasks and leaving them unfinished. 

But with Ritalin, it’s easier to get from one end of the day to the other. And the fears that I’d become someone else? I’m still me. Still inventive, still curious. Just a little quieter, a little more focused.  But there are things about ADHD meds I might not have realized. They can worsen PTSD symptoms, like anxiety. 

ANDREA: I have people who are controlled, you know, they have ADHD, they're controlled on medication, they're doing really well. And then, something happens and they either develop depression or they develop PTSD and all of a sudden their medication doesn't sit well with them. They start noticing that they're more anxious when they take it.

HANNAH: Yeah, I mean, I have definitely been noticing a lot more PTSD stuff coming back. And I kind of assumed it's ‘cause I was working on this episode. But I wonder if it could be related to the medication too.

ANDREA: You can often figure that out by just doing a start and a stop with a medication and tracking your symptoms, you know, because the nice thing about ADHD medicine is it doesn't hang around for very long. And the problem is of course that, for people with ADHD medication can be so life changing, it could be so helpful that most people don't wanna stop it.

HANNAH: It’s frustrating to realize that my medication might be working against me at the same time as it’s helping me. It’s frustrating to deal with two conditions that are surrounded by stigma. Sometimes I wonder what it’s even worth to try to change myself. How many different medications should I try? How many new side effects will I have to adjust to? 

HANNAH: I'm wondering how much of myself I should be working to change and how much I should be working to just accept.

ANDREA: So my main thought is you can't work on everything at once. And so I think there, there's a combination of radical acceptance of no matter how hard I try, this is also the way I am and I can also try, but it's gonna be hard for you when you try. It’s up to you to decide, what do you need to work on? And some of the other things you let go.

HANNAH: For so long it felt like I was just crashing through life, making my way from one day to the next. I know I can’t do that anymore. I have to pay attention to what’s going on inside my head, even if I’d rather ignore it. I have to make decisions about what I want to work on and what I want to let go. But I’m slowly learning to work with my weird brain rather than fight it. 

When I was a kid stepping on every crack in the sidewalk, I always just gave my brain what it needed. But then I was taught to fight many of my impulses. It took a lot of energy. 

MATTHEW: You can't bash your head against a wall to just brute force something over and over, and just wonder why it's not working. And instead it's like, oh, I was supposed to be taking a different approach this whole time. There's a completely different way you can get through that wall, you can climb over it or go around it. 

HANNAH: Knowing that I'm just not gonna be able to use the same strategies as everybody else is gonna be helpful to me and helpful to you and the people around me too.

Now, I know that doodling will help me pay attention during meetings. If I can, I avoid meetings before 10 am because I know this is the best way for me to tame my insomnia. If I’m around people and I’m achingly bored, I know that rocking from one foot to another can help. 

Knowing I have ADHD has made me realize that everything I’m going through is part of something bigger. At the same time, it doesn’t explain everything. A diagnosis isn’t a guidebook to your life. 

It is both freeing and a little defeating to understand that there are parts of my brain that aren’t going to change. But as I weigh what I want to change about myself and what I want to learn to accept. The thing I know I want to leave behind is the shame. 

HANNAH: I used to really feel like I should be able to get over things faster. I felt like I was a weak person for not being able to get over stuff faster and I think. And I think talking to Andrea has helped me understand why that's hard for me. 

MATTHEW: You okay?

HANNAH: *sniffles*

MATTHEW: Hey, hey it's okay.

HANNAH: Yeah. *sniffs*

MATTHEW: We're never gonna be able to go back to not having had the experiences that we have, but we're always changing and growing and I think that's okay in the end, even if it's a long road there. We shouldn't have to hold that shame in this place where you are loved and you are safe. I think it's really just it's okay to let go and exist. I think it lets you be kind to yourself in a way that I think we really deserve and I think you really deserve. 

HANNAH: Easier said than done, but yeah, I really want that.

ALLISON: For additional resources about ADHD and PTSD go to kcrw.com/bodies. You'll also find episode transcripts and a link to the Bodies facebook group, where you can share your own story and find support for whatever you’re going through. You can follow Bodies on Twitter and instagram at @bodiespodcast. You can follow Hannah on Twitter at @writenoise – that’s W-R-I-T-E underscore N-O-I-S-E. And you like Bodies, tell a friend about the show! 

ALLISON: This episode was reported and produced by Hannah Harris Green. Story editing by Mira Burt-Wintock, me – Allison Behringer – Sharon Mashihi, Cassius Adair, Camila Kerwin and Kristen Lepore. The Bodies team also includes producer Lila Hassan. Special thanks to KalaLea and Caitlin Pierce. Original score by Hannis Brown. Mixing by Nick Lampone. Theme music and credit music by Dara Hirsch. Episode art by Neka King. Cover art by Sarah Bachman. Hannah would also like to thank Elyssa Dudley and Morgan Green. Bodies is supported and distributed by KCRW. Our executive producer at KCRW is Gina Delvac. Thank you to the whole KCRW team. I’m Allison Behringer, the host and executive producer of Bodies. Thanks for listening. See you next week.