Learning to Live with Neurodivergence

During her week of PMDD, she shares what it’s like to have the mood swings and sensory sensitivities of PMDD with the inability to focus of ADHD. Living within the struggles of not wanting to “clean her room but wanting to come back to a clean room,” her PMDD contradicts everything her ADHD tells her not to do. It’s much harder for her to have conversations about her queerness because she has so much that she wants to talk about, but if the person listening says something that irritates or offends, she becomes overly sensitive to the comment. Becoming defensive, she later feels badly for her combativeness. Her comfort comes with her father, who is supporting her queerness and learning along with her how do deal with his own neurodivergence.

This episode was made possible thanks to our partnership with the Missing Voices Project. Based out of Flagler College, the Missing Voices Project believes that amplifying the voices of young people and their adult allies who live and serve in ministry at the intersections of disability, foster care & trauma, gender & sexuality, and racial reconciliation is necessary and holy work. We are grateful to Missing Voices Project for their support and for the bravery of these campers as they share about life at the intersection of queerness and disability. For more information about the Missing Voices Project, please visit www.missingvoices.org

Find out more about us by visiting our website, kindomcommunity.org. There you can find information about kin•dom camp and consider supporting our work with a one-time or recurring donation. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @kindomcommunity to keep up with all the important information.

Transcript

music  0:00  
[Andy strumming guitar & Baylee's voice singing: "Oh let's build, let's build a place we can go”]

Narrator  0:09  
Thank you for tuning into kin•dom campfire chats, a podcast of kin•dom community. This podcast features the voices of LGBTQIA+ persons, both youth participants and adult staff, who attended kin•dom camp in Texas in the summer of 2024.

We asked the camp participants to think of a question that they wish someone would ask them about their life journey with a friend, and in their own words, the campers tell their stories of struggle, love, support, and a community found. We invite you to listen with an open mind and an open heart.

music  0:50  
[Andy strumming guitar & Baylee's voice singing: "This is the place”] 

Narrator  0:56  
This episode was made possible thanks to our partnership with the Missing Voices Project who believes that amplifying the voices of young people and their adult allies who live and serve in ministry at the intersections of disability, foster care & trauma, gender & sexuality, and racial reconciliation is necessary and holy work. We are grateful for the bravery of these campers as they share about life at the intersection of queerness and disability.

speaker 1  1:30  
What is it like to live life with both ADHD and PMDD?

speaker 2  1:35  
I think it it depends on what I'm doing and who I'm around. With PMDD, my mood will be absolutely insane. And with ADHD, I will have these tendencies specifically, I won't want to clean my room. But with PMDD, I will want to come back to a clean room even if I don't actively want to do the cleaning. And it will I will get so agitated, I've actually had recently a manic episode over I couldn't look at my room I couldn't be in my room because of all of the visual noise. And it was, it was really difficult for me, because there was no other space in the house for me to actively just like be and be still and sit in my depression, basically.

So I think with PMDD, it's like, it almost contradicts everything that my ADHD tells me not to do. I'm like, I don't want to clean. I don't, I have trouble focusing. I talk a lot, and during the week of-the week before my period, when I have these mood swings and these extreme feelings, I will want everything to be clean and I will, I will want everything to be silent and I will get really irritated when people talk to me even though I usually love talking to people. And I think it's really hard to have conversations with people specifically about my queerness when I'm on that week before my menstrual cycle. Because I will have so much I want to talk about. And then, if they say just one thing that might irritate or offend me in any way, shape possible, or something that I want to correct, I will get-I will be incredibly over sensitive to it, and I'll get on every single one of their nerves about it. And I will try to defend my belief as much as possible, which I normally wouldn't do. Because I feel like my sense of justice is like, you know, I need to defend this, I need to correct them. I need to correct their behavior or their belief. And then I will feel terrible about it, and I'll feel like I'm the worst person in the world, and so I feel like I act really impulsively, and it really, it really sucks. 

And I've had a lot of relationships that I've almost they've almost completely, like caved in on each other just because of how I didn't know what was happening, and I didn't know how to control it per se, and I didn't have any way of knowing when it would come, when it would go, what I could do about it. And I didn't have any way to warn the people that I loved about how I would go from being this perky, talky, upright person to wanting to do nothing and being irritated at every sound you make and every time you fidget, even if like I can't see you fidgeting if I ask you to stop, and I can still hear it, or I still know you're doing something that I don't want you to do, it just it makes it everything irritates me.

Speaker 1  5:52  
And, I have a lot of relationships with my friends and some with my family that for a good time, it was really hard to repair them, because I had acted impulsively, and I had acted on a mood swing, and I hurt them, and so it's really hard to just it's hard to know what's going to impact who and when.because I it's like, I'm scared, because I never really know what I'll say, and when I say it, I know, even if I apologize, I can't take it back.

Speaker 3  6:36  
I think for me, first person that popped up when you said that question is my dad. And he, he's amazing. He is still learning about the community and learning how to support me and doing everything he can. He's had friends who have asked him about the community, and I've been able to provide him answers, which a little off topic, but I think he's just a really sweet guy.

He got diagnosed with ADHD. I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 10 years old, and he got diagnosed after I did so he was in his 40s, and he has been working through it and reading books and listening to podcasts and talking to people, trying to figure himself out, because especially when you're being diagnosed so late in life, you've lived your whole life with this, and you thought you were normal, but like something was wrong with you. Like you're just like everybody else, but you're you're flawed, in a sense. And he, when I got diagnosed, he was incredibly patient with me, and over the years, I've been someone who I can talk to him about my problems, to that I know my mother wouldn't relate to. She has bipolar disorder, and it's not as severe as some people, but it she does not have the same symptoms of a neurodiversity that I do, and it's really hard for her to connect with me over that. And so my father, he always, if I need to talk, he will put everything down. He'll be like, I'm here for you, which I know I would do that for anyone, and it makes me feel really loved, because he loves me the same way I love my friends and my family.

But he also will share things with me about his life that he didn't realize were symptoms of his ADHD until he got diagnosed and he looked back and he's like, it all-it's like all coming together, it makes so much more sense, and he will share those stories with me, or share things that he's learned or asked about and things that questions that have been answered because he's been seeking answers since forever, and now he knows which questions to ask, he will be able to answer them for himself. He shares them with me, and he will always, he won't always know what to say, but he always knows how it feels. And I feel like having somebody who you know doesn't have the same emotions as you at that moment, but has in the past, having somebody who you can truly connect with because, not only are you related by blood and related by choice, because he's amazing, and my friendship with him is amazing, but having somebody who I relate with on such a fundamental level, because we share a neurodiversity and we share so many personality traits, I feel like having somebody so close to me, it's like I'm figuring out myself with another version of myself. And he's just fundamentally, he knows what I feel when I'm feeling it. And he knows that I don't always need an answer or a solution. I just need somebody to talk to and somebody to understand.

music  10:59  
[Andy strumming guitar & Baylee's voice singing: "Oh let's build”] 

Baylee  11:03  
Hi y'all, it's Baylee. I'm the Creative Director of kin•dom community. I’d like to talk a little bit more about kin•dom camp and how you can get involved. kin•dom camp is an opportunity for LGBTQIA+ youth ages 12 to 17 to feel safe and free to show up as their full selves. Campers will have the chance to experience traditional camp activities and recreation, plus some specialized programming to incorporate LGBTQIA+ history and culture. More information can be found on our website kindomcommunity.org/camp. If you have any questions you can't find the answers to, you can email us at kindomcamp@gmail.com. 

Special thanks again to the Missing Voices Project for their support of this episode. You can learn more about their important work at missingvoices.org.

And thanks again to you, for listening to kin•dom campfire chats. We are proud to be a safe space for these campers, and we are even more proud of them for sharing their stories. We hope you'll keep gathering around the campfire with us as we celebrate all of the stories that make us this kin•dom community.