I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew my brain was malfunctioning, I wouldn't have blamed myself. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.

I used to think I was stupid. In my youth, I saw so many of my peers succeed, and that simply didn't happen for me. I would go home in tears to my mother, who would counsel me through my rigorous addition and subtraction problems as I screamed because I wanted to be good, but I just wasn't. But I wasn't stupid, I had severe ADHD. I used to think that people hated me. I thought I saw them jeer and point at me in the hallways of the school, and I took every comment made about me, complimentary or not, as a jab to my very being. I would go home to my mother, and cry, because no one liked me. But no one really hated me, I just had anxiety. As children, we don't know about the intricacies of the mind, and how sometimes the brain doesn't work quite as it's supposed to. We don't know why we're feeling all of these powerful emotions, and why everyone else just seems to have their life together. We tend not to know that something is wrong, because we have no reference point at that age. The only thing we have to go off of is what we think we know, and for a child, we don't know that much about the world around us, or ourselves. Now that I'm much older, I know the truth: my brain is dysfunctional most of the time. The neurotransmitters don't quite reach all the way throughout my brain, and that causes a lot of emotions and symptoms to arise. I know now that the medicine I take, that I have been taking since my diagnosis, helps the neurotransmitters do what they were intended to do, so that I can function normally. My medicine is the main reason I am here today, because without it I'm sure I would have gone crazy so many years ago. Living with neurodivergent thinking is an extremely difficult learning process, because the majority of symptoms are intangible, and can easily be warped by preconceived ideas of what this mental illness is supposed to do, or what that other mental illness looks like for the general population. But mental illness is not the same for everyone. It differs through gender, and upbringing, and so many other different variables. My goal in life is to help other people with that learning curve; to speed them through the cognitive journey that took me until now to complete. Because if I knew as a child that there was something wrong with my brain, I would have known that there was a reason why I thought that people hated me, or that I was too stupid to understand mathematics. There can finally be a reasoning towards all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and if we help them grasp an understanding of what is going on inside their minds, I strongly believe their whole life could improve exponentially.